The head teachers shifted uneasily in their seats. They were all used to laying down the law to their pupils - but now they were the ones being taken to task. In her president's address to the Girls' Schools Association yesterday, BenendenAn independent school in Kent whose former pupils include Princess Anne.'s headmistress Samantha Price did not mince her wordsDid not put things vaguely in order to spare people's feelings.. Nobody, she insisted, should be dismissive of young activists.

"The fact is that times have changed, and we simply need to keep up with them," she said. "Being 'woke' actually just means being awake to social justice... It ultimately comes down to something very simple: being kind."

It would be unforgivable, she added, for the older generation to close its mind to new ideas.  If young people really have woken up to the problems of the world, "We have much to be proud of and hopeful for in this next generation, and it is our duty to listen and nurture this." Adults should teach children to campaign, not try to deter them.

An education professor at the University of Virginia, Nancy Deutsch, agrees: "It's really a core part of humans that we need to feel that we have a sense of purpose, that we're here to do something."

She believes that activism - and debating controversial issues with others - helps young people develop vital skills for later life: "You need to figure out what the issue is, and how to speak it in a way that brings other people along... all change involves differences, conflict, and compromise."

But the former US president Barack Obama, who admits to disagreements with his daughter MaliaShe has just graduated from Harvard University and is reported to be pursuing a career as a TV scriptwriter., believes that wokeness can be an unproductive form of self-righteousness:

"There is this sense sometimes of 'The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people,'" he told youth leaders in a panel discussion.  "That's not activism; that's not bringing about change. If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far. That's easy to do."

There have always been disagreements between children and their parents. Ivan TurgenevOne of Russia's greatest writers, his other works include the novel Smoke and the play A Month in the Country.'s great 1880 novel Fathers and Sons focuses on a young man who returns from university with radical views which upset his father.

It has been argued, however, that the divide became far more pronounced during the 20^th Century. Before that, most young people did not move far from their parents and often joined the same trade or profession.

But with the arrival of cinema and television, they became open to influences from outside their own families and cultures. The term generation gap was coined in the 1960s to describe the differences this created.

Many of today's grandparents shocked their parents by growing their hair long and marching against nuclear weaponsA bomb or other weapon that uses nuclear energy to cause a big explosion. or the Vietnam WarA conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1955 to 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and a major conflict of the Cold War.. And many of today's parents shocked them in turn by rioting against Margaret Thatcher's poll taxIn 1990 the Conservative government replaced a council tax based on the value of people's houses with a flat-rate "community charge". This proved so unpopular that its abolition was announced a year later..

Some say, yes: the world has changed hugely since they were young, and they need to admit to that fact. Climate change has emerged as the key issue of our time. Forms of racism that went unrecognised are now in the spotlight. Women's and minorities' rights are much more widely acknowledged.

Others argue that "keeping up" means following fashion - but any values that really matter are more than fads. Progress can be made without cancelling speakers or embracing dubious theories about identity. Adults are right to insist that since life comes without trigger warnings, children need to be robust.