Hard to Muster Laughs at ‘Bad Teacher’

Just when we thought that public opinion of teachers couldn’t get any worse, a new film, Bad Teacher [2] by the writers of the television mockumentary, The Office [3], Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky was released across the country. The film’s title leads you to believe there is only one villain, but the truth is every teacher in this film is bad. Obviously, it’s meant to be a funny summer film, but if you take a closer look at what this movie says about teachers, it’s distressing.

Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is definitely the worst of them all. She shows movies to her class for the first eight weeks and guzzles hard liquor from the bottom desk of her drawer while her students stare at the TV. When the seventh-graders sponsor a car wash, Halsey uses her sex appeal to bring in the cash. She throws racial slurs at her students (along with dodge balls) and only begins to teach when she realizes there is a cash bonus for the highest performance on the state test. She’s saving up for a boob job. It’s easy to call her a bad teacher.

But her colleagues aren’t much better. From the gym teacher (Jason Segel), whose great accomplishment is moving the championship banners from one side of the gym to another, to the old hippy teacher who pretends to sleep through staff meetings, John Adams Middle School (or JAMS as they refer to it) must be a rotten place to be a student. Even the teacher we are supposed to believe is good, because she cares about her students, decorates her classroom and takes her job seriously, goes off the deep end and loses everything she had going for her as she competes for the romantic attention of a colleague, played by Justin Timberlake. And we are led to believe that it isn’t the first time she’s had a nervous breakdown as her principal often refers to the “2008 incident.”

I can handle a few hyperbolized caricatures here and there. After all, this is a comedy. Unfortunately it’s not a smart comedy. A smart comedy would have done more than stoop to some of the same weary conventions we’ve already seen in teacher movies. For example, Halsey is only ever shown teaching one class period, even though we know she has four. The belief that teachers have three months off to lounge every summer is perpetuated with a classic chalkboard segue with the words “Three Months Later.” In the eyes of the public, there’s no such thing as time for professional development or time to close down and start up your classroom each year.  A smart comedy would have come from a place of expertise and truly satirized the profession.

According to Bad Teacher, even so-called “good” teachers gather in the gym and smoke pot together when they should be chaperoning a school dance. Principals exist only in their luxuriously removed offices (the principal of JAMS, for example, is never seen outside of his office except for one unfortunate bathroom scene). And students sit in the same row day in and day out.

Perhaps the worst stereotype to be perpetuated by Bad Teacher is the notion that “those who can’t, teach.” It appears to be true in this suburban area of Illinois where white teachers are ignorant, obliviously racist and at ease with peppering their everyday speech with mock Spanish [4] in a pathetic attempt to appear “worldly.” In short, Bad Teacher might make some people laugh but if it were a true reflection of what the country is thinking about teachers, it would only make us cry.

Thomas is an English teacher in California.