The young men were the worst, some actual martinets, depressed and bitter, because the idealism that had brought them to us was no match for the petrified bureaucracy of the Columbus School System or the listless passivity of children they’d dreamed of inspiring (read, indoctrinating) to a soft liberalism (peace was a big word with these men) that would replicate and flatter their own, children who were instead locked tight inside themselves and an institutional tedium they couldn’t name but had already lost their hearts to.
martinet - a strict disciplinarian, especially in the armed forces.
