I lived in Texas for many years where one of the popular political saying was "Don't confuse me with FACTS when my mind is already made up."
I am not sure how you experience this from the perspective of teaching, but it seems to me that simple curiosity about your world and your surroundings is often frowned upon in the US of A. Maybe a rewriting of the above idea as "Don't confuse me with REALITY when my doctrine has already been burned into my brain!"
Maybe that's unkind, but sometimes I just end up rolling my eyes at what some people insist is factural/real.