Heads are bowed, textbooks are open and six tidy rows of 13-year-olds obediently take instruction.
In agreeing to the referendum he has bowed to international pressure and, perhaps, the views of senior army commanders.
The answers poured forth: the party had broken its promises (by raising value-added tax); it had bowed to free-market ideology by reforming pensions and labour markets; and its leaders had been aloof, unresponsive and had bickered among themselves.
Increasingly, companies have bowed to market sentiment, defined a "core" business and sold the rest.
The Democrats accuse their opponents of leaking the videos in the hope of forcing the court to dissolve the party, since to do otherwise would be to imply that it had bowed to political pressure.
But the Senate, half of whose members are elected and half of whom are appointed, has not bowed to the pressure.
Quite what Bolt did or didn't say during a snatched conversation with a reporter may remain a matter of dispute, but if the Jamaican had thought the games "a bit shit" at one point, by the time he bowed out on Saturday night he was praising the "crazy energy" Glasgow had to offer, with the Scottish weather the only lingering disappointment.
Higgins made his own gesture when he bowed his head at the memorial brass in Westminster Abbey to Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the Queen's second cousin, who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979.
One nation candidate Stephanie Banister bowed out early and spectacularly, after she told channel 7 that she didn't oppose Islam "as a country".
Many countries bowed to intense Saudi pressure not to broadcast the film.
Smiling wearily and with heads bowed, the women were ushered into the airport hall before being taken to hospital for checks.
