TV Character Profile: Seymour Skinner

Name: Seymour Skinner
Show: The Simpsons
Occupation: Principal at Springfield Elementary



Born sometime in 1953 in Capitol City, he is the principal of Springfield Elementary School, and a stereotypical educational bureaucrat. He struggles to control the crumbling school and is constantly engaged in a battle against its inadequate resources, apathetic and bitter teachers, and often rowdy and unenthusiastic students, Bart Simpson being a standout example. A strict disciplinarian, Skinner has an uptight, militaristic attitude that stems from a combination of being trapped for three or four days in a swimming pool full of earthworms and his years in the United States Army as a Green Beret, which included service in the Vietnam War, in which he was captured by the Viet Cong and was held as a war prisoner for eighteen months. Skinner is also quite bitter about the treatment he and other Vietnam veterans received upon returning from the war.