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February
2006
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Manners, intelligence make
winning combination |
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James
Pankratz
Special to Parenting |
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Buried in the stacks of the library was a time capsule — a book of teachings and customs of a bygone era. The author was instructing the youth of the age on the rules for social behavior in a variety of contexts — restaurants, theaters, sports events, and work. She dispensed advice on how to dress, talk, and behave in the company of peers and adults. Here is a sampling of her ideas:
1. When dining out, refrain from “diving in” the relish tray as if you were “on the verge of starvation.”
2. Tip the headwaiter $1 or $2 for arranging a table in a crowded restaurant.
3. When going to a play, the young man “must wear a jacket and tie” and the young woman “anything from an afternoon dress to a dinner dress.” The young woman “would be smart to carry some … fresh gloves in her purse to perk up her daytime clothes.”
4. “Remember that Dad pays for the phone, and that gives him and your mother priority.” The length of a phone call should be worked out with one’s parents, but “10 minutes should be an absolute maximum.”
5. “At a dinner party, a boy should hold the chair for the girl on his right; at home whoever sits on your mother’s left should seat her.”
You get the idea. Hilarious. Quaint. Material for a skit or satire. Can you imagine any parent or teacher in his or her right mind saying this stuff to a group of high school students today?
Yet in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll, 70 percent of respondents said people are ruder today than they were 20 or 30 years ago.
That poll prompted my research. The ancient tome I unearthed was written in 1967. It is “The Emily Post Book of Etiquette for Young People” by Elizabeth Post. The fact it is obsolete can be verified by the date due sheet at the back of the book, which records it was taken out only seven times in the past 12 years.
The end of the 1960s was an interesting time. The same day I looked over this book, I watched a documentary about events that took place around the same time the book was written. It detailed the ambush of a U.S. battalion during the Vietnam War, and an anti-war protest of college students in response to the senseless carnage of that tragic conflict.
The students called a strike, boycotted classes, and staged a non-violent sit-in. News footage from the time showed what happened next. Students chanted, and police let go with their night sticks. An eyewitness recalled “the sound of sticks striking watermelons” coming closer. Students with bleeding skulls were rushed to the hospital.
Obviously, it would be impossible to make the case that the youth of 39 years ago were dutifully observing Emily Post’s rules of etiquette. I was a student during that era, and I can attest that etiquette was not a high priority. To believe so would be giving into the comforting, but illusory, fallacy of the “good old days” approach to historical research.
Yet it feels like something was lost … as well as gained … during the social upheaval of the ,60s. We gained the idea it is good to question authority, because blindly accepting authority for authority’s sake inevitably allows those who wield it to use it for their own ambition and personal gain. That is as true now as it was then.
We began to lose the idea that parents have a duty to socialize their children, to teach them how to accommodate to and cooperate with others for the mutual benefit of all. In the Associated Press-Ipsos poll, 93 percent of respondents felt parents were falling down on the job of teaching proper social conduct to their children.
If parents aren’t teaching manners, where are children learning how to treat others? Turn on your TV to find out.
I returned to the library to join a long line waiting for the bi-annual book sale to begin. When the doors opened, adults stampeded into a large room, and jostled to get close to the tables where stacks of de-accessioned books, CDs, and tapes were piled. A man was grabbing every book with a new cover into his arms, and another was carrying a teetering pile of audio books he had grabbed within the first five minutes.
Amid this consumer feeding frenzy, I saw a girl — aged 10 or so — who wanted a chance to get past the bulky adults to get to the next table. She looked up at the man blocking her way and cheerfully said “Please excuse me, sir.”
Was that your daughter? She didn’t sound quaint or old-fashioned to me. And her presence at a library book sale suggests she might be being raised to think for herself as well. Manners and intelligence make a winning combination.
(Pankratz is a marriage and family therapist at Catholic Charities Milwaukee regional office.) |
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