India, Oct. 30 -- Teachers have held a position of unquestionable respect for generations. Their presence represented moral and intellectual authority, their decisions demanded faith, and their words carried weight. But in today's educational discourse, an awkward topic predominates: Why are kids treating instructors with such disrespect? We might be asking the wrong question. Rather than focusing only on kids, we need to face a more unsettling truth: Have we systematically undermined the very profession whose authority we now want youngsters to recognise?

Social media, smartphones and evolving parenting practices did not start the decline of teacher authority. It started when the connection of trust in education increasingly gave way to...