Mr. Van Driessen



David Van Driessen is a teacher at Highland High on the show Beavis and Butt-head. He has been shown teaching classes on biology, art, animation, economics, health, history, and literature. He is a soft-spoken, idealistic, aging hippie, and has tried to get his classes interested in animal rights campaigns and horticulture.

He thinks Beavis and Butt-head can be helped and is tolerant towards them, being quite upset when they were thought dead (in "Beavis and Butt-head are Dead"). None of his attempts at helping them have ever worked.

Although Daria seemed to do well in his class and he praised her work on occasion (such as "U. S. History"), she apparently never kept in touch after moving to her own spin-off, as Van Driessen is never again mentioned. However, he does make the occasional appearance in fanfiction.

Van Driessen is similar to Timothy O'Neill in that they're both liberal softies prone to idealistic causes - unlike O'Neill, Van Driessen appears to be quite competent at carrying them out. Notably, in "Incognito" he was able to confiscate a gun from thuggish student Earl, who sounded upset and apologised to Van Driessen. In past episode clips in "Are Dead", Van Driessen can also be seen attacking (badly) a man in defence of Beavis, thinking the man had touched the boy inappropriately and then hit him ("You touch my students, I'll touch you!") In the present day sections, Van Driessen takes a calm but frosty tone with Coach Buzzcut over his "disrespect" for the lads.

He owns and plays an acoustic guitar, and used to own an 8-track tape collection until Beavis and Butt-head wrecked it.

In two issues of the comic, Van Driessen showed an even-handedness that is remarkable for someone as stereotypically hippie as him: in "Discoverin' Things Sucks" he noted Columbus' achievements at the same time as condemning his imperialism, and in "Witless" he viewed the film Birth of a Nation as classic cinema (it was a technical pioneer) despite its massive racism.