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A story I’ve told before. When I was at school, one of my teachers - a man I really greatly respected as a man - was heavily involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement (the war was happening at this time). He opposed conscription very strongly, participated in all the rallies, and in our senior classes where were supposed to discuss issues, he presented the anti-war view, which as the son of a man killed in Vietnam, I often wound up opposing.

In my last year of school, I was seriously considering joining the armed forces, and I sought out a bunch of the men I admired for their opinions - including him. I went to him thinking he’d give me the arguments against joining and I wanted to hear them.

He surprised me. He told me the military was a good career, that he thought I’d do well in it and it’d be good for me. I expressed surprise that he said that.

And he sat me down and told me that as a teacher his number one priority in life was to teach his students to think for themselves. To look at the issues and let their own beliefs and their own conscience take them to what they decided was right. He would always be open about his own beliefs - he wouldn’t hide them, because he felt a man should stand up for what he believed. But while he was naturally delighted when a student decided on their own that they agreed with him, he would be an absolutely lousy teacher if all his students came to that conclusion. What he wanted for us to agree with his positions - but for us to be capable of holding our own views with the same passion and strength of belief that he had about his.

Today I am a teacher - after over twenty years in the military - and I try to live up to that man every day I teach.

My students are going to think for themselves - and I want them to - even when I think they are wrong. I want them to be wrong because that is what THEY have decided for themselves, not right because I told them what to think.

And my contempt for people who try to impose their political views on kids knows no bounds.

And he sat me down and told me that as a teacher his number one priority in life was to teach his students to think for themselves. To look at the issues and let their own beliefs and their own conscience take them to what they decided was right.

While I am happy to hear that, for a left-wing nutbag, the guy is unusually fair-minded, I think that the high-minded, lofty ideals that teachers ascribe to themselves are a huge part of the problem with mass education. The things kids need from primary school through high school are Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, and the variants thereof. Having someone take on the mantle of "teacher" and believing that it makes them some higher spiritual guru who is "shaping young minds" and "teaching kids how to think" is exactly the sort of corrupting vanity that leads such people to inject all sorts of garbage into the curriculum.

For example, your teacher stated that he wanted all kids to be "holding our own views with the same passion and strength of belief that he had about his". Well, that implies that he wants them to follow in his pattern of behavior, even if they don't follow his specific thinking. So, if he is an obnoxious, radical, overbearing professional whiner who thinks the highest calling is running around chanting slogans and browbeating everyone within earshot with his political views, then he is, in essence, trying to get his students to do the same, even if they do it on the right side of issues rather than the left. What if the very method he espouses is part of the problem?

Just teach the 3 R's. The kids will take care of the rest themselves.