The Six Pack

Six Uninspiring Teachers.

by Matt Prigge

Groucho Marx, Horse Feathers (1932): The icky genre of inspirational teacher sagas stretches all the way back to the weepie Goodbye, Mr. Chips, made just a few years after the Marx Brothers made mincemeat of college life. As the new president of fictional Huxley College, Groucho’s disdain for learning is evident in his focus on stuffing the school’s football team with ringers (or just Chico and Harpo), patronizing speakeasies and singing, “Whatever it is, I’m against it!”

Sam Kinison, Back to School (1986): Sam Kinison, at the height of his screeching powers, as a history professor. Moving on …

Ben Stein, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1987): Teaching economics with a narcotic drone, the former presidential speechwriter has come to embody the cliche of the tedious, useless educator. In real life, Stein is even worse—a shameless Nixon apologist who recently turned to “debunking” evolutionary biology via the loathsome propaganda film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which he distorts, exaggerates and lies as he tackles what he embarrassingly dubs “Big Science.” Fuck Ben Stein.

Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher (2001): The icy, messed-up antihero of Michael Haneke’s caustic character study discourages a talentless pupil by secretly putting glass shards into the student’s coat pocket, causing her to slice open her fingers and end her non-career. Despicable? Or perversely altruistic?

Steve Coogan, Hamlet 2 (2008): Despite—or, possibly, because—he cites Dead Poets Society, Dangerous Minds and Stand and Deliver, Coogan’s high school drama educator is a failed inspirational teacher—deluded, talentless and unconsciously racist.

François Bégaudeau, The Class (2008): It’s not that real-life teacher Bégaudeau—who adapted and stars in this memoir of working at a Parisian middle-school—isn’t trying to inspire. It’s just that he recognizes that the idea of one teacher turning around an entire classroom is a big fat honking lie, and that the truth is far more complex.