People losing their damn minds:

Lemme explain how teaching works: educational professionals profess their enthusiasm for “the kids” largely in inverse proportion to their actual experience of being with thirty of them in an enclosed space for most of the day. So, for example, senior management are generally much more favourably disposed towards “our young people” than real teachers but can still on occasion get pissed off with them because despite their best efforts, they can’t avoid bumping into the odd one from time to time. Even more enthusiastic are lecturers in teacher training colleges who love the kids so much they fucked off into what is laughingly called academia at the first available opportunity. But even these never-have-beens can’t match the people who actually run the show for sheer divorced-from-reality lunacy ...

And the bile goes on, with copious quotes from this.  Bonkers teachers, who according to Shuggy don’t do much actual teaching, say they “love” their prisoners.  The more cautious and grumpy ones, Shuggy’s preferred sort, fear that such protestations might be misinterpreted.

All these arguments are quite reasonable, if you think that imprisoning “thirty of them in an enclosed space for most of the day” is a good way for everyone involved to be made to behave, or if not good then at least unavoidable.  When people are forced into each other’s company, there’s a high chance that either love or hatred, or, most likely, some overwrought combination of the two, will result.  But if you are an adult and the object of your love or hate is children, probably best not to say either of these things with exactly those words.

I prefer the adult world, where people are at least allowed to balance the glories and horrors of being forced into one another’s company day after day against the more mundane benefits (like getting paid) that they get in exchange, and to decide for themselves who they will be imprisoned with.

One kind of educational romantic loves his prisoners.  My kind says: why can’t they be let out?