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.
It was always delightful for me to see how hard cons and libs coped with his very existence
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
We had the same debate at my Christian high school. We came to the consensus of abolishing civil marriage and letting anyone get a civil union.
The art teacher at the private boys high school I got a scholarship to was always very understanding. She didn't enforce any of the racist hair rules or uniform rules, and openly supported and encouraged the only openly gay student in a school of thousands, which as a closeted bi person, made me feel safe in a school of homophobes. I still remember when she kicked out a student for using the f_____t slur from her class. She also openly talked about politics and protesting the government. Eventually she got bullied out of teaching us by the stockholm syndrome boys because they wanted a traditional male strict figure. And by bullied, I mean literally cyber bullied by almost a whole class. The school moved her to teach the more junior grades, and I still feel incredibly sad about the whole situation.
My education was Catholic - so slowly realizing that I had been completely indoctrinated into a comically evil set of beliefs primed me to later understand that the same was happening on a societal level with respect to capitalism.
It was my English teacher and The Jungle too. My class would always end up in debates so I think he could tell I wanted something political to give me that push into leftism. He was a pretty great guy, I should really see how he's doing these days
My sophomore year world history teacher was a Korean War vet chud who demonized communism, and lovingly told us the story of how calling someone a pinko commie back in the day were fighting words.
Interestingly enough, he also taught about the history of several different world religions from a completely historical point of view, no injected Christian worldview or anything, which led me to begin questions my faith and upbringing (Southern Baptist) and curiosity into other religions, which led to my then agnosticism (but now am converting to Judaism)
I also had a thing with his daughter later in hs and that enraged him because I was a girl at the time, and that was hilarious
Edit: I almost forgot. he was also surprisingly pro union and paid a lot of attention to teaching us about labor movements in the early 20th century; I remember watching Matewan, a movie about a coal miners strike. He also commented a lot about how unions were important and how often strikers were massacred.
converting to Judaism? Pardon my ignorance, but is that actually a thing?
From my admittedly still small understanding, as I am in a learning process: There are three main branches of Judaism, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. Reform Jews are pretty chill and allow conversions.
Conservatives allow allow and recognize conservative conversions and most Orthodox conversions, rarely Reform conversion.
Orthodox conversions happen very rarely, and they almost always only recognize Orthodox conversion.
The only instance of a teacher getting me to think about leftist stuff at all was my political studies teacher stalwartly defending the position that CEOs deserve to make 3.000 times the money of a regular employee because they just work that hard.
And I really cannot tell you if she meant it or if she was laying it on extra thick so we would actually think about the topic.
For me, I started out pretty far left, and I've been consistently pushed further left by lib social studies/polysci teachers that I disagree with. I've had a few good ones though.
So my grade 12 social studies teacher was a huge lib (this was like 2017-18, he'd start every class by getting us to watch John Oliver or rant about Trump), and I ended up reading the Manifesto because of how much he pissed me off. It wasn't entirely his fault; he was very good at teaching the Social Studies Grade 12 curriculum, but that was all he did; teach for exams. I got kicked out of class once for calling him an idiot, and I was in AP, so once those exams were done I stopped attending class. At around the same time, my English teacher(my all time favourite teacher ever) introduced me to Marxist/Historical analysis of literature, which has helped me a lot in my required English credits in uni.
My polysci 101 prof was a lib too, and so were all of my classmates, so I started reading Capital because of how much they pissed me off. The class had a lecture day, which I started skipping after 3 weeks, and a debate day which I never missed.
I think the only good teacher/prof I've had, politics wise, has been this one Marxist hippie doomer polysci prof. I've been taking courses with him whenever I can, because I learn new stuff all the time in his classes. Without him, I think I would have ended up a total class-reductionist stupidpoler.
My 10th grade US history teacher showed us Matewan, Harlan County USA, and Sacco and Vanzetti but also some writing by Ayn Rand for some reason. He is probably some kind of radlib but I thank him for introducing me to the American labor movement.
My senior year history teacher showed us the third Zeitgeist movie which was my first introduction into anti-capitalist thought.
Wow thats awesome.... this one definitely led me on the path. I was a right-libertarian when I watched this, and I think that movie is a pretty defining moment in my rethinking of things.
