--- title: Dana Goldstein: Why ‘Bad’ Teachers Attract So Much Attention description: With her new novel, Tampa, Alissa Nutting has given us American literature’s first psychological exploration of the female pedophile, an account of a Florida middle-school... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7131938/we-love-to-hate-the-bad-teacher/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-07-08T09:45:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T09:15:33.182Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Dana Goldstein: Why ‘Bad’ Teachers Attract So Much Attention og:description: With her new novel, Tampa, Alissa Nutting has given us American literature’s first psychological exploration of the female pedophile, an account of a Florida middle-school... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7131938/we-love-to-hate-the-bad-teacher/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd16d45e4a62b4930/698a91599862f5428b89b929/ap080110024082.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Debra Lafave, Joyce Beasley og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Dana Goldstein: Why ‘Bad’ Teachers Attract So Much Attention twitter:description: With her new novel, Tampa, Alissa Nutting has given us American literature’s first psychological exploration of the female pedophile, an account of a Florida middle-school... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd16d45e4a62b4930/698a91599862f5428b89b929/ap080110024082.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) # We Love to Hate the 'Bad' Teacher by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jul 8, 2013 9:45 AM UTC  Former school teacher Debra Lafave, right, arrives with her mother Joyce Beasley for a probation violation hearing Thursday afternoon Jan. 10, 2008 at the Hillsborough County Courthouse in Tampa, Fla. Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett found Lafave guilty of violating her probation by talking to a 17-year-old former co-worker about sex, but she will face no additional penalties. She was originally arrested in 2002 for having sex with a 14-year-old student. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Former school teacher Debra Lafave, right, arrives with her mother Joyce Beasley for a probation violation hearing Thursday afternoon Jan. 10, 2008 at the Hillsborough County Courthouse in Tampa, Fla. Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett found Lafave guilty of violating her probation by talking to a 17-year-old former co-worker about sex, but she will face no additional penalties. She was originally arrested in 2002 for having sex with a 14-year-old student. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)AP by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jul 8, 2013 9:45 AM UTC With her new novel, _Tampa_, Alissa Nutting has given us American literature’s first psychological exploration of the female pedophile, an account of a [Florida](http://topics.time.com/florida/) middle-school teacher, Celeste Price, who lures two eighth-grade boys into sexual relationships. Price is no [Mary Kay Letourneau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%5FKay%5FLetourneau), who, after serving time in prison, actually married the student she abused when he was only 13 years old. Price is a coldhearted nymphomaniac who, after feeding her sexual needs, wishes for the deaths of her victims. She is based on [Debra Lafave](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debra%5FLafave), a real-life Tampa pedophiliac teacher — and former high school classmate of Nutting’s — who avoided jail time after her lawyer argued that she was too beautiful to get locked up. With its blunt descriptions of adult-teenager sex, _Tampa_ has attracted significant media attention, with Nutting [being billed](http://www.salon.com/2013/06/27/why%5Fstories%5Fof%5Ffemale%5Fsexual%5Fpredators%5Fshock%5Fus/) as “the summer’s most controversial author.” Though the writing in _Tampa_ is pedestrian in comparison with Nabokov’s _Lolita_, the great classic on which it is based, it certainly represents a gutsy attempt by a young, female author to embody a wholly unsympathetic female narrator and probe the question of whether society lets women essentially get away with crimes for which men are excoriated. 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](http://www.danagoldstein.net/dana%5Fgoldstein/2013/06/the-woman-upstairs-and-the-pedagogy-of-love.html) 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 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 an overhyped target for our national anxiety about public education. (**LIST:** [Top 10 Bad Teachers](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2079368%5F2079384%5F2079632,00.html)) Though much of _Tampa_’s narrative takes place within a school, only two teachers are depicted: Price, who is a criminal _and_ a bad teacher — her discussions of classic literature are based on movie adaptations — and Janet Feinlog, an obese, “joyless” woman who seems to hate children and eventually loses her job after cursing out students and throwing a chair. At Price’s trial, Feinlog is called by the defense as a character witness; she claims that the clearly sociopathic Price is “a good woman.” We know such monsters exist. In the Bronx, a 40-year-old male elementary-school teacher [is accused](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/raped-girl-family-teachers-fired-article-1.1381512) of raping a 10-year-old girl. At the elite Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, a librarian [has admitted](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/stuyvesant-high-school-librarian-accused-inappropriately-touching-male-students-article-1.376964) to attending meetings of the North American Man/Boy Love Association. These incidents came to light recently in a series of articles [published](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/backing-uft-deal-sickos-perverts-article-1.1381598) by the New York _Daily News_, which were inspired by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown’s [advocacy campaign](http://parentstransparency.org/) to weaken public-school educators’ union-won due-process protections. But media reports of nightmare teachers tend to obscure how rare they really are. In New York City, since 2007, [128 teachers](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/backing-uft-deal-sickos-perverts-article-1.1381598) have been accused of sexual misconduct — less than two-tenths of 1% of the city’s massive 80,000-person teacher corps. In general, our national political focus on making it easier to fire ineffective teachers — and here I’m talking mostly about those who are educationally ineffective, not legally criminal — tends to leave the public with an inflated sense of how many bad teachers are out there, seeding distrust in the entire endeavor of public education. As a longtime education reporter, I’ve asked a number of no-excuses school reformers for their estimate of the number of working teachers who ought to leave the profession. The response I hear most often is “5% to 10%,” a stat supported by the [research](http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2009-10/49898689.pdf) of Stanford University labor economist Eric Hanushek. That means even the toughest reformers believe that 90% to 95% teachers are capable of improving their practice and becoming effective professionals. Of course, it isn’t a novelist’s job to capture the complexity of education policy. The media, however, could do a better job. One of the most covered public-school stories of the past year was the indictment of 35 Atlanta teachers and administrators for inflating students’ standardized-test scores. Few TV reports mentioned that the brave, ethical whistle-blowers — not just the bad guys — had been classroom teachers. (**MORE:** [Erika Christakis: What’s Really Scandalous About the Atlanta Schools Testing Scandal](http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/02/whats-really-scandalous-about-the-school-testing-scandal/)) Indeed, the best fictional depiction of a predatory educator is John Patrick Shanley’s play and film _Doubt_, which is set at a Catholic school. It is fascinating exactly because it pits a charismatic, potentially pedophiliac priest against two ethical and suspicious nuns. Monster teachers like the characters in _Tampa_ are out there, but don’t think for a minute that their real-life colleagues want them to get away with their crimes. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7131938/we-love-to-hate-the-bad-teacher/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7131938/we-love-to-hate-the-bad-teacher/"},"headline":"We Love to Hate the 'Bad' Teacher","datePublished":"2013-07-08T09:45:54.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T09:15:33.182Z","description":"With her new novel, Tampa, Alissa Nutting has given us American literature’s first psychological exploration of the female pedophile, an account of a Florida middle-school...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7131938/we-love-to-hate-the-bad-teacher/","keywords":["teacher","Tampa"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd16d45e4a62b4930/698a91599862f5428b89b929/ap080110024082.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd16d45e4a62b4930/698a91599862f5428b89b929/ap080110024082.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Debra Lafave, Joyce Beasley","caption":"Debra Lafave, Joyce Beasley","creditText":"AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7131938/we-love-to-hate-the-bad-teacher/","name":"We Love to Hate the 'Bad' Teacher"}}]}] ```