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.

  • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    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.