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.
My high school English teacher was a 75 year old anarchist who taught us how to smoke from a fruit, showed us Charlie Chaplin movies in class, asked us to blow up the state capitol in her honor (in Minecraft) someday, and let me snog my gf alone in her classroom while I was TAing and she was on lunch. Fun times.
A lefty lib professor of American history in college told us, mostly out of nowhere when discussing 20th century activism, that he believed Marxism-Leninism was one of the most dangerous political philosophies ever invented. I knew who Marx was sorta in college, but I didn’t really know what to make of what he said. Seemed reasonable.
Now I am one lmao.
I got into an argument with him once because he assigned a mini essay question asking what early industrial workers sacrificed to get the labor standards that came after the depression. I said I didn’t think they sacrificed anything, they fought and died against a cruel economic system that undeniably would have kept exploiting them (and still did overseas today) and gained a few concessions. He was annoyed by that, felt it was pedantic.
But it wasn’t, because being reoriented about what this system is is what finally brought me left, understanding that it’s not an accident, that it’s part of the plan.
Without radicalization and theory, you just get stuck in being, at best, a succdem who can’t understand why things keep getting worse. That was basically every college professor I ever met.
Very little. However, my grade 12 English teacher did teach us how to use class analysis which kinda blew my mind at the time. That’s probably the only time anything a teacher has taught me has influenced my political beliefs.
Going to a private boys catholic school where rules were strict and the ability to express myself was cracked down on made me identify myself in opposition to the values of the school. But there were a few good teachers there that played a role in my radicalisation.
A lot of my History teachers were critical of the United States and the way its history was told, stuff like Lincoln didn’t want to free the slaves, etc. When I went on a fancy lad tour of the States with school, my history teacher actually confronted one of the tour guides about the details of a battle and argued that the US was provoking the battle in the first place. Going to the US also radicalised me, learning that servers don’t get paid a living wage, seeing the guards and metal detectors at the front of high schools and the abundant level of security at the Pentagon.
However the biggest role my teachers played in my radicalisation was from my Spanish teacher. Who explained to us that capitalism worked exactly like the bell curve that was used to grade us. And that there ALWAYS had to be ppl at the bottom getting screwed over.
