For me, it was mainly the philosophy and politics teachers. Boy oh fucking boy, for some reason, every single one of my philosopy and PolSci teachers were… interesting personalities to say the least. It was our philosophy teacher who introduced us to the Labor Theory of Value, oddly enough, and the issue of economic inequality. And as for the PolSci-Side, two teachers stand out: One grew up in the GDR and was very, very nostalgic about it (with some fair criticisms, especially concerning the Stasi), and the second, and final one in my case, was an irony-poisoned super-leftist with a gigantic disdain for the rich, the state and capitalism.
In the mid 2000s I was in high school and Che shirts were all the rage. My history teacher complained about it and told us that if we talked to any Cubans in America they wouldn’t be happy to see Che on a shirt. He then showed us a bunch of movies about the Cuban revolution and I remember him getting mad when most of the students cried when Che died in one of the movies. Fuck that teacher.
Back in 2004, my AP US History teacher set A People’s History by Howard Zinn as our textbook, and had us read The Jungle as a supplementary assignment. It was an eye opening year.
I’ll never forget him. He was a great storyteller, very charismatic, and fucking smart without being a dick about it.
I had a Biopsych professor like that. Cool ass dude RIP Terry.
Edit: as far as teachers that radicalized me it was my biology professor. He was like a radical guerrilla environmentalist who would take us off trail on field studies to go rip up invasive species. Every cool STEM guy is an anarchist I swear. He was also way ahead of the curve and was one of the early voices warning of insect populations declining. That shit still haunts me.
Will never forget back in high school we had a “should gay marriage be legal” debate. You went to a side of the room based on whether you wanted it or not.
Hoss of a teacher went to stand with the don’t want, and we were all like wtf dude. He was an anarchist and didn’t want the state to have a say on any marriage being illegal
