“My generation of kids would have respected a grandma on the bus. They would have been paddled otherwise, and most came from homes where honoring the elderly was done routinely anyhow. Not an option today.”
I am not necessarily in disagreement with you, but I do have children and grandchildren in our public school and almost all the kids in the school are well mannered and the teachers and staff are competent.
And in your tiny slice of pubskewled Ewe Essay you doubtless have parents that care. Not super-liberal ornamental-kids parents, or absentee mothers and deadbeat fathers all over the place.
Not smart to generalize from that. I firmly and confidently say the woman got assigned an impossible task due to the local constraints and conditions. It has every appearance thereof. Sanely raised children would, if anything, respect elders MORE, not LESS.