I'm a physicist specifically working with magnetic systems, but I have very little pre-graduate teaching experience, so take this attempt to answer the question with a grain of salt.
The reason some people regard Faraday's original explanation of the eponymous law (it is worth noting that at the time it was widely regarded as inadequate and handwavy) as illuminating is because Faraday visualized his "lines of force" as literal chains of polarized particles in a dielectric medium, thereby providing a seemingly mechanistic local explanation of the observed phenomena. Not much of this mindset survived Maxwell's theoretical program and it has very little to do with how we regard magnetism today. Instead, the unification of electricity and magnetism naturally arises from special relativity, whereas the microscopic basis of magnetism requires quantum mechanics. There isn't really any place for naive contact mechanics in the modern picture of physics, so in that sense I would regard Faraday's view as misleading.
Finally, I can't end any "explanation" of magnetism without linking the famous Feynman interview snippet [1] where he's specifically asked about magnetism. It doesn't answer your question directly, but it's worth watching all the more because of it.
What I see at the beginning of that video is somebody who doesn’t want to spend the energy answering a complex question. Then, in the process of dismissing the question he gets drawn in and can’t help himself from really getting into it.
I don’t know anything about Feynman beyond vaguely associating his name with science, but watching this makes me want to seek out more from him.
You're in for quite a treat then. It sounds like you might have more of an interest in his technical work and scientific contributions and teaching materials (of which there is plenty, and of high quality), but personally I quite enjoyed this book of his as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...!
The reason some people regard Faraday's original explanation of the eponymous law (it is worth noting that at the time it was widely regarded as inadequate and handwavy) as illuminating is because Faraday visualized his "lines of force" as literal chains of polarized particles in a dielectric medium, thereby providing a seemingly mechanistic local explanation of the observed phenomena. Not much of this mindset survived Maxwell's theoretical program and it has very little to do with how we regard magnetism today. Instead, the unification of electricity and magnetism naturally arises from special relativity, whereas the microscopic basis of magnetism requires quantum mechanics. There isn't really any place for naive contact mechanics in the modern picture of physics, so in that sense I would regard Faraday's view as misleading.
Finally, I can't end any "explanation" of magnetism without linking the famous Feynman interview snippet [1] where he's specifically asked about magnetism. It doesn't answer your question directly, but it's worth watching all the more because of it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8