Manners, part 2

A friend and I were chatting at work today, waiting for our last faculty get-together of the calendar year, and he mentioned that his wife worked at an international school in town. What a cool idea. Kids from all over, who are ELL, are at this one school. He said the P.E. teacher has about 50 kids per class (ach!), but then said that the teacher stated he'd take 50 more just like them because they are all so well-mannered and respectful and for the most part, do what they're told. ... You sort of don't want them to get "americanized" in a bad way.

How sad is it that I knew just what he was talking about. The students in my class that have been here for only a short while are so polite and sweet and hard working. I also have American students that are that way, but for the most part, the majority have nothing on their "foreign" counterparts in terms of manners. What happened? What part of our culture (or parts) are the cause of this? And more importantly, how can we (who?) effectively reverse this trend.