This paper argues that teachers employed by the governments of Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan both subverted and bolstered their governments throughout the rebellions of the interwar period. After the First World War, the League of Nations touted government schooling as both a key means by which Mandate inhabitants were to become modern, and a marker of whether or not they had done so. Parents hoped government schooling would help their children achieve government employment, which promised a steady paycheck and social mobility. However, British colonial officials feared that an excess of education might produce rebellious, and anti-British, nationalists; British policies thus limited government schooling during the Mandate period. The subsequent dearth of educated personnel had two paradoxical effects during the violent rebellions that took place across the region during the 1930s. Firstly, educators could criticize the policies of the states that employed them, in print and in demonstrations, without fear of permanent dismissal, as they could not be easily replaced. Secondly, educators were also dependent on their governments for their livelihoods; they thus preferred to work within the government rather than to join the segments of the population working towards their governments’ violent overthrow. Histories, newspaper articles, memoirs and popular accounts have lionized these teachers as nationalist heroes. Educators appear as the mouthpieces of violent, peasant or popular revolutionary uprisings rather than part of the often-maligned elite negotiations. Schools themselves are repeatedly described as “hotbeds of nationalism.” In these narratives, educators preach to legions of angry young men and women, inspiring them with “the spirit of nationalism” and “resistance to imperialism”, thereby inciting and participating in anti-colonial rebellions. Yet, simplistic contrasts between elite and peasant elide the complex experience of the growing number of individuals who fell between these categories, their role as government-subsidized nationalists, and the nature of the nationalisms they espoused. Moreover, these teachers, and those they educated more generally, seldom participated in the armed uprisings that swept the region. Drawing upon hundreds of personnel files, memoirs, textbooks, alumni records, official statistics and publications from archives in the United States, United Kingdom, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, this paper develops narratives of anti-imperial rebellions beyond the simple binary of nationalist resistance vs. collaboration. It shows how an influential interest group managed to protest against their governments, while remaining within government service.