We once read a book called "Feed" in high school - a ham fisted anti-capitalist book. Wherein citizens are 100% connected to an internet like service that only exists to sell them products. 90% of the class couldnt get it. Even when the teacher sat down and explained the entire plot of the book they still couldnt wrap their head around it.
I think this is really it. It clicked that my AP American Literature teacher was probably some sort of communist or socialist years after I graduated when she was marshaling our local George Floyd protest. The whole year of her class we read books with heavy themes of class struggle, but I wouldn't even know that was a thing until a year after her class. We read The Grapes of Wrath. We read Fences and Death of a Salesman back to back. We literally read The Crucible. I, a self proclaimed communist, could probably not have picked a more radical list of American novels. None of us in the class got any of it. The idea that there are contending economic classes is something you really have to either stumble upon, go to college to learn about, or experience firsthand and American high school students tend to not have any of those things happen to them. Once they get a little older it's a different story.
I've thought about reaching out to my former teacher telling her she should be more blunt with her agitation, but I was an awful student so I'm not sure how she would receive it.
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If you contact your former teacher, and tell them their teaching had an impact on you in one way or another, they 'd be happy about it.