What I find interesting is that Wittgenstein seemed to view his students not as "students" per se, but as foils for his ongoing inquisition into his own understanding of philology, ontology, and philosophy.
He wasn't teaching just for the sake of doing something good; he was using grade school students as test subjects (in a very benign way) for his own exploration of paradigms of human consciousness.
I find this to be an interesting twist -- one might expect that a prominent philosopher hanging up the gloves to teach grade schoolers constituted an instance of the old "rapid burnout disguised as a moral epiphany". But no -- in fact, Wittgenstein realized that he could only learn what he wanted to learn by teaching grade school, and set about doing that without fully explaining his thought process to the rest of the world, who probably would not have understood anyway.
Though I have found no evidence of its inspiration by Wittgenstein's experience, nonetheless one is reminded of the title character in Herman Hesse's "Magister Ludi", who
[Spoiler Alert]
abnegates his position as head of the world's leading (perhaps only) academy to seek a reification of philosophy (to "bring it into contact with the broader world"), in part through the tutoring of a childhood friend's young son.
I must at some point comb through the accounts of both attempts at this goal, to see if the resemblance is more than superficial.
He wasn't teaching just for the sake of doing something good; he was using grade school students as test subjects (in a very benign way) for his own exploration of paradigms of human consciousness. I find this to be an interesting twist -- one might expect that a prominent philosopher hanging up the gloves to teach grade schoolers constituted an instance of the old "rapid burnout disguised as a moral epiphany". But no -- in fact, Wittgenstein realized that he could only learn what he wanted to learn by teaching grade school, and set about doing that without fully explaining his thought process to the rest of the world, who probably would not have understood anyway.