I don't thinnk that its as case of Us v Them and nor should it ever be but I thoroughly concur with Dreamland.
In the UK, its occassionally patently obvious that, when dealing with area control, there are a small number of ATCOs who wouldn't know the arse end of an aeroplane from the front end of a bus.
The personnel concerned are nearly always people who have just come out of the college and assume that because they give a specific clearance the aircraft will always be able to comply with it.
We are fortunate that at our unit we have a good enough relationship with all the operators to allow new ATCOs fam flights to give them more than a working knowledge of what goes on "on the other side". Equally we also have a regular programme which allows pilots of all levels to come and spend time with us.
There are advantages for a trainee ATCO gaining hours towards a PPL, but I strongly believe that this time would be better resourced and better perspective gained if it were initially in the back of a PA28 during someone else's PPL training moving on to the flight deck of an airliner going long haul.