You’ve got a boy in your class who’s causing more than a few problems. He bullies the quiet, thoughtful children and has troubling views about girls. He openly mocks disabled people and barks insults at classmates who began their lives in other countries. He never admits he’s wrong and shouts down those with the temerity to challenge him. He makes up malign rumours that, through the force of his personality, have polluted the school.

Yet he seems to have a compelling charm and an endless supply of alluring snake oil: it’s lost on you, but it exerts a powerful influence over many of his peers and is bringing out their worst tendencies. Frankly, his personality ticks all the boxes for sociopathy, and you fear what damage he will wreak once he ventures into the wider world.

That boy is now leader of the “free world”. A country that was once a beacon of liberalism, which provided a radical escape from the rigid old hierarchies of 18th-century Europe and - whether you bought into this view or not - has long styled itself as the protector of Western democracy, is turning in on itself.

‘Terrified’ children

Children are worried. A few months ago we reported on research suggesting that immigrant pupils in the US were “terrified” at the prospect of a Trump win (“My students think Trump will put them into slavery”, 22 July). After last week’s result, a video from a Michigan high school swept the internet, apparently showing pupils taunting Hispanic classmates by chanting, “Build that wall!” This echoed the president-elect’s promise to erect a physical barrier along the 1,989-mile border with Mexico.

Pupils see a reality TV star with his finger on the nuclear button - it just doesn’t compute

Now, teachers in Scotland are telling us that Trump, once a joke figure among their pupils, is a source of deep alarm. They see a reality TV star with his finger on the nuclear button; they see a bigot whose invective clashes with their own values. If they’re not scared, teachers tell us, they’re simply incredulous - it just doesn’t compute.

There are two ways of reacting to this. One is to throw your hands up in the air and wail at the hopelessness of it all. An old colleague of mine took issue with just that type of response, writing on Facebook last week that, the day Trump was elected, her daughter arrived at school to be greeted by six-year-olds proclaiming that war was imminent and their parents were leaving the country.

‘Get a grip!’

“Can those of you who are scaring your kids by telling them a new and huge war is about to start please get a bloody grip!” she wrote, before signing off with this: “Let’s not start breeding fear and distrust among our children. That’s what got us into the mess we’re in!”

Here’s where schools should come in. As the University of Stirling’s Professor Mark Priestley said hours after the election result, there’s “never been a better time or more important time for education”. Thankfully, plenty of teachers are already rising to the challenge, using the Trump story to fuel learning rather than indiscriminate outrage.

Trump’s election was swiftly followed by the death of Leonard Cohen. Cohen’s most-covered song, Hallelujah, contains in its final verse - google his version, as others end differently - the humility, curiosity, honesty and grace that Trump’s campaign entirely lacked; a message that, from adversity, comes a crescendo of hope, not hate.

So let’s all take a breath, calm down and tell children that Cohen provides a truer and more enduring reflection of what we’re all about than Trump ever will.

@Henry_Hepburn