Ever since the 1980s, school inspectors were telling teachers that "a quiet classroom is a bad classroom" and that they mustn't stand in front of a class because that gave the impression that they were figures of authority when they were, in fact, no more important in the classroom than any of the pupils.

I have been ploughing a lonely furrow, trying to stop our classrooms becoming places where teachers were forced to give up being role models to children in terms of dress, speech and morals and start to speak, act, dress like the worst of their pupils.

Accepting the dubious doctrine that children should be "confirmed in their culture," however low it may be, teachers have given up trying to raise those at the bottom of the heap, with the result that we now have a society based on anti-social behaviour, vile language, drunkenness and sexual excess.

If that was the culture they were born into, so the doctrine went, it was job of the school to confirm them in that culture and not to try to alter it. It was all part of society's rich diversity.

Those of us who clung pathetically to the belief that, at last, after 30 years of this nonsense, Government " initiatives" would help civilise children by giving them literacy and numeracy skills in primary school and the knowledge of great literature in secondary school, helping to raise their English expression beyond the level of the gutter, are now having to wake up to reality.

Take a look, if you will, at a series of study guides for GCSE and 14+ SATS, published by Co-ordination Group Publications: expensive, glossy, full-coloured comic books, that advertise their rock-bottom quality on the first page, which proclaims: "It's another ace book from CGP" and claims "we stick in all the really important stuff and have a stab at making it funny".

Then, things get worse. We have the comments on the characters in Romeo and Juliet as follows: "Romeo is a bit of a drip"; Juliet is "one tough cookie"; Mercutio is "a bit of a star and Romeo's best mate"; Montague is "a nice guy"; Lady Montague is a "real sweetie"; the nurse is a "gas bag" and at some point Romeo is "in a bit of a mess".

The balcony scene is described thus: "It's the slushy balcony scene. Yuck!" and we are treated to a coloured cartoon of two young people, with the boy saying, "eh up, pet, you look right nice" to which Juliet replies "You're not so bad yourself chuck."

Take a look at their guide to Macbeth and learn that Lady Macbeth is "a two-faced cow" who later on "loses her marbles," while Malcolm and Donalbain "scarper" after their father's murder.

Look at the expensive, full-colour French GCSE textbook which tells you that a point of grammar is "dead easy" and introduces another point with "they call 'em..."

Can you imagine the public schools or the grammar schools offering this dross to their students or accepting spoken or written English of this execrable quality? No, this is only for the plebs, to whom school must be made to seem a real laugh, not serious at all, while implying that such language is acceptable to all.

If publishers think it worth their while to publish such rubbish, along with an English book entitled The Tricky Bits then someone must buy them.

As far as I'm concerned, who taught English for 40 years, and would never have allowed any of this, it makes me weep.