August 25th, 2008
13. Principal Strickland in Back To The Future
Ageless authoritarian Mr. Strickland rules the hallways of Hill Valley High with a strict military precision that perfectly matches his bullish bald head. But while there's nothing wrong with maintaining discipline—especially in a school where bullies like Biff Tannen roam free—it's Strickland's oft-stated disdain for "slackers" that earns him a place on this list, a lifelong prejudice that manifests in statements like, "No McFly has ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley." For Strickland, fostering young minds obviously runs a distant second to instilling them with fear and crushing their dreams—although to be fair, Back To The Future's grand statement ('The future is what you make of it") and Strickland's admonition to not be such a loser are pretty much one and the same.
14. Mr./Mrs. Garrison in South Park
Given the emphasis that South Park has put on Mr. Garrison's personal life over the last few years—his coming out of the closet, his home life with Mr. Slave, his multiple sex changes—it's easy to forget his early days on the show, when his sole purpose was to be the world's craziest, most thoroughly incompetent teacher. In his early days, he patronized his third-grade class by teaching through a hand puppet named Mr. Hat, who was racist, gay, and insulting to the students. ("Mr. Hat, may I please be excused from class?""Well, Kyle, no! You hear me? You go to hell! You go to hell and you die!") When Mr. Hat disappeared, apparently off on his own adventures, Mr. Garrison briefly replaced him with a tree branch named Mr. Twig, but eventually, he learned to stop hiding behind a puppet and express his many sexual kinks, his racism, his profound ignorance, and his hatred for his students openly, abusing them and encouraging them to abuse each other. At least, when he wasn't replacing the school curriculum with his own lessons on pop culture, like how many times Charo appeared on The Love Boat, or why, um, Chubby Checker left The Beatles.
15. Principal Snyder on Buffy The Vampire Slayer
It ain't easy running a school, and Principal Snyder has it harder than most, having to take over Sunnydale High from a man who was literally eaten alive by his own students. Still, that doesn't explain the intense pleasure Snyder gets from being a bully, his "tingle" of glee at making life miserable for Buffy, Giles, and the rest of the Scooby Gang, nor his obvious favoritism for athletes and unabashed hatred for everyone else. (Perhaps his philosophy is best summed up by a line in "School Hard": "A lot of educators tell students, 'Think of your principal as your pal.' I say, 'Think of me as your judge, jury, and executioner.'") Even more troubling, Snyder's reign comes at the behest of evil Mayor Richard Wilkins, who specifically appointed Snyder to the job so he could cover up the school's frequent supernatural activity, dismissing it as the acts of gangs on PCP. With nary a redemptive moment, Snyder is second only to the Big Bad in the ranks of Buffy's nemeses; speaking for everyone onscreen and at home, Xander later dreams of telling Snyder, "I never got the chance to tell you how glad I was you were eaten by a snake."
16. Mr. Jonas in How Green Was My Valley
A sentimental but still pretty dark adaptation of Richard Llewellyn's novel about growing up poor and Welsh at the end of the Victorian Era, John Ford's How Green Was My Valley stars young Roddy McDowall as Huw (pronounced "Hugh") Morgan, a kid whose scholastic abilities might be his ticket out of his dead-end mining town. Ford's film rhapsodizes over village life without skipping any of the hardships, including the outside prejudice McDowall encounters when he earns the right to leave the village to go to school. There, a sadistic, foppish teacher (Morton Lowry) berates him for being poor, when not caning him to the bone. But Lowry's reign of terror ends when a pair of villagers, including a local prizefighter, beat Lowry up in his classroom under the guise of administering a "boxing lesson," thus fulfilling an unspoken fantasy of school-kids everywhere.
17. Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films
Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry has employed its share of questionably qualified professors throughout the Harry Potter series, including addled Divination instructor Sybill Trelawny (played by Emma Thompson in the films), vapid pretty-boy Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh), and Quirinus Quirrell (Ian Hart), the original Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher who was actually possessed by the world's most evil wizard. But Potions master Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) most routinely and viciously terrorizes his students. Harry Potter's greatest antagonist second only to Lord Voldemort, Snape is ambiguously evil, and his true nature is one of the series' greatest mysteries. A one-time servant of Voldemort who switched sides and swore loyalty to headmaster Albus Dumbledore at great personal risk, Snape's history and malicious treatment of Harry make him a constant suspect of greater evildoing. Originally drawn as a menacing but fairly innocuous bat-like caricature, Snape grows more malevolent as the series grows progressively darker, but while what seem like his worst acts actually have semi-reasonable justifications, it's harder to justify his blatant favoritism and abuses of authority in and out of the classroom.
18. Dr. Phillip Barbay in Back To School
They should've let actor Paxton Whitehead keep his real name to play the stuffy British professor Dr. Phillip Barbay in Rodney Dangerfield's ridiculous, sometimes hilarious Back To School. Not only does Rodney prove him a bad teacher—he's a business prof who knows nothing about the business world—but he's also a stuffed shirt who tries to keep Rodney from getting an education. Luckily, Ned Beatty's Dean Martin keeps him in his place. Sam Kinison also makes an appearance—as either the world's greatest or world's worst contemporary American history teacher.
19. Prof. Jerry Hathaway in Real Genius
Professor Jerry Hathaway hates popcorn, but he loves easy money and doesn't mind a little bit of evil. When the CIA hires him to create a laser that can eliminate human targets from space, he passes the work along to his students—Val Kilmer in particular. Hathaway—played by William Atherton—threatens to flunk Kilmer if he doesn't complete the nefarious project. But all ends well, and the professor's comeuppance involves lots of popcorn.
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