Sir Michael Wilshaw is right: bring the strictest and scariest teachers back into the education system

I think any right- thinking parent would be up for that. Well maybe not that per se, but not the mealy- mouthed right-on alternative either. My personal bugbear is the invidious “just-call-me-Chrissie” classroom cosiness of primary teachers allowing five year olds to address them by their first names. Why? I mean, why?

Cast your mind back to the first time your toddler called you by your Christian name and remember the jolt of surprise it gave you. It was weird. Oddly patronising. Entirely transgressive.

Informality in the classroom leads to bad behaviour.  Photo: Alamy

You knew and your mischievous, twinkle-eyed child certainly knew that here was a outrageously daring attempt at pushing the boundaries. Did you let them get away with it? Of course you didn’t, not for many, many years. If ever. On that basis, establishing informality in the classroom isn’t just grating, but entirely wrong-headed verging on madness. That way lies sloppiness leading to stroppiness.

At the risk of coming over all Mr Gradgrind, children need to learn the facts of life, and the entry-level fact is that teachers might be friendly, but they are absolutely not your friends.

Furthermore; infants and adults may be equal under the Human Rights Act but not in the study of French declensions, the periodic table or even the Geneva Convention.

In this forum the grown-up is in charge and as such must be afforded respect as a matter of principle regardless of whether they really merit it on an individual basis.

Do we need to instil more fear into our students?

Or to put it bluntly; even a teacher with scurf on his shoulders, halitosis or an irritating facial tic must be obeyed. This may not be fair but here we have invaluable lesson number two: life isn’t. Ask any beleaguered state school teacher and they will tell you that it’s not multilingual school rolls but poor behaviour and unruliness that are the real impediments to progress.

The children of immigrants are desperate to learn. It’s the home-grown ingrates who don’t give a monkeys. And what is the key element missing?

I’m talking about fear. Yes, fear.

It’s uncomfortable and yes, a touch totalitarian to say out loud, but fear is the predecessor of respect.

Not blank-eyed terror at a midnight knock on the door, but social anxiety about repercussions (don’t mess with airport security or they will yank your bags off the plane) or a loss of face (people will laugh at you if you fail to conform). Worse, your parents might find out.

As parents get more empathetic, stricter teachers are needed at schools.  Photo: Alamy

My generation lived in fear of our parents. It was a different time, and a different dynamic, characterised by consensus rather than individualism.

But these days even using the word “fear” requires explanation and deconstruction because fear sounds like a bad thing, a sad thing and thus the very last thing we want our children to feel.

And yet. And yet wouldn’t we prefer it if they didn’t talk back, or grunt with simian contempt, slam doors and disregard our perfectly reasonable and well-meaning requests to maybe switch off their screens and do their homework?

Yes we would. And as we become more lax, touchy-feely and empathetic as parents, we need classroom dragons and Demon Headmasters more urgently than ever.

Ironically, Sir Michael’s call for greater rigour at school comes as one pushy mother has urged parents to “start working on their child’s CV from birth”.

Tragic. Lunatic. Tragic again. Not least because it sounds both effortful and joyless. It might come naturally to some, but to most of us it seems both psychotic and despotic.

For every tiger mother lashing her tail and devouring the national curriculum up a tree, there are scores of gazelle mothers anxiously hoping their offspring will muddle through due to a combination of luck, happenstance and herd immunity.

Self determination is a powerful quality to instil in any young adult, but of equal and opposite value is the ability to conform and knuckle down. If only our kids would listen.

So let’s take up Sir Michael’s rallying cry and outsource the fear! Give us the sort of unbending pedagogues we remember from our cowed youth; termagants and harridans that no cocky student dare defy.

That way, our own children, scared witless, will diligently do their coursework unbidden and we can go back to being parents, murmuring encouragement and fetching them hot chocolate. Who knows, even the tiger mothers might be persuaded to retract their claws.