Throughout the rest of the class, she periodically called out, “knee check”. . .

The silken reins of polite society are still guiding women into submission, starting at young ages.

Granted, anyone who has ever sat near an ill-behaved child at a restaurant knows good table manners can make the difference between dining in peace or picking mashed potatoes out of one’s eye.

But the process isn’t always easy. Some little spirits seem instinctively resistant to the Emily Post view of the world.

Take 10-year-old Dori of Thousand Oaks, for instance. She and 11 other children--eight girls and four boys aged from 5 to 11--were recently corralled by their parents into attending a class at Moorpark College for preteens called “White Gloves and Party Etiquette.”

The teacher, a Miss Stacy Thompson of Ventura, had her work cut out for her, whipping this unruly, upper-middle-class group into shape for future cocktail chitchat about the difficulties of closing escrow and finding child care.

Her greatest immediate challenge was getting Dori, a skinny kid with waist-length brown hair, pink glasses, silver braces and floppy feet like puppy paws, to act like a young lady. An afternoon with Dori (pre-etiquette class) would be enough to convince even biological determinists that girls are born equally as assertive as boys.

“Is this class going to be fun or boring?” Dori asked before it even convened. “Are we going to learn to walk good? Because I have bad posture and my mom keeps bugging me, and I really want a snake. I’m allergic to fur, so all I have is two lizards because I like insects and bugs, but if I come here after school, I get a snake.”

So much for sugar and spice.

Even after Dori warned at the beginning of the class that “I like to talk a lot, and I forget to raise my hand sometimes,” Thompson, 23, remained undaunted.

God made little girls to be different from little boys, said Thompson, a graduate of Les-Man-I-Kinetes modeling school and a student of broadcasting at a fundamentalist Christian college in Newhall. Learning manners helps children respect authority as well, she believes.

Her own waist-length blonde hair cinched back into a neat schoolgirl plait and her stockinged feet tucked demurely to one side, Thompson tried to be a pal-type authority. There are only two rules in class, she said at the beginning of the 1 1/2-hour session. Everyone is to smile--the children grimaced in mock amusement--and to work together during the four class periods.

“I want to get to know you guys a little bit, am I right?” Thompson said.

“Wrong,” the class screamed gleefully in perfect unison.

Unruffled, Thompson interviewed the children about their preferences in pets and foods--rats, kittens, ice cream and pizza headed the list--and then got down to some serious social engineering.

“The proper way for girls to sit even when wearing pants is to keep your knees together, whatever you do,” Thompson said.

But crossing your legs is out, she said. Instead, girls should demurely tuck their legs to one side, and they may cross their ankles.

Boys, on the other hand, must not sprawl but otherwise are free to sit as they please, with the ideal being to keep their legs about 6 inches apart, Thompson said.

Dori wasn’t buying it.

“Girls do not have to sit that way,” she told the teacher, cautiously adding, “What if you’re a tomboy? I am sort of one.”

“It’s much prettier that way,” Thompson said, deflecting the challenge.

Throughout the rest of the class, she periodically called out, “knee check,” and 16 girlish knees came together with a guilty snap, including Dori’s.

Thompson had a little more trouble controlling the lessons on walking and sitting. “Dori, remember the snake,” Thompson called out at one point--reminding her of her mother’s promised reward--when Dori refused to abide by the admonishment against “plopping” into one’s seat and began positioning herself for a long drop into the chair.

“Don’t even think about it,” Thompson warned, jerking in the silken reins.

“I can think about whatever I want,” Dori said, in a snide and ultimately futile attempt to maintain her independence from a member of the gender police. The next time Dori sat down, she did it so well that Miss Manners herself would have writhed in pleasure, if that were permitted ladies.

Thompson then herded the children to the far corner of the classroom, which unfortunately contained a piano whose keys beckoned little fingers. One at a time, the children practiced walking across the room properly, backs straight, hands out of their pockets.

One 10-year-old boy with a brown crew cut was so good at it that Dori predicted--out loud, of course--that “his future is in the Army.” Taking up the thread of conversation, a Munchkin of a boy with wire-rim glasses and a serious air wondered if “our whole country might be destroyed one day” by an army.

“We’d have to find another place to live,” Dori said.

“Let’s destroy them before they destroy us,” said the little Napoleon.

As the two budding enthusiasts of the preemptive strike planned their strategy, Drew--a chunky young version of Sylvester Stallone who had already told Dori she had buck teeth--began kicking at her. One kick landed squarely, if lightly, on Dori’s derriere.

So what did this Gloria Steinem in denims and a T-shirt do?

She behaved like a perfect young lady, just as she had learned, and cried helplessly.