In this article the author reflects on three key processes--depoliticisation, demoralisation and depersonalisation--which have been evident during recent decades in his experience of education. He argues that he does this from the standpoint of someone who had a working commitment to pastoral care and personal-social education, but for whom such commitments now make up a very small part of his professional life. The context referred to is the UK, and England in the main, although the processes discussed are also evident in other countries. His purpose is not merely to catalogue these processes, but to consider how they have had their effects and how such effects may be worked against in current times for the good of pupils' and teachers' personal-social development.