The teacher is exhibiting their power to make the children tell a lie in public, a lie that everyone knows is a lie. The teacher is demonstrating that what is very important to the children is not at all important to the teacher, that the teacher can make the children perform this ritual, then shut up and return to their seats because the teacher tells them to.
... Is assering this kind of power ("authority" connotes people being willing to "listen" more than "obey", as far as I can tell) a terminal value in the teacher's mind?! Because this sounds amazingly pointless. I would think a teacher's desire is to mold the students' mind to their satisfaction, propagate their memes, etc. etc. not just... make them execute pointless gestures just to show who's boss.
Now, it is said we all here pride ourselves on our intelligence, rationality, and moral sense. It is also said, however, that we are a fiercely independent bunch, and that we can let this pride of ours get the better of us. There have also been comments that the live communities that appear at meetups provide much more positive interactions than what goes on on this site's discussions; this might merit further investigation.
My point is; we've done a lot of research on how to do proper ethical and metaethical calculations, and on how to achieve self-empowerment and deal with our own akrasia, which is awesome. We've also done some work on matters of gender equality, which is very positive as well. But I haven't seen us do anything about the basic details of human interaction, what one would call "politeness" and "basic human decency". And I think it might be useful if we started tackling these, for our own sakes, that of those who surround us, and that of easing our mission along, which is, as I understand it so far, to save the world (from existential risk (at the hands of (unfriendly and self-modifying) artificial intelligence))).
What inspired me to propose this post was a video I just saw from Hank Green of the famed and fabled vlogbrothers. I hold these two individuals in very high esteem, and I would expect many here to share my feelings about them, on account of their values and sensibilities largely overlapping with ours; namely the sense that intelligence, knowledge and curiosity are awesome, and that intellectuals ought to use their power to help improve themselves and the world around them.
Here it is; I hope you enjoy it