Apathetic Teacher

"Tutoring? Sorry, my schedule's packed."

"'Pick any moment from history and tell me about it. Be as creative as you like, or not, I don't care. Professor Cornwa...' He didn't even finish signing his own name!"

— Jeff Winger (on their final history project from Prof. Cornwallis), Community

There are Badass Teachers, Sadist Teachers, Cool Teachers, Fired Teachers, and Enthusiastic Newbie Teachers...and then there's this guy. Jaded, misanthropic, and very likely a Deadpan Snarker, this is the teacher who's been in the job too long. He dislikes students in general — he's been there long enough to know they're thick and (usually) irritating. He hates the school, he hates the job, he really hates the management — but because he's known virtually nothing else, he still sticks at it, putting himself through it year after year.

Sometimes, this person started out as a young, Enthusiastic Newbie Teacher, who got beaten down by rowdy kids and an uncaring system, turning the teacher jaded over time. There's usually one person who will find that their no-longer-gives-a-shit attitude makes them a Cool Teacher anyway, or at the very least an occasional confidant. They're likely to seek solace in the bottom of a bottle. It's often implied, if not outright stated, that even their home life doesn't offer them much respite, either.

In pretty much all Save Our Students movies, one of these (if not an entire school of them) will serve as a foil to the idealistic teacher. If the school is an inner-city one, expect this teacher to be the one to make some remark about how they can't really expect anything from kids with this "background". Occasionally an apathetic teacher will be won over by the enthusiasm of an idealistic teacher and will start caring about the students too.

The key difference between Apathetic Teachers and Sadist Teachers is the former hate their jobs while the latter hate their students. Sadist Teachers often seem to take a sick glee in torturing their students; the teachers this trope describes don't seem to take much joy in anything, least of all their work.

In psychology, these people are called "burnouts."

This kind of teacher is likely to hand out an Extremely Easy Exam. Compare Apathetic Student.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Yuki Endou in Asteroid in Love seems to enjoy making fun first, and being a teacher second. However, as the hot spring regulars tell the club members, she used to be diligent and talented when she was younger. She seems to be starting to get over this at the end of the Ishigaki arc, though.
• Yukari from Azumanga Daioh gets bored with her job easily. The show's opening even shows her sleeping at her desk. In one episode, she's just come back from summer vacation and she's as bummed out about going back to school as two of her students. Chiyo, also one of her students, tries to motivate Yukari with a repeated chant of "Get motivated!", but it doesn't work. The manga shows that, since she still lives with her parents, she even needs them to wake her up for work.
• Dragon Ball Super has the angels, who are tutors for the Gods of Destruction. While the degree of this varies, most of the angels seem to be completely apathetic to their well-being. When it's revealed that losing universes in the Tournament of Power will be completely erased except for the angels, their reactions tend to range from genuine sadness to being happy that they're gone.
• Mr. Reiji a.k.a. Mr. Lazy from Haré+Guu. He is a Sleepyhead (as a result of his all-night anime marathons) and the jungle village's only teacher, so, more often than not, he starts the school day by declaring it free study period and immediately falling asleep (he even brings his pillow).
• In episode 4 of K Shiro sneaks his two new (supernatural) friends into his class at school. The teacher briefly stops to ask who they are, and Shiro tells him they're, uh, new transfer students. The teacher doesn't stop to verify this at all, he just keeps droning on about the book they're reading, completely oblivious.
• In My Hero Academia, Class 1-A's homeroom teacher and pro-hero Shota Aizawa (Eraser Head) appears to be one at first. However, it's shown that he has very high standards for his students when it comes to heroism, and seriously pushes them in that regard. That said, he's still a Lazy Bum who falls into complete apathy when it comes to subjects he considers irrelevant, and on off days, he would rather curl up in a sleeping bag than put up with the Wacky Homeroom.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The old supply teacher, possibly installed by NERV, who seems not to have changed his syllabus in ages. He can't change his syllabus—he can only spout NERV's party line about Second Impact. In this world, his apathy is justified: NERV doesn't actually care whether or not the kids do well; the school is primarily there to go through the motions of giving Tokyo-3's youths a semblance of a normal life.
• Ms. Igarashi from Pani Poni Dash! cares less for her students than where her next drink will come from.
• Mr. Takeuchi from A Silent Voice seems very sick of his job, and he ignores Shoko being bullied until administration gets involved.

Comic Strips

• Mrs. Wormwood of Calvin and Hobbes. Whenever Calvin does something stupid, she thinks "Five more years 'til retirement... Five more years 'til retirement..."
  Calvin: I think it's really gross the way she drinks Maalox straight from the bottle.
  • Word of God has it that she believes in the value of a good education, which is why she's not happy with her job, as this idea is lost on Calvin.
• Hard to tell if Mrs. Olsen of Frazz is this or a Sadist Teacher. Probably both.
• Mr. Fogarty of Luann, though he's portrayed as the Only Sane Man in comparison to the students in his class. When the main cast graduated high school, when he finally decided to retire from teaching altogether.
• Pictured above is "El Profe" Severiano from Los Miserables, who's the embodiment of this trope, in one strip he even "prepared" his students for the International Mathematical Olympiad by stealing the result sheet and making the students memorizing it while looking at a porn magazine during his class.
• Le Petit Spirou: Mr. Mégot the gym teacher is a combination of apathetic and sadistic, though (thankfully?) his incompetence prevents him from doing too much damage. Highlights include taking the class to the local bar to play table football on rainy days, making them wash his car, or going fishing. His most iconic line is "the intelligent sportsman avoids unnecessary effort".

Fan Works

• My Hero Academia: Entropy:
  • While Aizawa notices that Midoriya's mental health is deteriorating, he does absolutely nothing about it, allowing him to spiral further and further downhill until his disappearance. While Toshinori expresses concern that he might have taken his own life, Aizawa continues not caring... up until Midoriya reemerges as head of the Syndicate. Naturally, he denies that he played any part in Midoriya's fall from grace.
  • This also factors into Hagakure defecting. While confronting him, they call him out on the fact that he only cared about the most obviously powerful members of the class — something Aizawa's own thoughts affirm. They, on the other hand, couldn't even get his help with something as simple as getting a proper costume, forcing her to run around in the buff during her time at U.A. Meanwhile, Hatsume was able to get her uniform situation sorted within two days.
• In Raise Your Voice Against Liars, Apathy is the second target's (Miss Bustier's) sin. The reason this person never intervened with canon bullies like Chloé and Lila is because they just didn't care about students' well-being, instead prioritizing keeping the illusion of a calm school for their own personal benefit.
• Statistic: The staff at Aldera Middle School combine this with blatant bias against the Quirkless. When All Might starts working undercover as Toshinori Yagi, the guidance counselor is all too happy to foist Izuku off on him, claiming that he needs a 'good role model to help him past his victim complex'. All of his coworkers also joke about the possibility of Izuku 'becoming just another statistic' when he fails to show up to school one day.
• The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H.: Mrs. Gunderson (neé Hoover), as in canon. She takes frequent "bathroom breaks" (i.e. smoke breaks), shows her students educational videos and slapped-together slideshows instead of actually instructing them, and often gives her students worksheets or assignments to do on their own while she kicks back and listens to podcasts. Her apathy and "bare-minimum" teaching style often puts her at odds with Simon, who loves school and actually looks forward to getting assignments.
• In Those Lacking Spines, Ms. Larxene of Destiny Sanctuary Peak High School Academy Grammar School. She teaches English, and spends most of her time flirting with the class' parents during "Career Day". Also, this may have something to do with the fallout after she realized what happened when she graduated with a degree in Philosophy.
• Three's A Crowd (Naruto): While Kakashi does care about the future of Team Seven, and can very clearly see that Sasuke and Uo are both extremely arrogant and unwilling to work with Sakura, he's reluctant to actually do anything to address their problems, writing it off as "typical teenaged boy stupidity". Since Sakura is the only one willing to make any effort to work with them, he pressures her to act as The Heart of the team and shape them into something functional, despite how blatantly neither of her teammates respect her. Sakura repeatedly calls him out on this, only for Kakashi to completely miss the point and act as though she's solely responsible for their team struggling.
• In Time to Disinfect, though not actually seen, Mari expresses disdain for Sunny's former violin tutors for not actually teaching him anything. Sunny supposedly learned violin better from Mari herself - who has never played it - than he did from them.
• Your Heart a Haven of Thorns (Naruto): Kikyō accuses Kakashi of being one, being deeply displeased with how little Sakura and her teammates have actually learned from their jonin instructor prior to the Chuunin Exams. She attributes his lack of engagement to a fear of getting too attached to his "cute little genin"; having lost so many comrades and loved ones, he's deliberately distancing himself from them... which, as she points out, runs the risk of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
  Kikyō: You have a team composed of a civilian girl, a jinchuuriki, and an Uchiha. Every single one of them fits into the category of 'ends up dead sooner rather than later', and I will not stand by and let you throw them aside. I'm sure you've got some convoluted reasoning you tell yourself at night to help you sleep, but the truth is that you have proactively mourned for their loss and dug their graves. I will not let these children's deaths happen because you couldn't be bothered to put in the effort. You are going to pull your head out of your ass and stop looking at these children like they're already dead. You may be a dog, but I will not sit here and let you roll belly-up because you were afraid to get attached. Now, are you going to pull yourself together and help teach these cubs, or am I going to have to escort you out of this building?

Films — Live-Action

• Another Round: The opening scenes establish all four main characters as apathetic teachers stuck in a rut, delivering boring lectures to disinterested students.
• Seems to be the point of Bad Teacher (2011).
• Mr. Murdock in Blackboard Jungle.
• In Dangerous Minds the Cool Teacher accuses the other teachers of this. An older teacher points out that she'll teach for a year, then move on to a better job, leaving the school and students behind. In real life, that's what she did.
• The Elementary School: Ms. Maxova, the kids' first teacher, who has had her spirit broken and ground into dust by her unruly, uncontrollable students, who shout and whistle and play games and shoot spitballs and don't even pretend to pay attention. In an early scene she is vainly trying to explain the reproductive system of a flower as the kids hoot and holler. She drops out of her lecture for a bit to say that she doesn't care what the children do, forlornly commenting that "It's your fault what becomes of you." Then she starts talking about stamens and pistils again.
• Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Mr. Grooberson's idea of teaching summer school is putting on old horror movies for his class to watch while he focuses on studying the town's seismic activity levels.
• The Hangover: In an amusing subversion of the Hot Teacher, Phil (Bradley Cooper) doesn't seem to care about his job or the kids at all. He is a Jerkass in general, really. In fact, you see him taking field trip money from the kids for his trip to Vegas.
  Phil: (leaving for the weekend from school) Let's leave before another one of these nerds tries to ask me another question.
• Heart of Dragon has the private tutor of Dodo, an autistic, mentally-retarded man in his thirties but with the mentality of a 5-year-old, who is paid by Dodo's brother Ted to homeschool him. Said tutor is all smiling and cheerful when Ted is around, but barely five minutes after Ted leaves, he starts scolding Dodo for not being able to recite simple English words and flat-out tells the autistic man that he’s taking this job for gambling money. He’s in the middle of his rant when Ted suddenly comes back, having forgotten to take his keys, and caught the teacher in his act.
• Jung-wook from Marathon (2005) works as a PE teacher at an autism school as community service for a DUI, and only agrees to be Cho-won's marathon coach because the hours will count towards his punishment. At first he does as little as possible, ordering Cho-won to run endless laps while he takes naps and attends horse races and at one point skipping training to take him to a bathhouse. He does eventually start actually teaching Cho-won by riding a bicycle alongside him to show him how to pace himself.
• Mr. Davies in Moxie is very dejected in the beginning of the film and the signs on his wall meant to say ‘You matter, don’t give up’ are positioned in a way that can be read as ‘You don’t matter. Give up.’ He gets better by the end and begins to support the Moxie girls.
• In an unusual variation, the titular character of Mr. Holland's Opus starts out this way as a young teacher and needs a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to become more emphatic and engaged.
• Notes on a Scandal: Barbara and a colleague flat-out tell the idealistic Sheba that most of their students, who live in a low-income area of London, aren't worth worrying about since they're not going to amount to anything anyway. However, when they told her to "console herself with the gems", they probably didn't exactly mean for her to start sleeping with a fifteen-year-old boy.
• Dewey in School of Rock started out like this, despite being only a substitute teacher.
• Stand and Deliver
• Mr. Shoop in Summer School. By the end of the film, though, the kids have learned something.
• Weston in To Sir, with Love fills this role, seeing the delinquent students as a lost cause.
• Threads. The children of a post-nuclear war Britain are educated in the English language by a scratchy pre-war video, in a classroom run by an elderly teacher who probably got the job because she was too feeble to work in the fields. The children only speak a simplified form of English, further demonstrating the decline in educational standards along with civilisation in general.
• Mr. Turkentine in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, featured in a few scenes in the first half, seems to fall into this, what with his having no qualms about letting his students handle dangerous chemicals or dismissing class so he can go buy Wonka Bars.
  "I've just decided to switch our Friday schedule to Monday, which means that the test we take each Friday on what we've learned during the week will now take place on Monday before we've learned it. But since today is Tuesday, it doesn't matter in the slightest."

Jokes

• Two teachers are walking down the school corridor: one young, carrying a huge heap of teaching props and materials, and the other old and empty-handed.
  Young: (impressed) Wow... you, sir, after all these years, must hold all of that in your head!
  Old: Not my head... my ***.

Literature

• Glenn in Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor starts out this way. He doesn't want to work or leave the house at all due to trauma from his previous job (being in the magical equivalent of a black-ops squad and his former partner dying), and he especially doesn't want to be a magic teacher due to hating magic, but his guardian forces him into the position. He then slacks off and lets his students self-study while not bothering to answer their questions. He eventually starts taking his job seriously and becomes a Cool Teacher.
• Captain Underpants: Every teacher at Jerome Horwitz Elementary when they aren't being Sadist Teachers. In the main universe anyway.
• Professor Cuthbert Binns from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (not present in the movie) was the only ghost professor in Hogwarts, the History of Magic teacher and possibly the most boring teacher in the school. School legend states he died after falling asleep in the staff room, and not realizing he was dead, rose as a ghost in order to teach his next class. He often called students by the wrong names and didn't try very hard to make the subject interesting for those he was teaching, droning on and on from old texts until most of his class had fallen asleep. (Nonetheless, he provided some valuable information to Hermione about the Chamber of Secrets.)
• A minor character, but still an example: Phineas Nigellus in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has a nice little rant about why he hated being a teacher, which doubles as a long-overdue "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the increasingly petulant Harry.
• Professor Proust from Kill time or die trying instructs his class to read one hundred pages from any textbook, and then dismisses them.
• The Landry News features Mr. Larson. The premise of the book is described as follows: "Mr. Larson is the teacher that doesn't teach. He just sets up a class assignment, reads his newspaper, and sips coffee as his students act out. That changes when a student publishes a newspaper in his classroom, asking why Mr. Larson isn't a teacher."
• Kaori Iba from Maburaho rarely tries to exercise any authority over her students, and loves video games to the point that she'll play them in the middle of class.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Coach Nunley from Meriwether College Prep in The Sea of Monsters, who pays absolutely no attention to his students (he's always got his nose buried in a copy of Sports Illustrated instead) and answers any question with "Un- huh." or "Go ahead.", which inadvertently results in Percy getting blamed for the damage that a group of Laistrygonian Giants did to the gym while trying to kill Percy and Tyson.
• Public School Superhero has Mr. Hillcoat near the beginning of the book. He just orders his students to read from their textbooks while he sits back at his desk to watch SportsCentre on his iPad.

Live-Action TV

• A.P. Bio: This is the central premise of the show. Jack Griffin is a Harvard-educated philosophy professor who missed out on his dream position of teaching at Harvard, so he became a Jaded Washout, moved into his late mother's house, and got a job teaching one period of AP biology at a local high school. He shows up to class in sweat pants, refuses to teach biology, and spends each class period forcing his students to help him get revenge on the professor who took his job.
• A repeated sketch in The Armstrong and Miller Show (the Channel 4 show) was of a really Cool Teacher who was passionate, funny, and well-loved by his students... until the bell rang, at which point he'd become this, telling his students to "fuck off", abandoning any sort of life lesson he'd been teaching mere seconds ago, and in at least one example, directly contradicting it.
• The Brady Bunch: Mr. Price, the dull old science teacher in "The Power of the Press" who had been derided by everyone (including Peter) for his weakening effectiveness and outdated teaching methods in the classroom. That is, until Peter gets a D on his science test and, all of a sudden, he decides that he's such a great teacher that he deserves to have a story written about him in the school newspaper. Peter's attempt at flattery doesn't work.
• Walter White of Breaking Bad fame is generally shown as this, giving out halfhearted lectures and occasionally tossing questions to his bored students, not really caring if they pass or fail. Considering that he's underpaid, overqualified and only went into teaching after allowing himself to be bought out of Grey Matter (which went on to make a fortune thanks to his ideas), it's no wonder. Part of the reason he so happily jumps to meth-cooking is that it's a lot more exciting and makes a lot more use of his skills than just explaining terms to a bunch of brats.
• Community:
  • Professor Ian Duncan spends whole periods in his Intro to Anthropology class showing YouTube videos so that he doesn't have to teach. Although he's definitely apathetic, this particular example is less out of inherent apathy and more because he's actually a psychology professor who's been press-ganged into teaching an anthropology course and has no idea what he's doing; we never actually see him teach anything related to psychology, so it's possible he improves with material he's familiar with and interested in. Unlikely, but possibly.
  • Season four has Professor Cornwallis who used to be a tenured professor at Oxford until a sex scandal forced him to resign. Now, the only teaching job he can get is teaching American history at Greendale Community College (ironically he is a descendant of General Cornwallis). He is extremely apathetic and sometimes verges on suicidal.
  • In the fifth season, Professor Buzz Hickey and Jeff, though he becomes a Cool Teacher eventually.
  • When he's not harassing his students, Senor Chang acts like one of these.
• Derry Girls: Sister Michael can't be bothered to even try to care about her job or any of her students. Also, despite being in a religious order, she is very jaded about miracles and the effectiveness of prayer. In the second series she briefly mentions that the only reason she became a nun in the first place was the free housing and meals.
• Debra!: The only two teachers to appear in the series are each variations on this trope:
  • Mr Treadgold is a worn-down, fragile shell of a man who has clearly been beaten down by life and dreads another off-topic digestion or question from Debra. Despite this he still comes in for work and all the classes he is assigned to, which constitutes a lot given that he is a substitute teacher.
  • Principal Ridge on the other hand, shows little interest in the education or wellbeing of his students or fellow teachers and is only interested in the perks that come with the job of Principal.
• The Good Place: Chidi turns into this during his breakdown when he receives incontrovertible proof that the afterlife is real, he already died and went to the Bad Place once, and now that he knows this he has failed his second chance and will go to the Bad Place again when he dies. His students lampshade it, acknowledging that he's clearly going through something, and they're very sorry about that, but exams are coming up, so if he could teach them something, please? What results is a rant about Nihilism and how life is pointless.
  Chidi: ...You all get As or Fs. And there is no test. And you all failed it, and you all got As. Who cares? Good-bye.
• Good Times: In one episode, Michael describes an elderly teacher long past caring or perhaps even cognizance, who frequently sleeps through her own classes. Thelma then seconds this based on her own experience, as does JJ. Florida reaches her limit when Wilona also remembers having her as a teacher, who was on in years and apathetic even in her day.
• Mr Gilbert on The Inbetweeners goes between this and Sadist Teacher. He couldn't care less about his student's welfare, once noting that a pregnancy scare involving Neil was "a looming disaster for mankind but not his problem" and that the only reason anyone teaches is due to less strict background checks. This is made even better by the fact that Greg Davies, the actor who plays him, was a teacher for thirteen years. He is an apathetic teacher to most students (he may be a Jerkass, but he more or less goes for the live-and-let-live principle — if they shut up and behave, he'll leave them alone). He is a Sadist Teacher to Will, mainly because Will managed to insult him quite gravely on his (Will's) first day.
• LazyTown: A variant in "Time to Learn". Bessie Busybody, who's the children's teacher, is more distracted and flighty than truly uncaring. When Robbie-as-Biff attends school, he throws a paper airplane at Bessie, who completely ignores it, even though it lands in her hair; when he flings a coin at the school bell to signal the end of class, Bessie cheerfully agrees that it must be time to change topics—despite the fact that she's spent less than a minute on the lesson; and during the students' lunchtime, she's too busy chatting on the phone to notice Robbie bothering the other kids.
• Although he isn't technically a teacher, Shaun the probation worker from Misfits — a world-weary and visibly bored Deadpan Snarker, charged with the task of supervising a group of juvenile delinquents — fits the type precisely.
• For a "Teacher" stand-up challenge on Mock the Week, Russell Howard portrays one, who says, "I don't know, Watson. I just do this shit for the holidays."
• In an episode of My Name Is Earl, Earl decides to go back to high school so he can learn what he needs to learn to get his GED. He finds that all the teachers there are apathetic, as they have been beaten down by mean students like Earl once was.
• Apparently Nick Cutter from Primeval doesn't even turn up to his own classes. When Connor tells him this, he just says "Uh-huh" and walks off.
• In the pilot episode of Rock & Chips, Del's teacher actively encourages the teenagers to play traunt, saying the then-new Compulsory School Age was a stupid idea that was implimented without checking if schools had the space or facilities to keep students until they're sixteen. When would-be Teacher's Pet Slater insists on staying, the teacher threatens him into following the others.
• Skins:
  • Kieran. They even try to pack him off on a motivational course ("the Feeling, Healing, Teaching Program"). He functions as a confidant and wannabe father figure for Naomi — until he misreads the signals and tries to kiss her.
  • Most of the Roundview staff seem to be heading this way actually if they're not there already.
• Teachers (2001): Pretty much all of them, to some degree. Jenny and Susan are the two partial exceptions, but both of them slip back every so often.
• Teachers (2016): Ms. Snap and Mrs. Adler both have shades of this. For Ms. Snap, it's because she's so wrapped up in her own problems; for Mrs. Adler, it's because of her persistent cynicism. At the end of the day, however, it's clear they do enjoy their jobs.
• Ms. Park in True Jackson, VP. She is later even put in charge of being the janitor, play director, cafeteria cook, and football coach (simultaneously), and doesn't care about any of them.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Teacher's Aide", Miss Peters is the only teacher at her tough Inner City School who cares about the students and treats them with respect. Other teachers consider them to be animals and degenerates.
• Mr Budgen in Waterloo Road - he's been there for decades, despises the pupils, puts in only the bare minimum of effort, sometimes falls asleep in his own lessons, and has no time for any sort of innovation (or for the headteachers who impose it or colleagues who go along with it). He's still capable of being a very competent teacher, but most of the time you wouldn't think so, because he just doesn't care enough to demonstrate it. In the later seasons, he does get better, starting to care about at least some of his pupils and rediscovering his love of his subject. He never completely shakes off this trope, but the main apathetic teacher role passes to Mr Windsor.
• Several of the teachers in The Wonder Years are long past the point of caring about their jobs or the students. For example, music teacher Mr. Frace has been assigned the job of leading the eighth-grade glee club, whom Adult Kevin describes as routinely turning the choir room into a "musical chamber of horrors" with their utter inability to sing in time or in tune with each other. When Mr. Frace concludes that they are collectively beyond any attempt at musical instruction, he simply leads them through a few warmups at the top of the hour while grimacing in pain as he accompanies them on the piano, then he draws the blinds and simply tells the students to study for the rest of the class.
• Young Sheldon: In "A Box of Treasure and the Meemaw of Science", the Medford High School teachers don't care to change up the tests they give from one year to the next. That makes it easy to cheat off Sheldon's old exams. However, Georgie reminds his customers that a smart cheater will still get some wrong, so as to not trigger suspicion.

Video Games

• Several chalkboard messages Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning indicate that the other teachers of Here School don't really care too much about education. Baldi, while giving you lessons in math, doesn't do anything to help you with tough questions and resorts to hunting you down until the second secret ending of the Classic Style in Classic Remastered. Mrs. Pomp suffers worse from this in that, while she wants you to head to her class, she doesn't actually teach anything and just wants you to be present on time.
• Most teachers at Bullworth Academy, from Bully, are this to a degree, even the most sympathetic ones. The Math teacher is shamelessly corrupt, the English teacher gets drunk in between classes, and essentially all faculty turns a blind eye to rampant violence and bullying (unless it's you doing it). Exceptions are the Art teacher (who instead takes her job a bit too seriously), and the Headmaster, who is apparently blissfully unaware of the chaos happening at his school.
• Lost Judgment: Jin Kuwana used to be this kind of teacher at Kurokawa Academy. When Mitsuru Kusumoto, one of his students, was getting bullied by the class, he brushed it off as harmless teasing and told the bullies not to overdo it. By the time Kuwana decides to actually investigate the bullying, Mitsuru had already jumped off the school roof in a suicide attempt, thus leading to Kuwana getting fired. Since then, he has been determined to atone for his apathy... by murdering bullies around the country.
• Persona 5: Sadayo Kawakami, the main character's homeroom teacher, is this at the beginning of the game. She's unhappy about taking Joker as a student because she thinks that he's just going to be a delinquent and beyond that, she's very disinterested in her job. Completing her Confidant route involves discovering why she became this way and helping her get beyond it, causing her to regain her interest in teaching and helping her students, and turning her into a Cool Teacher again.
• Re:Kuroi: Marie is supposed to be a teacher at the former magic academy, but she doesn't do anything about Kaito being bullied until she confirms he's a wizard. In this case, she gets involved with him not to stop the bullying, but because she needs to keep on eye on other wizards. It's implied her apathy is due to her own experience as a bully victim, where no one would help her.

Visual Novels

• Mutou of Katawa Shoujo occasionally gives this impression due to often being late and giving uninspired lectures, and Hisao thinks of him as such in Hanako's route, thinking that his willingness to let her leave class if necessary is proof that he doesn't care about her. Mutou is, however, actually concerned about his students, and in Hanako's good ending, Hisao comes to realize this.
• Eris Monte of Sable's Grimoire openly bemoans the fact that she's stuck teaching the "shitty brats" that are Amadronia Academy's first-year students. While she's responsible enough to make sure that no students get hurt under her watch, she otherwise puts little effort into her lessons or into helping them as their academic advisor. This apathetic attitude, combined with rumours of her sexually harassing students, have left her on thin ice with the administration, and she eventually ends up fired or reassigned depending on the route. Her own route delves into the reasons behind her apathy and can end with her rediscovering the spark that drove her to become a teacher in the first place.

Webcomics

• In El Goonish Shive, the guidance counselor at Moperville South seems to be this. He gives Grace her schedule and locker number without even looking at her and is sarcastic about the fact that he gets her name wrong in the process.
• Mr Garcia from Paranatural gives off this vibe. He's constantly sleepy (if not actually asleep), constantly in a bad mood, and constantly snarking about his students. How does he keep his job? He has tenure. Deep tenure.
• Steve Parsons of Subnormality had a stint as one of these. Deconstructed when one of his students confronts him during a drug-induced breakdown about how he's fucking them all over and if he can't summon up enough energy to do his job properly he shouldn't be doing it at all.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! Dr. Jean Poule is a brilliant biologist stuck teaching at a podunk little community college. Her grand experiment that would have put her on the scientific map (and let her escape the job) ended in a way that she doesn't dare tell anyone about, leaving her stuck in a job that bores her senseless. She keeps hoping that her fiancé's wacky adventures will yield some sort of verifiable discovery she can use to establish her reputation and land a better gig.
• Miz Sorkowitz in Ozy and Millie sometimes comes across like this. The fact many of her students are bright, but not in a way that the school is designed to reward (Millie's chaotic thought processes, Ozy's zen insight, and Stephan's computer nerdery) means she's largely given up on anything except handing out standardised tests and occasionally sending Millie to the school psychiatrist. However, the principal is actively malevolent, so she's unlikely to be fired (and is a slight improvement on him). On one occasion when Millie's mom asked her why, just because she hadn't seen Jeremy start the fight, she was assuming that Millie spontaneously attacked a football player twice her size, she bluntly replied "It's easier."

Web Original

• Mrs June from Mommy Sleeps in the Basement is a downplayed example. She does try to encourage and help her students, but after ten years she's clearly disillusioned by the seemingly endless cycle of poverty and abuse she encounters, and the lack of assistance from CPS. She privately thinks most of the Jackson kids are "dumber than a box of rocks" and a lost cause, but she also goes above and beyond to support Paisley - who she thinks is genuinely bright - makes mental notes to drop off some of her baby clothes at the Jacksons when she learns Betty is pregnant again and wishes she could do more to help.

Western Animation

• Besides being a Sadist Teacher, Miss Simian from The Amazing World of Gumball admits in "The Butterfly" that she doesn't care about the children's education. You wouldn't either if you've been teaching since the Stone Age and had people attacking you for trying to teach subject matter considered subversive for its day, such as using the wheel and how to make fire.
• Principal Lewis from American Dad!. Lampshaded and justified in "Jenny Fromdabloc":
  Principal Lewis: Hey, Steve, I'm only telling a few people; I'm making belt buckles now if you want to buy one. Check it out!
  (displays bootleg Tweety Bird belt buckle with the caption "There Is No God")
  Steve: I really can't believe you're an educator, Brian.
  Principal Lewis: My job's mostly administrative.
• Big Mouth: The principal of Bridgeton Middle School is on the very edge of retirement and, simply put, has no more fucks left to give. After reversing the school's controversial school uniform policy, she retires on the spot with plans to drink her grandkids out of her head.
• Bob's Burgers': Louise's fourth-grade teacher Ms. LaBonz tends to come across as this, giving lessons and assignments in a bored/disgruntled tone, openly complaining whenever she has to do extra chaperoning work after normal school hours, often leaving the kids to their own devices while she goes outside to smoke, and it's implied she has called in sick more than once just to get out of work.
  Ms. LaBonz: (on the bus during a field trip) Rudy, sit down. There, I said it. I did my job.
• Fangbone!: Ms. Gillian, the teacher for Bill and Fangbone's class, is this due to being perpetually exhausted by and dissatisfied with having to teach Eastwood Elementary's resident Wacky Homeroom.
• Ms. Butterbean from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy who obviously doesn't care a lick about her job. She is also a Sadist Teacher, being cruel and verbally abusive towards the kids. One episode even shows that she lets Sperg, The Bully, get away with his actions as long as they bribe her with an apple.
• Kiff: Helen, the drama teacher at Kiff’s school, has little interest in teaching her students, preferring to nap, check her social media, or further her own acting career.
  Helen: I was taking a nap, dreaming I was on the beach/but my students woke me up, they wanted me to teach.

• Carl Moss from King of the Hill is a particularly sleazy example of an Apathetic Principal. Cuts corners wherever he can, makes no effort to running his school, and doesn't care about any problem that comes to his attention unless it involves the possibility of losing his job.
• Mr. Czelanski from Mission Hill never gives even the slightest crap about what's going on around him, or in his class, or with his students, save for his first appearance where he yells at his class for not paying attention to Kevin's introduction and forces them to take a quiz on it (Whether this is Early-Installment Weirdness or he does care about some things is anyone's guess). If nothing else he's bluntly honest about it, telling Kevin he doesn't know how to get admitted to a college as he never had to go (luckily for him, they had 'Nam) and openly admitting to Andy that he couldn't care less about parent/teacher conferences.
  Mr. Czelanski: Kevin's doing great. Excellent student. Blah blah blah— you really wanna hear this stuff?
  Andy: Not really, no.
  Mr. Czelanski: Great. We still have 14 minutes left.
  (Pours himself and Andy some whisky)
  Mr. Czelanski: If only more parents were like you.
• Miss Sculptham on Moral Orel. She's shown to only do the bare minimum of her job, often refusing to "teach" her students about anything after class hours. Like most of the characters in the show, she has deeply rooted problems of her own.
• The Owl House: While she does agree to teach Luz magic, Eda Clawthorne tends to not be very motivated into giving out actual lessons. Most of what Luz learns from her is by total accident. In some fairness, up until Luz learned the light spell, Eda didn't think humans could learn magic. ^note Witches as a species have an extra organ that powers their magic. It also doesn't help that Luz's way of doing magic is so different from a normal witch that Eda had to study wild magic herself before she could teach Luz anything.
• In Puff the Magic Dragon and the Incredible Mr. Nobody, Puff shows Terry that his teacher (who put down his artistic skills) is just one of these.
• The Simpsons:
  • Edna Krabappel is cynical, smokes while on duty, generally responds to her students' problems with snark or even flat out laughing at them (particularly Bart), thanks to a combination of having to deal with the children of Springfield (again, particularly Bart), and the school's endless stream of cutbacks for years. Though some episodes show that Edna still cares about trying to teach the kids deep down, under a ton of cynicism and snark it may be, and she and Bart have actually formed a closer bond than either of them would ever admit, despite his antagonism of her.
  • Miss Hoover, the second grade teacher Lisa's stuck with, makes Mrs. Krabappel look enthusiastic. One episode shows that once her tenure kicked in, she lets Ralph teach the class while she reads magazines. Another episode has her grading all her students' work with the press of a single button, as opposed to grading them individually (meaning that Ralph ends up with the same grade as Lisa, who is rightfully pissed off).
  • Dewey Largo, Lisa's music teacher, generally sleepwalks the school band through uninspired Sousa performances, but is a brilliant conductor whose life went off-course many years ago when his acceptance from Juilliard got lost in the mail. "Girl's In the Band" shows that he's well-capable of being an excellent music teacher, as when he believes he may be scouted by the Capitol City Philharmonic he almost immediately gets his students sounding so good that Homer is confused upon attending a recital, thinking he's at the wrong school.
  • Reverend Lovejoy is also one, from a "pastors are also teachers" point of view. In his self-focused episode, we discover that he was once a vivacious man eager to spread the word of God in new, exciting ways...only to encounter Ned Flanders, who called Lovejoy morning, noon, and night to pester him with inane questions and irrational paranoia about going to Hell. After dealing with Ned's problems (and the general imbecility of Springfield's populace) for years, Lovejoy lost all of his passion and began phoning in his weekly sermons. In a sweet moment, though, the end of the episode has him saving Ned from a monkey enclosure, rekindling a bit of his spark, and delivering a genuinely stirring speech about courage and faith in God, which has the whole congregation hanging on his every word.
  • Back when he was in kindergarten, Bart had a teacher whose open contempt and apathy towards him contributed to him being an underachieving class clown. Long story short, the teacher wrote Bart off as a lost cause and openly told him he had no future whatsoever just because he wasn't as quick as the other kids to catch on to things.
• Mr. Garrison from South Park has shades of this, if not contempt for his students. One episode had him outright hire illegal Mexican immigrants to do his job for him... and they, with no training, no experience, and barely any English, did far better teaching than he ever has.
• Mrs. Puff from SpongeBob SquarePants flips flops on this depending on the writer. Though it's mostly her attitude toward SpongeBob since no matter what she does, she can't seem to get him to pass the driving portion of her test and out of her hair for good. His over-eagerness certainly doesn't help, neither does continually landing her in jail either.

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