lilmod ulelamaid: “I am not sure that I agree that the teachers should focus less on connecting. I do think it’s very important, but there has to be more of a sense of boundaries. This is true for women teachers as well as men teachers.”
From what I see, “connection” usually means “manipulation”. For example, a young boy or girl in yeshiva/seminary comes to a teacher regarding a personal problem. Sometimes this happens because the teacher is the smartest (?) person this students knows, and they hope that maybe they’ll know how to solve their problem. Other times, it is because the student wants to form a connection with the popular, charismatic teacher, since being close with them will essentially make the student cool, “in”, etc. In either case, although the teacher might have many years of experience in these situations, they aren’t necessarily any good. Maybe they’ve been giving students nonsense advice, or perhaps even harmful advice, for many years, and basically no one can evaluate that such advice is harmful? What reason is there to think that if Rebbi X spent 10 years learning in Brisk that he has the emotional maturity to counsel talmidim about relationships? Or because Morah Y is happily married with 7 children, what reason is there to think that her advice is worth anything?
Teachers, when they are talmidei chachamim, when they are drawing on their years of serious learning, be in chumash, halacha, gemara, etc, when they are teaching inyanim which are really their expertise, then they can do a phenomenal job in educating students. When, instead, lomdei torah begin to spend their time sharing advice in areas in which they have no particular expertise, that is just unfair. It would be like me giving you advice about writing website because I sometimes read the YWN website.
Students, like other human beings, often want meaningful connections. To some degree, rebbeim and morose can provide this, but I don’t believe that they can generally provide it to the degree which they pretend they can. Things end up badly — teachers pretend that they are these super duper tzadikim, students adoring them, etc, when really they are, by and large, regular people like you and me — they wake up, they brush their teeth, they eat breakfast (some like strong coffee, some weak, some no coffee at all), they have friends and there are people they don’t like, they have better days and worse days, sometimes their feel energized, sometimes depressed, etc. A 45-year mechaneses or rebbi, or a 65 year old rebbi, will never find genuine friendship with a group of 18-year olds.