The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
77
who are not driven so much by their desire to share their love o f
literature and language; rather, they are driven by the need to save their
students. The stories o f Johnson and Gruell are based on the wom en’s
actual careers, and if these films are accurate, their inability or
unwillingness to balance their Professional and personal lives and their
willingness to sacrifice so much in an obsessive pursuit o f success would
raise serious questions about their emotional health. Despite their
personal issues, however, the English teachers in all the films I ’ve
discussed are Creative and fimctional to a high degree, and in these latest
films, they are more selfless than it is reasonable to expect a teacher to
be.
The films in which English teachers are foils or major characters
dramatize what a good English teacher is not. These are the bad and ugly
teachers, teachers who take out their personal ffustrations on their
students. There are a number o f them and selecting the most pathetic is,
as Samuel Johnson noted when asked to make a similar choice between
two politicians: “There is no settling the point o f precedency [sic]
between a louse and a flea.” Unlike the good English teachers, the
personal issues and deficits o f the bad and ugly teachers seriously impair
their ability to connect with their students because they are compelled to
use their students as emotional punching bags. These are the ugly
teachers. Perhaps the most painful o f these representations is Paul
Barringer, a failed novelist in Up the Down Staircase. His heartless
cruelty— thinly disguised as teaching— is dramatized by the m anner in
which he responds to a love letter he received from Alice, the infatuated
Student. With her at his desk— and the door closed— he corrects her
writing. I ’ll just offer the tenor o f this scene. He reads from the letter:
Dear Mr. Barringer.
“There’s nothing wrong in using circles to dot I ’s,” he says to
her, “but it’s considered an affectation...
I hopeyou don ’t mind thepresumption...
Look up the spelling o f presumption— and no dots.
I thought I saw you in the window, and my heart was throbbing with this
love I bear fo r y o u ...
No dots, please, and ‘throbbing’ is pretty cheap.”
The interview continues in this vein. Alice expresses no emotion, but it is
she who the next moming tries to commit suicide by jum ping from the
window o f Barringer’s third-story classroom. But he has stiff
competition. John Griffin o f Killing Mr. Griffin harbors so much
repressed rage stemming from his marital problems that he verbally