Is unhappiness a key to academic success? No credible learning or management theory suggests that fearful, unhappy or insecure people are more productive. Common sense and countless studies demonstrate that love is a better master than duty. For example, one popular yet wrong view of education suggests that school is a child's "job." This reduces learners to forced unpaid workers, as they do piecework in the name of higher standards, competitiveness and accountability. No learning theory suggests that fearful or insecure people are more productive, writes Gary Stager in the new issue of District Administration. Paradoxically, the same adults who destroyed the timeless liberal arts tradition in schools sacrificed many of those "standards" at the altar of accountability and unhappiness. If schools are failing, each school employee who advances such nonsense weakens support for public education and advances the pernicious curriculum of misery and helplessness.