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How can I rewrite the following sentence using an impersonal construction?
Young people are expected to be polite to the elderly.
I think it may be one of the following:
"It is expected that young people are polite / would be polite / were polite / be polite ..."
Which one should it be, and why?
This depends on meaning, on dialect, and potentially on speaking style. Your original sentence:
Young people are expected to be polite to the elderly.
is ambiguous, since expect has two potentially relevant senses: "to think that something will probably or certainly happen" and "to consider (something) to be reasonable, required, or necessary" [link]. So the sentence can mean (roughly) either of these:
Young people are believed to be polite to the elderly. (It's surprising when they're not.)
Young people are required to be polite to the elderly. (It's immoral when they're not.)
I'm betting that the "required" sense is intended — with no context, it's the most natural reading — but it's impossible to say for certain.
For the "believed" sense, we use the indicative mood; either the present tense (are polite) or the future tense (will be polite) is fine. The difference between the two is very slight.
For the "required" sense, in the U.S. we traditionally use the subjunctive mood (be polite), but I believe that in the U.K. they insert a modal verb (should be polite), and even in the U.S. it's fairly common to substitute the indicative (are polite or will be polite), though I would recommend against that in formal writing.
Another point of variation is that the subject of the that-clause can also appear as an argument of expect, using the preposition of. As a result, each of the following is possible:
It is expected that young people are polite to the elderly.
It is expected that young people will be polite to the elderly.
It is expected that young people be polite to the elderly.
It is expected that young people should be polite to the elderly.
It is expected of young people that they are polite to the elderly.
It is expected of young people that they will be polite to the elderly.
It is expected of young people that they be polite to the elderly.
It is expected of young people that they should be polite to the elderly.
with some of these potentially differing in meaning, and others differing only in dialect and/or style.
Personally, I'd go with "It is expected that young people be polite to the elderly" — it has the most likely intended meaning, it's suitable in formal American writing, and it's one of the options you list — but Friendly Greasemonkey got heavily downvoted for making that same suggestion, so . . .
The correct answer is:
It is expected that young people be polite to the elderly.
The impersonal form (for verbs) can be used to express operation of nature, mental distress, and acts with no reference to the do-er. In this example, it is not just the elderly who are doing the expecting, so the impersonal form is more apropos.
Edit: I misunderstood the "why" element to the question. Seems harsh to downvote me on that. Anyway, the choice of be polite is the matching tense to the original form and corresponds to the implied expectation of future behaviour of the young people towards the elderly. The expectation doesn't carry the need for "should" or "would" in the sentence.
