The Top-10 Most Horrible Schoolteachers & Educators In Fiction
Now that Summer Vacation is in full swing, and last week’s article on Great Fictional Teachers already has to dreading to inevitable return of your school year, I figured I’d try to depress you even further by not only continuing to talk about school, but to run down a list of the ten most horrible teachers you could possibly get. While we can always dream of getting that really cool teacher who will take the class outdoors, perhaps play you a song on their acoustic guitar, and teach you edgy things that are way off the syllabus, it’s more likely that you’ll get a teacher that is dull, inattentive, unengaging, or just downright cruel. Welcome back to school, you little maggots, now real this immensely difficult and boring book (it’s usually Silas Marner), and be sure to do all of the assigned homework that I’m going to assign on the first day of school.
What’s more, Jake Kasdan is releasing a movie next week called “Bad Teacher,” starring Cameron Diaz as the title teacher, so it seems that hellish classroom dictators are hanging in the air like summer lovin’. Let’s continue that spirit, shall we?
Here then, from 10 to 1, are the worst teachers in fiction. Hope you’re enjoying your summer reading list. Just to let you know, Bless Me Ultima is way overrated. Bwa ha ha ha.
10) Mrs. Tingle
from “Teaching Mrs. Tingle” (1999)
Leigh Ann (Katie Holmes) is one of those obnoxiously overachieving high school students that you outwardly resented, but secretly admired. She’s pretty, successful, and poised to get into a good college, where she will, no doubt, continue to achieve, and become even more popular. She is hellbent on become this year’s valedictorian, and needs to pass her final class, taught by the harsh taskmistress, Mrs. Tingle (Helen Mirren).
Mrs. Tingle is one of those teachers who grades you not just by your achievements (should she find any), but also by what she thinks of your personal character. She has already judged Leigh Ann to be shallow and undeserving, and will likely not give her the high grade she needs, partly out of stubborn integrity, and partly out of gleeful spite. Mrs. Tingle knows she’s smarter than the teens she lectures to, and berates them and fails them to keep herself alive.
What’s even more frustrating is that, when Leigh Ann kidnaps Mrs. Tingle with the hopes of torturing her into a better grade (this is actually a lot funnier and more practical than it sounds; the film was written by ’90s-teen-genre-film impresario Kevin Williamson), Mrs. Tingle only manages to berate her further, and use her stirring intellect to talk Leigh Ann and her two compatriots into more drama than they bargained for. Manipulative, hateful, and stubborn, Mrs. Tingle is some kind of archetype that is all too familiar to us.
9) Ms. Bitters
from “Invader Zim” (2001-2003)
You can often tell if a schoolteacher resents their job. It may be the (unjustly) low pay. It may be the constant clashes of character with stubborn asshole teenagers. It may be the repetition, year after year, of the same simple material, or it may be a general disinterest in their assigned subject, but often you’ll find a man or woman who will grunt and snort about how much the school sucks, how little they get paid, and, as a result, will belittle students as a form of sport; a small, resentful respite from the nightmare of their job. Some teachers can mask their resentment in such a way that it become entertaining for the students, and you feel you can get on their side in hating school. Too often, though, the resentment will boil up into a general hatred for all students.
No teacher seems more outwardly hateful than Ms. Bitters, the wraith-like ghoul who teaches at the twisted school attended by Invader Zim, star for Jhonen Vasquez’ cartoon show. Zim’s school is already a stinky cesspit of secrets, villainy and general disorganization, but, thanks to Ms. Bitters, it’s also teeming with outward, unhidden hatred.
“Hello, you stupid children,” she’ll growl as she enters her classroom. She’ll proceed to teach things way beyond the children’s ability, just so she can yell at them for getting stuff wrong. She’ll move about the classroom like a serpent, hissing and crawling and threatening, potentially catching you committing some imagined infraction. Sometimes, math class can resemble Hell.
8) Edna Krabapple
from “The Simpsons” (1989 – present)
And speaking of teachers who feel defeated and stymied by their local public school system, we must not forget Edna Krabapple, the 4th grade teacher at Springfield Elementary. Randy, alcoholic, stern, depressed, Mrs. Krabapple will often indulge the students in stifling stories of her stalled marriage, her hatred of teaching, and her general frustration with life. She won’t rant or outwardly tell downer stories, but she’ll drop hints here and there, giving her unwitting 10-year-old charges frightening glimpses into the darker recesses of adulthood. She’ll then sneak off to smoke as often as possible.
It could be said that Edna Krabapple is a saint, as she has to put up with hellions like Bart Simpson and Nelson Muntz in her class. And, given the way the show’s chronology works, she’s been teaching the same class of unaging students for about 22 years now. But she never finds a way to engage her kids. She just slumps over her desk, a glaze over her eyes, angry, defeated, horrible, depressed.
You know that weird feeling you got as a kid, when you realized that your teacher had a life outside the classroom? Like when they would show up at your house for some reason, and you’d experience a weird cognitive dissonance? Edna Krabapple is the living embodiment of that cognitive dissonance.
7) Mrs. Gorf
from Sideways Stories from Wayside School (1978)
Not as bitter as Ms. Bitters, as defeated as Mrs. Krabapple, or as cruel as Mrs. Tingle, Mrs. Gorf, who teaches at Wayside School is still a huge presence to be reckoned with. Wayside School was intended to be a one-story structure, but, thanks to a blueprints mishap, was accidentally constructed as a thirty-story tower. Everything that happens at the school is, hence, a little off, mostly proven by the hiring and continued tyranny of the evil Mrs. Gorf, another teacher who is full of hatred and wickedness.
Mrs. Gorf, you see, with her pointed ears and long skinny tongue, was able to invoke a secret power of turning students into apples. A student would speak out of turn or get a question wrong, and zop, they would be fruit. She would line up the apples on her desk as a pointedly ironic display of how good a teacher she was. The school’s principal would never question her due to all of the gifted apples she received.
Eventually the remaining students of Mrs. Gorf retaliated, and brought down her reign of terror, but a reign of terror it was. Mrs. Gorf wasn’t just a screamer, she seemed to be outwardly demonic. I recall reading the story as a kid, and feeling queasy and a little scared. Thank goodness your teachers can’t change you into apples.
Or can they??
6) The Economics Teacher
from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986)
Apart from being downright wicked, one of the worst sins a schoolteacher can commit is to be utterly, stultifyingly boring. It’s one thing to berate a student into succeeding. It’s another to smooth their brains into puddles of uncaring mush. A mean teacher can still be a good teacher. A boring teacher will always be bad.
And no teachers are more boring than the stone-faced economics teacher at Ferris Bueller’s high school. First off, economics is a dull subject to begin with (my own high school economics teacher, Dr. Desrochers, admitted in the class that economics is a dull and unengaging subject, and he needed to show us movies and question our values to keep us alert; it worked), but the econ teacher, played iconically by Ben Stein, compounded the problem by droning the dull subject is a bland, flat monotone that hypnotized his students into placid-paced, spineless sea creatures.
Indeed, his droning monotone was so insidious, it pacified his students during the roll call. He would repeat names, lessons, and lecture endlessly, blissfully unaware that his students were not playing the least bit of attention. Some students would sleep. Not one of them could tell you the first thing about economics.
5) Michael “Tiger” Magrew
from “Pretty Maids All in a Row” (1971)
Mr. Magrew (Rock Hudson) is the greatest teacher in the world. He’s both the faculty adviser and head coach at his Venice, CA high school, where he raps with students, and has an open door policy in his office. He’s warm, charming, and will give you private lessons on the side just because he cares. If you need help with the ladies, why he’ll even help you out in that regard too, pointing one timid student (John David Carson) toward the charming new substitute teacher (Angie Dickenson). And, if you’re a charming young co-ed , he’ll give you a little sexual tutoring on the side himself. Charming, irascible, sexy, smart.
Not to mention morally irresponsible (boning students? Really?), caddish (he is married, after all), and criminal. Yes, to keep his numerous, numerous affairs a secret, Mr. Magrew has taken to killing many of his students, and quietly disposing of the bodies around campus. Some people see that the evidence points to him, but are disarmed by his sociopathic charm. A true serial killer if ever there was one, Mr. Magrew is a horribly sexy psycho, just waiting to bed you and then murder you if you either threaten to expose him, or simply become too attached.
Roger Vadim’s “Pretty Maids All in a Row” is kind of obscure, but should be considered a modern camp classic. Rock Hudson chews into the role with as much effervescence as he can, and it rides a creepy line of student/teacher sexuality that has become taboo. Seek it out if you can.
4) Erika Kohut
from “The Piano Teacher” (2001)
Some schoolteachers are warm and charming and inviting, to the point of seducing you. Some are so cold and stiff and passionless, well, they still might seduce you, as is the case of Erika Kohut in Michael Haneke’s harrowing and excellent 2001 film “The Piano Teacher.” Erika Kohut, as played by the steely, intense, indespensible Isabelle Huppert, is a passionless and frigid monster who will berate her piano students for not playing with enough emotion, when she herself seems incapable of any real-life human feeling. She will insult them and offer no helpful input at times, and then, in a passive-aggressive move, put broken glass in their coat pockets when they’re not looking.
One of her students (Benoît Magimel) felt she was masking something deeply emotional and definitely sexual with her sadism, but his flirting and sexual advances only served to reveal that she was just as cold and cruel in her sex life, frequenting late-night nudie booths, and peeing outside of the cars of necking couples. She also, curiously, still shared a bed with her mother. There is something deeply damaged about Erika. Something that cannot be repaired.
And now imagine that this cruel, cold, unhealthy human being was standing over your shoulder as you tried desperately to play the latest assigned etude. Imagine her cold, stiff body leaning past you to turn the page. Imagine her glue-smelling breath penetrating your nose. This is your teacher, and she has no soul.
3) Mr. Bryles, Ms. Connors, and Mr. Hardin
from “Class of 1999” (1990)
In the future, 1999, the youths of the world will all be organized into dangerous, murderous gangs. All urban areas are now under martial law, and youth crime is the cause of an outright downturn in civilization. Luckily, they still feel they have to go to school, which may say something positive about their need to be educated, but spells out disaster for school officials, who have to come up with creative ways to keep these little criminals in line. Luckily, we have the white-mulletted Bob Forrest (Stacy Keach, giving the strangest performance of his career) to give us a solution: build disciplinarian robot teachers who cannot be harmed.
The teachers he builds are not just stern and indestructable, but able to give out corporal punishment to students on a whim. Mr. Bryles (Patrick Kilpatrick) spanks a few of his students on the first day. Ms. Connors (Pam Grier) threatens to shoot them, and Coach Hardin is, strangely equipped with missiles. As is the case with any story about robots, they eventually turn against their masters as well, threatening to blow up the school.
It’s one thing to have a bad teacher who threatens to hit you with a ruler. It’s quite another to be dodging their missiles and they cackle horrible through their robotic voice boxes. Evil robot teachers from the future. Every kids’ dream come true.
2) Any of the teachers from “Harry Potter”
from the “Harry Potter” series (2001-2011)
Dolores Umbridge was a cat-obsessed, giggling horror of a Hogwart’s teacher, who would literally mutilate her ill-behaved students, and blissfully deny the presence of danger. She eventually used her acumen at manipulation to take over the spot of headmistress. Severus Snape purported to teach defense against the dark arts, but seemed far more interested in teaching the dark arts themselves. He would eventually murder the school’s headmaster, and ally himself with an evil wizard. Arsene Lupin was mild-mannered and caring, but was secretly a werewolf. Sybill Trelawney was a kook whose subject wasn’t taken very seriously. Guilderoy Lockhart was a charming fake who didn’t know anything about the subject he was assigned to teach. Even Prof. McGonagall seemed like a strict taskmistress who was eager to punish students.
Hogwart’s seems, at first glance, like the ideal school for a young kid, eager to learns spells and become a wizard. As time passed, though, we kind of learned that this is probably the world’s most horrible school, rife with monsters and dangers, and the producer of one of the most evil wizards of all time. A wizard, mind you, who hated the school so much that he went on a jihad to destroy it, it’s principal, its teachers, and its star pupil whom he hadn’t even met.
While there seemed to be a good number of caring teachers at this school, it seems that they spent way too much time with interpersonal battles and petty squabbles. Eventually, they would be the iones responsible for putting their students in harms’ way. Good job, there.
1 ½) Mr. Garrison
from “South Park” (1997 – present)
A borderline child molester, Mr. Garrison is a pop-culture obsessed, eternally distracted wonk with no life experience, no insight, and no teaching skills. While he did try to engage his 3rd grade students with a hand puppet named Mr. Hat, he would mostly give impassioned lectures about episodes of “The Facts of Life,” which celebutante was the sluttiest, and how dumb his students were. He would openly swear, share increasingly inappropriate sexual details of his life, and tell his students they were going to Hell.
How Mr. Garrison managed to keep his job after relationship drama, sexuality shifts, outright sex changes, and including his gay leather slave in his classroom is beyond me. Even the innocent Mr. Hat became something of a second personality, absorbing all of Mr. Garrison’s gay panic. The man was a bundle of psychosexual problems, and he’s in charge of your children.
“Remember children, there are no stupid questions. Just stupid people.”
1) Agatha Trunchbull
from Matilda (1988)
Agatha Trunchbull was such a horrible teacher, she was practically inhuman. An elephantine, fire-breathing monster, she would beat children, break plates over their heads, insult them, beat them again, and shove them into tiny closets for extended periods. She seemed motivated by (indeed only capable of) one simple emotion: pure unadulterated rage. She was unable to speak quietly or calmly in any context. Why merely speak when bellowing can cause so much more intimidation? The Trunchbull resembles less a teacher, and more a particularly evil Nazi death-camp overseer.
And, that one time a girl knocked a ball over the fence, The Trunchbull picked up the girl by her braids, and chucked her bodily after it. At home, Trunchbull would stalk about in darkness, keeping an eye out for invaders. She also has the honorable and sweet Miss Honey under her care, and would treat her just as poorly as she would her students, with the added bonus of embezzling and committing inheritance fraud.
Roald Dahl’s books, while clever, imaginative and wonderful, were all possessed of a decidedly dark streak of villainous cruelty. Willy Wonka, remember, was kind of an abusive weirdo at times. And while each of his stories featured some sort of horrible Dickensian villain, no one seemed more wicked and horrible than Mrs. Trunchbull. She was as evil as a human could get without resorting to actual murder, child rape, or transforming into an inhuman creature. This is a the archetypal evil teacher we all had nightmares about.
Honorable Mentions:
The Headmaster from “If….”
“The Faculty”
Julius Kelp from “The Nutty Professor”
Miss Goggins from “Jim Copp Tales”
Jim McAllister from “Election”
Trevor Garfield from “187”
Bradley Cooper in “The Hangover” (Remember? He embezzled school funds)
Count Olaf from A Series of Unfortunate Events, book 5: The Austere Academy)
The teacher from “The Wall”
Witney Seibold is an AA holder, onetime theater major, onetime film major, living in Los Angeles with his wife, his books, his videos and his collection of lectures on CD. He writes film articles on the days when he’s not feeling lazy, and maintains his own ‘blog, Three Cheers for Darkened Years! where he has posted over 800 articles to date. As of a few days ago, he is the proud owner of over 1 million hits! Hooray! He is also half of the voice of The B-Movies Podcast, which he co-hosts on CRAVE Online with William Bibbiani.
