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David Cameron has opened a debate about respect in the classrooms with his question; "should pupils stand up when the teacher arrives?".

The initial reaction of most of the younger generation is a mixture of distain and incredulity. Why would you, etc., etc. Of course, many older people will remember their grammar schools where such behavior was both required and automatic.  They could not imagine being in a room and not standing up when the tutor or really anyone at all entered.

The change from automatic to aversion seems to have happened over a period of less than 20 years, perhaps from 1970 to 1990, which is a short time for such a fundamental change in social mores.

Perhaps we should pause here and wonder whether it is the behaviour of teachers as much as society in general that has the diluted the respect once owed to the profession.  Certainly, up until the late 1960s, teachers in ordinary Grammar schools wore gowns for lessons. At the morning assembly, they would have worn their mortar boards. Respect was a natural consequence of the environment.

These days, teachers seem to turn up for lessons dressed in very casual clothes and focus on being part of the crowd, good buddies with the pupils, who have in turn been elevated to the role of students.

Cameron was probably wrong to raise the matter in the manner that he did, particularly with the creditability problem that attaches to his somewhat elitist education.  However, that should not deflect us from the view that respect is necessary for both nuts and bolts classroom discipline and proper transfer of knowledge.