Dealing With Conflict

To show what I've learned from conflicts at high school, I'll give a kind of 'self-interview' in the following:

1. Discuss an emotional conflict with someone. What was it about?
I often had dissents with some teachers at high school. I was upset with the way they promoted their approach to a solution as the and only one. How can an interpretation of a german poem only have one solution to be accepted for an 'A'? How can the teachers judge my sometimes different perceptions about the political system badly, if it is not compliant with their opinion? Btw, why do most teachers have the same political attitude? Because the party they're promoting makes the 'best' laws for the profession of the teacher. If this is the base for a political decision, I'm not willing to accept the teacher's judgement of my thougths about politics.
2. What was the source of the conflict?
For some reason, teachers have very strong opinions. They are not going to change them, unless they are so obviously wrong, that things would get ridiculous. Part of the reason for that is probably, that you need to do more persuading if you're not an adult. I can understand this, but for the pupils (like me) that early showed a special interest in particular topics and therefore are able to add value to a conversation, it is very hard to be treated as a dumb child.
3. How did you handle that conflict?
In subjects that didn't arrouse my interest too much, I only gave the minimum effort for receiving a reasonable grade. In other subjects like computer science, I studied hard to prove my teacher wrong.
4. Did your actions make the conflict better or worse?
Regarding these particular conflicts (with teachers), it wasn't neccessarily my goal to resolve the conflict. That is because I hated the obstinacy that some of my teachers had. I didn't believe that is easily possible to change their mind. So ignoring them indeed lowered my grade in the less interesting subjects, and the teachers didn't like me too much. Nevertheless, I was sometimes able to change the mind of the teachers of interesting subjects. I think in these cases it also led to a relatively good relationship with the teacher.
5. If you could go back, what would you do differently, if anything?
There might be a way to change the mind of a teacher effectively, but the way I described above is the only one I could think of. Man is a creature of habit, so there it seems that the nature programmed obstinacy into the humans' minds. Accessing and modifying it can be hard. I think there is a way, but I have to admit that my interest in doing so is not overly high, at least in the case of school (I'm very happy with the result I got from school, so I wouldn't change it... Wait, is that obstinacy?).
6. What did you learn from this experience?
I always thought people act individually, because everyone's got an individual character. But I've learned that sometimes you can a judge a whole group of people if they have a critical mass of common interests. I experienced the same frustrating situations again and again, with different teachers. You need to follow a pace that firstly satisfies your interests, and secondly doesn't displease the one you're having a conflict with; at least if you want to keep a healthy and sustainable relationship to this person.
In addition, I guess my suggestions here don't apply to any situation. For example, I would act differently when I have a conflict with a friend. It also depends on how smart the other person is. I'd say that 70% of my teachers just weren't able to understand what their pupils brought into the conversation. All in all, you have to decide individually on how you act, but, in my mind you should decide beforehand how much effort you take for solving a conflict. Sometimes, it might be possible to make a descision for a group of people (at least at my high school).