FROM TABLE MANNERS TO THE WHOLE CHILD: THE NEED FOR NEW APPROACHES TO COMMON COURTESY IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM

BY FATHER BENEDICT AUER, O.S.B.


As a child, I recall my grandmother trying to teach me table manners. She had been trained in a French Canadian run convent school in Illinois at the turn of the century. She taught me to hold my fork correctly, and that I had sit up straight at the table while I was eating. We, my brother and I, were not allowed to put our arms or elbows on the table. At times, I was very upset with her making me do what seemed totally unimportant to a child. Years later when I was in high school, I was invited to the South Shore Country Club in Chicago for a graduation party. I remember, long before wall-to-wall carpeting, walking into the corridor of the Club and feeling as if I was walking on a cloud as I walked across the room on the thick oriental rug. The party was in what was called the Bird Cage Room, a separate building with French doors that looked out on Lake Michigan. At first I felt completely out of place, and wasn't at all sure of what I should do. There seemed to be more silverware on the table than we had in our entire house. I remember thinking that my grandmother had said to start at the outside and move inward as needed. Eventually I survived the evening, and many more, until today I forget how important my early training was for my debut into society and subsequent life as a member of social events and activities my mind had never envisioned as a child.

Along with my grandmother's instructions, I also had received in school a weekly class that was entitled "Christian Courtesy." It was part of the Catholic School curriculum during the 1940's and 50's. It showed how to set a table, how to converse at formal dinners, how to use a napkin properly, and many other helpful hints for the socially unaware who wanted to become socially aware. We made fun of the program at the time, but in reality it somehow helped prepare us for the real world of professional functions and business.

So what does this have to do with education today. The other night I was at McDonald's for supper. Sitting next to me was a family consisting of a mother and father and two children. When they got up to leave the area where they had been looked like a disaster area - the floor was covered with garbage, the table was layered with ketsup, mustard, and french fries. The parents left the trays at the table and walked off with their two children totally covered with food. Immediately I thought to myself these two children have absolutely no manners or social skills to cope with eating out or even eating in. Where are they to get the needed social skills in order to survive in a complex and often demanding world? The parents do not seem to have the skills, and even if they do they do not use them. We have become more and more a society of people without common manners or any social skills to deal with common everyday problems such as eating out and common courtesy.

Who is responsible for the common everyday social skills that children should be acquiring in order to survive in the real world? The answer used to be simple - parents. But it is no longer so simple. Many parents do not have the parenting skills necessary to instruct their students in simple manners and social skills. The present generation of parents often find themselves just trying to survive much less act as instructors in many skills they themselves do not have. The simple skill of saying "please" and "thank you" is often lost in the struggle for survive.

Television has not helped the parent as anyone who watches Saturday morning cartoon time will verify. Youngsters are inundated with ill manners, screaming role-models, and impolite morons, not to insult real morons, who act disrespectfully to all adults. This complicates the average child's perception of how they should act and what they should do. The other day, I was observing a kindergarten class at a local public school and I was amazed at one child who was totally living a television existence. He came in singing rap lyrics, walking as if he was a television commercial for blue jeans, and constantly playing to his audience (his classmates). He was five. Yet already the pattern was set. He was living out his existence as he saw it modeled on television. His parents were probably helpless, or at least saw themselves as such, and who inherits this behavior or lack thereof - the teacher.

As a teacher of many years, and now as a professor of education, I find one of the basic tasks for the teacher is role modeling social skills. My new teachers find this the most difficult task because they themselves may not be devoid of such skills. This deificit of social skills is not just on the elementary level but all the way up and through the secondary school. The student who walks into a classroom today on any level is frequently devoid of common courtesy and needs to learn common manners if he or she is to survive in the "real" world of business and professionalism. Sad as this may seem, the task to instruct the student in these skills now falls to the teacher along with being just about everything else to the student from counselor to instructor, from confidant to organizer. The 1990's student is probably the most needy child with regard to social skills that has existed in this whole century.

So what skills are needed by the student that the classroom teacher can provide. First and foremost, the teacher will have to model common courtesy. I see more and more teachers having to teach and model the simple words "please," "thank you," "excuse me," and many more such words which just seem to be common countesy. As a child we were schooled at home that you always used these terms of courtesy. But common courtesy is no longer something to be taken for granted. If we watch television any evening of the week, we see sitcoms that blatantly make fun of manners or more exactly show students exactly what not to do yet in a positive light. I believe there still is a place for common courtesy. In a society that is increasingly self-centered and selfish, children are raised in one child-families where they do not have to share or even form relationships except with adults. Often mother and father, both or a single parent, are busy earning a livelihood and do not have the energy that real child rearing requires. So teachers have to consciously model the simple everyday courtesies. What I hear is teacher's constantly stressing the point "Now what do you say Johnny?" or "Melissa, do you know what to say?" I remember my grandmother and mother doing that while I was growing up, and finally how I had integrated these concept as my own as I grew older. I visited a Middle School recently where I was almost killed, a near exaggeration, when the bell rang to change classes. Students saw me in the hall, but ran into me, bumped me, and generally showed no respect for a guest. And sadly they did the same to each other. Mutual respect is gone. The student no longer respects other students, and even himself or herself. The teacher's task is cut out for the future - instruction through modeling. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Table manner are atrocious. I visited a high school near the college I teach at, and found the floor of the cafeteria so littered with food, paper, and trays that I could not walk through the aisles. It was awful. I mentioned it to the principal and was looked at like I was crazy. Eventually I was given the sarcastic answer, "We'll have to work on that!" And what I last heard, and this is four years later, it is still the same. Yet exterior discipline is needed to create interior discipline.

At many elementary and middle schools, lunch is now served and brought back to classroom. I have talked to teacher after teacher who has a half hour of chaos and anarchy in their classrooms. Some have come up with some interesting solutions. For instance, one went to a local linen store and bought plastic table cloths, napkins, plastic plates, even silverware. She then created a restaurant-like environment where they had to act politely and use good table manners. She plays classical music in the background. Another teacher has implimented this even further by once a month creating a restaurant that is famous like the Palm Court in New York or the Drake Hotel in Chicago. Using Italian lights, different table cloths, etc., she has created an environment in which the children really want to be there. Interestingly enough some of her worse discipline problems have bought into this idea completely. One student who was her worse problem brings ideas and special materials for this event because it gives him something special to look forward to each day. The research done into different learning styles shows us that not every student learns the same way, and here is a good example of children who learn much from an activity that is not in the present academic curriculum. Although Manners and courtesy are a part of creating a whole child usually they are not part of accepted curriculum. Yet if we can instill in students manners and common courtesy many of our classroom discipline problems would if not disappear at least possibly lessen. Problems such as disrespect, talking out, and even ill manners could be changed with some instruction or modeling in the ways listed above.

It is essential that as the nuclear family disappears, 50% of most classes are studented with youngsters who are from single parent families, somehow a young person must be introduced to ways of being successful in the world. Simple techniques such as writing "bread and butter" letters or thank you's are another such way of instruction. I tell my student teachers they should write thank you's to their principal, cooperating teachers, supervising teachers, and anyone else who has helped them. Such common courtesy can no longer taken for granted. I remember having to write such letters in practice form over and over again in elementary school. And thinking at the time, I will never use this in real life. Yet I have found that the instruction in writing such short notes has been invaluable. Over and over again, I have written thank you notes for dinners served, gifts given, and even services rendered. In a world where people feel unappreciated, such notes are not only assuring to a person who feels unrewarded, but in addition, it points to the fact that the world of courtesy is not dead.

In a world where the media continues to point to ways of solving problems steeped in violence, the teaching profession has its work cut out for it. Teachers serve as role models of utmost importance today. Our use of language, our politeness, and even our way of writing is emulated by our students. When I hear a high school teacher use "four letter words" in his classroom, I am amazed for another teacher has surcombed to the vulgarity in a world where very little common courtesy is left. Yet there is hope for I see more and more teachers trying to raise the level of cultural awareness in their classrooms throughout the country. In an age of multiculturalism and diversity, it seems only logical that courtesy and manners are a part of the world which educators should be attempting to preserve. Yet it is an uphill battle, and often we feel like Sisyphus pushing the proverbial rock up a steep incline, yet it is worth it.

When I interview of person for a position at a school, I look for certain characteristics. The ability to dress as a professional is one such characteristic, recently I saw a prospective teacher come to an interview wearing a sweatshirt and blue jeans. Needless to say the principal was not impressed. Secondly, I look at the resume to see if it is typed, neat, and without grammatical errors. With spell check on most computers today there is not excuse for spelling errors. And finally I look for the common characteristics of courtesy, the "yes, sir," "excuse me," "thank you," and so forth that are required of a professional person. Even if I were interviewing for a gas station attendant I would expect these verbal characteristics. I am constantly amazed at the teenagers who work the window at McDonald's, and I can comment on this because I was one of Ray Krocs's first employees in the 1950's. He wouldn't hire 90% of them. An after all of the above, then I look at the credentials. And when the interview is over I look for a thank you from the interviewee. I think that is what we should be training our students to do as well. And this should be starting in the first and second grade.

Society has lost its grace. Our rough edges are cultivated by the media and even emulated by parents so students need somewhere to find these attributes. It is easy to sit and decry society and its lack of manners, but if we really want to change society we have to find where and how to do it. I believe the schools are the place for this to take place. I am seeing more and more teachers approaching education with this instruction in mind. If we truly are to create a "whole child" then common courtesy and manners are part of this educational program. True education does not just educate with content, but creates a child who is able to take his or her place in the world of professionalism and business as a truly professional person. A polite auto mechanic is not impossible, even though at times it seems improbable. You can create a doctor of medicine but without social skills he or she is a doctor "with a bad bedside manner." A doctor we frequently do not return to for treatment. I think the 1990's must become a era for a turn around in the area of common courtesy. Somehow we must change the classroom into a mini-community that takes on all the good characteristics of common courtesy and manners. In other words if we instill in students these characteristics we will then change the society in which we live, and probably even have better discipline within our own classroom.