This article is about the fictitious Springfield Elementary School in the television program "The Simpsons." There are also many real Springfield Elementary Schools in the United States.
In the television series The Simpsons, the Springfield Elementary School is the school which Bart Simpson, Lisa Simpson and their fellow students attend.
Its principal is Seymour Skinner, and its superintendent is Superintendent Chalmers (with his assistant Leopold). The school's teachers include Miss Elizabeth Hoover, Dewey Largo, and Edna Krabappel. The other staff include Otto Mann, Groundskeeper Willy (sometimes spelled Willie), and Lunchlady Doris. Children at the school include Nelson Muntz, Jimbo Jones, Kearney, Wendell and Üter.
Administration
Seymour Skinner
Voiced by Harry Shearer, Skinner is the prototypical educational bureaucrat, constantly concerned with a low-grade battle against the school's inadequate resources, apathetic, bitter teachers, and largely rowdy and unenthusiastic students--Bart being the standout example. Principal Skinner's name is a joking reference to the famous psychologist B. F. Skinner, famous for his theories that with appropriate reward and punishment conditioning techniques, any behavior could be introduced into an individual. His father fought on Abe Simpson's World War Two squad.
Seymour Skinner's personal history, like that of many Simpsons characters, is somewhat convoluted. It was long known that he was a Vietnam War veteran, having served as a POW for many years (he often goes into lapses on how he was mistreated). He lived the life of bachelor, living alone with his domineering elderly mother (his father having passed away). However, in an episode devoted to filling in the character's backstory, it was revealed that Skinner actually an impostor, having stolen the identity of his platoon sergeant at the end of the war. Seymour's real name is Armin Tamzarian (an Armenian name) and was a troublesome orphan until he joined the military. Believing the real Skinner to have been killed, Tamzarian returned to Springfield and assumed his identity to comfort his mother. However, at the end of the episode, Judge Synder granted Tamzarian Skinner's name, past, present, future, and mother, and decreed that no one should mention his real identity again under penalty of torture. This storyline bears some resemblance the tale of Martin Guerre. Many Simpsons fans consider this to be one of the worst episodes ever, and the Simpsons writers mocked it themselves in the later episode Behind the Laughter.
In later seasons Skinner and Edna Krabappel started dating, and later got engaged. Despite this, he still lives at home with his mother, Agnes Skinner.
Superintendent Chalmers
Chalmers, voiced by Hank Azaria, is the superintendent of Springfield's school district. Whenever he visits the school, some sort of disaster strikes. He produces extreme cases of anxiety in Principal Skinner, who offers increasingly improbable stories to explain what is happening. Skinner often tries to exploit Lisa's genius to make the school look good. Chalmers is known for yelling "SKINN-ER!!". In two episodes he was seen dating Agnes Skinner.
Leopold
Voiced by Dan Castellaneta, Leopold was Superintendent Chalmers' assistant. He was a surly, snarling one-trick pony; when a staff member had to be temporarily replaced, Leopold stomped in, issued vague threats and terrified the children, making them think he was the replacement, and then suddenly and politely introduced the actual substitute. The children then collectively sighed with relief.
Teachers
Edna Krabappel
Voiced by Marcia Wallace, Edna Krabappel (pronounced "kra-BOP-le,") is a sterotypical "downtrodden schoolteacher" who has had any idealism that she ever had beaten out of her by the sad realities of the poor resources and misbehaving children. Despite holding a Master's degree from Bryn Mawr College, she seems poorly educated, a caricature of American public school teachers, as evidenced by the episode when Lisa steals all the teacher's manuals and the teachers are unable to do any work.
Edna teaches Bart Simpson, Milhouse van Houten, and Martin Prince, among others.
Edna is separated from her husband, misses male company, and it is occasionally implied that she feels her biological clock ticking. In some early episodes she is portrayed as very sexually aggressive. In later episodes, though, she develops a secret, but seemingly stable, romantic relationship with Seymour Skinner, the school's principal, which almost makes it to the altar. This is one of the exceedingly few cases where Simpsons characters have apparently undergone personal evolution within the show's history. However, she's also been seen gadding about with Apu, Sideshow Bob, and Comic Book Guy.
Her last name is pronounced "kra-boppel," a play on the fruit "crabapple." Matt Groening admitted in a commentary on the DVD of the first season, it was meant to be a joke that no one called her "crabapple," and indeed no one did-until the real Seymour Skinner came along (though no one mentions him under penalty of torture), and then Milhouse did it once in the fifteenth season (2003-04).
Elizabeth Hoover
Voiced by Maggie Roswell, Miss. Hoover has been worn down by her years in the public school system, and is not against drinking significant quantities of alcohol.
She is in particular weary of dealing with Lisa's unbridled enthusiasm and Ralph's mishaps and inanities. She was replaced by a substitute teacher, Mr. Bergstrom, played by Dustin Hoffman when she thought she had Lyme disease. It turned out that she was psychosomatic, which, the children correctly guessed, meant that she was both "faking it," and "crazy."
Dewey Largo
Dewey Largo is the music teacher, whom Lisa credited with proving that any piece of music could have the soul sucked out of it.
Staff
Otto Mann
Voiced by Harry Shearer, Otto is the school bus driver. He is notable for his occasionally manic driving style and his propensity for sounding and acting like a perpetual '70s teenager. He has also been seen at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings: "My name is Otto, and I love to get blotto!" He is often homeless, having been evicted from his apartment and forced to live with the Simpsons in one episode, and found squatting in the Simpsons' recently-vacated home in another.
His father is an admiral, and the two do not get along. There have been suggestions that this is a reference to Jim Morrison of The Doors, whose father was also an admiral.
In at least one episode, Otto's last name is 'Mechanic'.
Groundskeeper Willy
Voiced by Dan Castellaneta, Willy is the school's groundskeeper, with flaming red hair and an outrageously exaggerated Scottish accent. His years of heavy work have given him an amazingly muscled physique, occasionally revealed, notably when he had to crawl through ventilation shafts to retrieve Santa's Little Helper. Needing some assistance to get through the narrow tunnels, he turns to Lunchlady Doris to coat him with oil, with the memorable lines, "Lunchlady Doris, Have you got any grease?" She replies by saying, "Yes. Yes we do." Willy bellows "Then grease me up, woman!" as he dramatically tore his shirt open, to which she replies, "Okey-dokey."
Sometimes, Willy wears a kilt. He does not however wear anything under the kilt - the mark of a true Scotsman. At Scotchtoberfest, Bart attaches a number of balloons to Willy's kilt. This led to the kilt flying up. The gathered crowd gasped, and one woman fainted. In response, Willy cried, "Ach! 'Tis no more than what God gave me, you puritan pukes!"
In the second part of "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", Willy has his kilt on while being interviewed by the police. During the interview Willy uncrosses and then recrosses his legs. In response, the officers point a gun at Willy with a warning to stop doing that. The scene was a spoof of Sharon Stone's interrogation scene from the film Basic Instinct.
In the episode "Monty Can't Buy Me Love", Willy is re-united with his mother and father on the banks of Loch Ness, Scotland, where Mr. Burns leads a successful expedition to catch the Loch Ness Monster - Nessie - and bring it to Springfield.
According to Superintendent Chalmers, Willy is an escaped patient from a mental hospital that Skinner hired. According to Willy, he has worked at the school for 20 years, just as long as Principal Skinner, so he was likely hired soon after Skinner got his job.
At one time, Willy was engaged to Sherry Bobbins , until she recovered her eyesight at which point, in Willy's words, "suddenly the ugliest man in Glasgow wasn't good enough for [her] anymore."
Willy's hobbies include videotaping couples in cars, something which proves to the benefit of Homer Simpson when he is later wrongfully accused of sexual harassment. He says America thinks it's wrong but every Scotsman does it. Compare: Hagrid from the Harry Potter books and films.
It was recently revealed that Willy's personal enemy is another Groundskeeper that speaks with a heavy Irish accent: Seamus.
Lunchlady Doris
Voiced by Doris Grau, Lunchlady Doris is the overweight, middle-aged, and laconic worker at the cafeteria. It was occasionally intimated that she and Groundskeeper Willy are romantically involved. She has served many weird things to the students, including whole beef hearts, horse testicles ("more testicles means more iron"), rat's milk, ground newspapers, and ground-up gym mats ("There's very little meat in these gym mats.") After Doris Grau died, the character of Lunchlady Doris was retired out of respect.
Students
There are four bullies at the Springfield school. Nelson Muntz (voiced by Nancy Cartwright) takes delight in inflicting pain to the others in school, but is not usually cruel. He is notorious for his unabashed displays of schadenfreude, invariably accompanied by his trademark "Ha ha!" laugh. He is also a fan of Andy Williams. He lives with his mom, who got fired from Hooters, and is very poor. Nelson's dad appears to have left after saying that he was going to the store. In some episodes, however, Nelson's father is still around to raise him: in one episode, he is Nelson's soccer coach. Kearney is a pudgy kid with a disarming habit of punching his fist into his other hand. Although he appears to be of similar age to Bart, he can drive, has been seen shaving and has a young son (who sleeps in a drawer). His father used to work at KFC. Jimbo Jones (voiced by Pamela Hayden) wears a toque and a black T-shirt with a skull on it. He enjoys torturing his schoolmates and shoplifting. In one episode it is hinted that he comes from a well-off family. In another episode Jimbo becomes the boyfriend of Bart's babysitter Laura Powers (voiced by Sara Gilbert), whom Bart had a crush on. In one of the Hallowe'en editions, he was turned into hamburger patties by Principal Skinner. Dolph (voiced by Tress MacNeille) is the fourth bully.
Wendell is a pale kid who barfs easily. Üter is the German foreign exchange student, with odd habits such as offering his already-licked lollipops to others as a sign of friendship, and eating marzipan candies fortified with iodine. He disappeared for a period of time after the Civil War field trip, when the people running the reenactment they visited noticed that the students had snuck in and gave chase. Üter was left behind to be clubbed with the butts of the faux rifles that the men reenacting the Civil War were wielding. Although a joke was made of this event in a later episode, with Üter's parents asking Skinner where their son is, he has since reappeared, alive and plump. In the German version of the show Uter is an exchange student from Switzerland.
Also at the school are Ralph of the Wiggum family, Sherrie and Terrie, and Milhouse of the van Houten family.
See also: List of characters from The Simpsons
Last updated: 02-16-2005 08:54:24
