"Don't Stand So Close to Me" is a hit single by the British rock band The Police, released in September 1980 as the lead single from their third album Zenyatta Mondatta. It concerns a schoolgirl's crush on her teacher which leads to an affair, which in turn is discovered. The Police won the 1982 Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for this song.

The music and lyrics of the song were written by the lead singer of The Police, Sting. The song deals with the mixed feelings of lust, fear and guilt that a female student has for a school teacher and vice versa, and inappropriateness leading to confrontation which is unravelled later on in the song. The line "Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov" alludes to Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, which covers somewhat similar issues. After being criticised for rhyming "cough" with "Nabokov," Sting replied, "I've used that terrible, terrible rhyme technique a few times. Technically, it's called a feminine rhyme – where it's so appalling it's almost humorous. You don't normally get those type of rhymes in pop music and I'm glad!"

Before joining The Police, Sting had previously worked as an English teacher. Sting said of the song in 1981:

I wanted to write a song about sexuality in the classroom. I'd done teaching practice at secondary schools and been through the business of having 15-year-old girls fancying me – and me really fancying them! How I kept my hands off them I don't know... Then there was my love for Lolita which I think is a brilliant novel. But I was looking for the key for eighteen months and suddenly there it was. That opened the gates and out it came: the teacher, the open page, the virgin, the rape in the car, getting the sack, Nabokov, all that.

In 1993, however, he said of the song's inspiration, "You have to remember we were blond bombshells at the time and most of our fans were young girls so I started role playing a bit. Let's exploit that." in a 2001 interview for the concert DVD ...All This Time, Sting denied that the song is autobiographical.

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