The author draws on the voices of beginning teachers in a particular teacher education program and his own experiences as a teacher educator in several different settings to account for preservice teacher reflection and resistance to rationale-based social studies teacher education. Twelve categories represent the perspectives of beginning social studies student teachers. Some are directly related to larger explanatory frameworks offered by teacher education research. Others reflect commonplace tensions in the university classroom. These twelve categories of reflection and resistance in rationale-based teacher education may serve as starting points for thinking about more effective approaches to helping beginning teachers answer the powerful question--what are you teaching for? If the philosopher George Santayana was correct when he claimed, "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim," then what is it called when you never knew your aim in the first place?