I whole-heartedly agree. The thing about ORM is exactly that it is so easy to get a false sense of security of "everything working" while you're clearly doing sub-optimal things all the time. It's just a fact in order to do proper, extensive SQL operations you have to know SQL and to learn it you should write a lot of SQL. ORM gets you up and up running quickly, but in the end I think it's better learning it the hard way first and _then_ being smart enough, hopefully, to know when it's better to use ORM than doing everything by hand.
I understand both points of view, with ORM saving my brain from writing massive JOINs on multiple tables yet at times forcing me to dissect a ORM query because it's doing something stupid. But if I didn't use ORM I would have probably not even made those stupidly complicated tables that I have to debug in the first place. Maybe even worse, is that instead of learning SQL I had spent all my time learning the ORM's API.
It's a balancing act, with good points on each side. I like writing my own SQL, I think it makes me think harder what I'm doing. Sure then I'll be probably writing my own helpers that might resemble a half-assed ORM but as long as it is kept simple, outside of the hands of those who wish to over-abstract everything with their fancy design patterns, it should be highly efficient and easy to understand. And the best of all, my understanding of SQL will be a lot more useful than knowing some language-specific ORM.