The elephant on the Green Line trains is the behavior of many of the young people who ride the trains: appalling profanity, an utter disregard for the tidiness of the carriages, the blatant freeloading. To the last, it has not even been a year of operating yet and there is a passenger constituency so accustomed to not paying that a train ride might as well be another in a long list of entitlements.

Our elected worthies seem disinclined to point this out.

In the meantime, our governor, Mark Dayton, when he is not championing the return of the umlauts to the road signs in LindstrÃƒÂ¶m, is ridiculously unsatisfied with various education bills that don’t propose to spend at least $695 million, or more than one third of the state’s surplus. House Republicans have proposed a $156 million increase in education spending over the two-year budget for 2016-17. Senate DFLers want $361 million in new spending.

Dayton scoffs. He is greedily eyeing that anticipated $2 billion surplus and wishes to pass it out to the bottomless pit of public education, there being no evidence that money spent equals academic achievement or closes the achievement gap. Well, there are those superintendents who must be kept in high clover.

So long as all this new money — it’s new money every biennium — results in the kids having to become embraced in the wombs of inclusiveness and self-esteem and multiculturalism and diversity, which are unmeasurable affectations, I have a proposal.

How about classes in public etiquette? I realize that yet another class in a non-academic discipline is problematic, but math and English and history seem to be trains that have left the station.

I’d much prefer to see money spent on disabusing the children of public indecency than to pay for three more acolytes to walk around with the Kleenex box for the Super, who might have a cold.

Goodness, we spend $16 billion every two-year budget on K-12 education, or about 40 percent of the general fund, and we are told that is not enough. Well, then it will never be enough, but you already know that in your heart of hearts.

Roughly 40 percent of our tax dollars are spent on education. I know that I am impossibly nave and quaintly antiquated, but for that kind of money I sure would like to run into a polite or grateful kid once in a while. I don’t want to cringe at the horrific language I hear, particularly by young girls, on the admittedly rare occasion when I ride the train. I don’t want the teens to be eating and drinking on the train because that is against the rules. I don’t want the young people to put their slushy shoes on the seats. I don’t want to see the fare dodgers hop on and off the trains if they see a transit cop, which isn’t often enough.

For $16 billion every two years, I want classes in etiquette. I want eye contact. I want a hello. I want “yes, sir” and “no, ma’am.” I want the kids to understand that they have an obligation to fulfill the unwritten social contract of public engagement with their fellow citizens.

So long as the Legislature keeps sending more and more money into that bottomless pit and apparently so long as the bottomless pit has less and less to show for it, which is why they keep calling for more, try classes in good, old politeness. Can’t hurt. It’s universal. Nobody should be let off the hook. There is no excuse for rudeness, none at all.

If it got established, the hectoring of the young for polite public spiritedness, five will get you 10 that your achievement gap would draw even in about 10 minutes.

Because, kids, and you know who you are, if you keep up the current trend of such raw disdain for your fellow citizens, you are never going to go farther in life than that train will take you.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 1500ESPN.