I can trace many of my current skills, interests and aspirations directly to several of my teachers, most often in contexts not directly related to their core subject.

There is the occasional teacher who is there to power trip, but they are by far the minority. The school system crushes teachers just as much as it does the kids.

Edit: Reread my comment you replied to, if I made it sound like the teachers were mind-dead, that was absolutely not my goal. I just wanted to specify that the kids themselves were like that, and worried it might be misinterpreted as the school itself being like that.