An Anaheim, Calif., school board member has proposed to bring proper manners back to school. She’d like students to stand when adults enter a room and to address teachers as "sir" or "ma’am." The board is debating testing the standards at one school or applying them to all students entering seventh-grade.

The rationale for Katherine Smith’s proposal makes perfect sense. An environment of civility and order undoubtedly would remove many of the distractions that make learning more difficult for some students. If tougher standards can help make good behavior a habit, teachers will be able to spend more of their valuable time and energy teaching. Eventually, Smith hopes, the atmosphere of respect will spill over into the students’ homes and the surrounding community.

Any proposal for change draws objections, and this one was no exception. Some detractors say it’s disruptive, old-fashioned and restricts free speech. Some of the reactions have been amusing, if depressing. Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the proposal appears legal but isn’t a good idea. "It doesn’t sound like freedom and individuality," she said. (Presumably students could still say what they thought; they’d just have to say it politely.)

Others point out it’s essentially unenforceable and might actually require teachers to spend more time on discipline rather than less. Requiring a more formal relationship between students and teachers may run counter to educators’ attempts to portray themselves as "being on a student’s side." Some teachers have said that the current situation is not one of fear and loathing, and they resent the implication that they’re not able to maintain order in their classrooms. Inadvertently proving that point, one senior commented that some students were too casual, going as far as calling teachers "dude."

If that’s the worst discipline problem, then Smith needs to turn her attention to other matters. No one imagines that it is, however. Any parent who listens to the stories his or her children tell about their days at school knows that some students go far beyond goofy adolescent informality.

Perhaps the best argument "against" Smith’s proposal is that seventh grade is awfully late in the game to be teaching students basic manners. Students should learn etiquette at home, of course. If they’ve observed, from the day they were born, their parents modeling respectful interactions with both adults and children, this simply should not be an issue. It’s easy to question how effective such requirements would be for students who were not held to the same standards at home.

School-age children learn interpersonal skills from three sources — family, school, and popular culture — and the relative importance of each depends very much on their parents’ involvement in their lives. We’d all like to believe that the proper order of influence is parents and then school, with very small doses of other elements thrown in. There’s no question that children spend many of their waking hours in school; whether they spend more of their free time with responsible, well-mannered adults or watching prime-time television makes a great deal of difference, however.

Most parents want their children to grow accustomed to behaving as they’ll eventually have to in the adult world. We don’t routinely call other adults "sir" or "ma’am," but we do benefit when we treat them with respect. It makes sense that students who use good manners when interacting with teachers should reap rewards; the challenge may be in identifying rewards that offer sufficient motivation. Good marks are not likely to be enough for those causing the problems, and surely grades should be reserved for assessing mastery of an academic subject.

Students who believe education is a privilege and a necessity for later success in the world of work, as well as those whose parents have threatened dire consequences if they don’t behave themselves in school, are likely to adapt to reasonable new behavior standards fairly well. For those who don’t fit into those categories, the challenge remains the same as it’s always been. How can we make those students perceive cooperation as beneficial to themselves as well as educators?