Bad Teachers! Eek!
Dana Goldstein writes an interesting piece about our nation's obsession with "bad" teachers:
But Nutting’s narrative is an extreme example of another genre, as well: the story of the despicable, or at least morally compromised, teacher. Claire Messud’s divisive novel, The Woman Upstairs, features a single, childless woman who obsessively attempts to appropriate the happy family life of one of her students. Bad Teacher, a low-IQ Hollywood comedy starring Cameron Diaz, has now been turned into a CBS television series. In the high-minded indie film Half Nelson, Ryan Gosling played a schoolteacher who is a secret drug addict. The contradiction inherent in a bad teacher makes for an entertaining character, which is why the meme has a long, rich history from Nicholas Nickleby to the Harry Potter series. But the bad teacher has also become