Recently, a discussion about manners has developed in the comments thread of SL’s latest post on Sarah Palin. And so my interest was sparked by a post on The Age’s Essential Baby blog with regard to modern children and their lack of manners.
Apparently, the Australian Scholarships Group and the National Excellence in Teaching Awards organization have recently released a guide entitled Parent-Teacher Partnerships, which contains 6 rules for establishing a successful parent-teacher partnership to help children get the most out of school.
Rule No. 1 is “Prepare your child for school”, and essentially deals with parental responsibility towards children’s education, including education in respect for others and manners. Inter alia, the guide says:
When it comes to parental responsibility, teaching children respect was high on the list. And not just respect for teachers. Respect for the opinions of others and respect for personal property also rated a mention, as did empathy for, and treatment of, fellow students. Teaching children acceptable behaviour and good manners ran a popular second, followed by personal hygiene, punctuality, acceptable mobile phone use, knowledge of healthy food choices, and the benefits of exercise.
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Teachers want parents to check homework. They want parents to teach younger children to wipe, flush and wash, and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. …
…Teachers are asking for respect, and for the parents who seem unwilling or unable to say ‘no’ to their children, the message is that increasingly, these kids are finding the discipline of school hard to take.
The blog post wonders whether parents are too busy to teach their children manners these days or whether parents consider manners old-fashioned and irrelevant.
My parents were relatively strict. Both my sister and I were taught manners, and were expected to be polite and respectful of others. We were also taught to be open-minded towards people of different backgrounds, and to empathise with others. Sometimes I wonder if we weren’t actually brought up to be too nice for this dog-eat-dog modern world: we both had difficulty appearing “pushy” enough for law firms when it came to job interview time (although once we got a foot in the door, we were both fine).
I think that manners are very important insofar as they indicate and promote respect for others. We have to share this world with many other people, and it’s a lot easier if we respect others. At a most basic level, that involves saying “Please” and “Thank you”. Additionally, being aware of one’s personal hygiene and the like shows respect for others (eg, covering your mouth when you cough). Then there’s respect for other’s personal space and property (eg, not pushing people out of the way, not talking on one’s mobile phone loudly in confined spaces).
Another polite thing is to listen to and be responsive towards others. I have noticed that when there is a troublesome workmate or the like, the most common complaint is that the person doesn’t listen to others. That is, they just talk over what someone else is saying, or they ignore it. It’s really about appreciating your audience.
These kinds of manners are all about respecting other people as human beings. It is essentially saying, “Yes, your personhood, comfort and needs are important to me, and I respect them. I recognise that you are a person of equal worth to myself.” It is about not being selfish and purely wrapped up in one’s own needs.
There are other kinds of manners which are about respecting people with special needs in society: standing up on the train for an elderly man on a walking stick or a pregnant woman, helping a person in a wheelchair across the crossing if they get stuck on the curb and so forth. I also think these kinds of manners are important. I have to say that when I was pregnant with my first child, I was really shocked by how infrequently other train passengers offered me a seat without being asked first. Perhaps they were just wrapped up in their own concerns, but that’s still pretty sad.
Then there’s manners as a matter of form. Some manners are designed to show social status, and to reflect certain cultural values. These are the kind of manners where we have to be careful, because they may be culturally or socially specific, and we should not judge other people from different backgrounds for not conforming to them. It’s always interesting to travel to a totally different country and observe how different manners operate there. When I went to Japan, I learned that slurping one’s noodles loudly is an expression of respect to the chef, whereas in Western society it would be rude. But I don’t think it would have been fair if I had been judged for my failure to slurp had I been unaware of that rule.
It is this latter kind of manners which can be divisive rather than promoting respect. Different social rules can entrench class values (eg, sticking one’s little finger out when drinking tea is a sign of “breeding”). To my mind, it is these kind of manners which do not matter so much – the fundamental issue is whether a person has respect for others.
Sometimes, as I said in comments in the thread below, manners do not prevent people from being rude. The English upper middle class excel in being able to be rude while still technically observing manners. It’s actually really difficult to respond to such rudeness, and I grew to dislike it intensely when I lived in the UK.
I think many parents still do teach their children manners (myself among them) but it is a lot less common than it was. The reasons why it is less common are varied.
To a certain extent, some parents may think manners are old-fashioned and outdated. They may have had an overdose of manners for manners’ sake when growing up, and decided to throw the baby out with the bath water. I think this is a pity, because respect for other human beings is not old-fashioned and outdated: it is essential for a civic society.
I also think that the modern parent is very busy. I will confess that when I was juggling work, study and looking after a child, I sometimes let matters of discipline slip because I was just too tired to fight the point. I was just struggling to get by and to keep my head above water. I think there are a lot of parents in this boat.
Also, I think children do sometimes get bad habits from creche and the like. My daughter came out with “I shake my little tush bum” the other day. I don’t know where on earth she got it from, but it certainly wasn’t from me or any other family member. I suspect it was creche. I think she was trying it for effect, so my tactic was to ignore it totally. It’s somewhat inevitable that this will happen. I remember coming out with some terrible swear words learned from other kids at primary school; I didn’t know what they meant. Of course, the person I tried them on was my dear Grandma – the priority to go for maximum shock value.
And then there’s the parents who don’t want to say “no” to their children for fear of warping their little psyches. Snort! I’ve noticed that this tends to be a characteristic of older parents. Now, I certainly don’t believe in hitting children or being strict with them for no reason. But when children may potentially hurt themselves or other people, I believe it is essential that they be told not to do [insert offending conduct here]. It’s all part of showing respect for other people. My heart always sinks when I see some child dismantling a shop window display while the parent ignores it or says mildly, “don’t do that, dear”. Meanwhile the shop assistant looks on in dismay. Again, it’s respect for others: the child is showing a lack of respect for the property of others, and creating a lot of work for the shop assistant who will have to repair the display. Of course, it’s inevitable that children will run amok sometimes, but I do think they should be told off if they start dismantling shop windows.
I also think that children actually need some kind of boundaries, particularly after watching a friend who was brought up by hippy parents with no rules and was very unhappy as a consequence. To her parents’ surprise, she eventually converted to Christianity, and I suspect that part of the reason was to have some structure and rules in her life. One is more likely to warp the child’s psyche by failing to teach him or her boundaries and respect for others than by occasionally saying “no”.
The bottom line is that the form of manners does not matter as long as we show respect for one another, regardless of ethnicity, religion, class, political orientation or the like. This means treating other people as human beings, and listening to them as we would wish others to listen to our ideas.
10 Comments
Both my wife and my mother are teachers, so needless to say I know a lot of them, and I hear regular complaints about parents. In many cases there seems to be and adversarial rather than cohesive relationship between parents and teachers. Obviously I’m potentially biased – not being a parent, and only hearing the teachers side of the argument – but it seems to me that parents would get a lot more for their children from teachers by cooperating and ‘taking the teacher’s side’ more often then not.
Obviously there will be times when it is important that parents stand up for their children, and judging when that’s the case in a school environment is bound to be difficult. Especially if you’re the kind of parent who’s not regularly involved in your child’s schooling.
I’m a huge fan of Rule No. 1, but it’s not only about preparing children specifically for school. As you say, the instillment of good social skills (respect for others being one of the more important ones) simply must begin at home.
Parenting properly must be a pain in the arse these days, especially now that there is often no common ‘bank’ of accepted behaviours to teach kids. One that seems to be losing ground – but that I recall very strongly from my childhood – is the prohibition on gossip. The version in my family was ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all’.
Other cultures still have this very strongly, something I found out both when travelling to China and (later) working with members of the Chinese business community in Brisbane on a bilingual corporate history. The thing was, everyone I dealt with was painfully honest – so it wasn’t a species of dissembling. Rather it was a recognition that speaking ill of others when they were absent or unable to defend themselves was a special kind of cowardice.
SL, my parents were also strict on gossip – I got in big trouble for doing anything like that. My mum would say, “Imagine how you’d feel if people were saying things like that behind your back.”
The difficulty for me was always how to be less blunt. I’d either bottle up a difficulty I had with a person, or else I’d explode and say exactly what I thought. Sometimes not very tactfully. It’s always better to raise these things, but perhaps in a non-confrontational way…
I have a mate from HK who is very, very blunt. I like it. I’m never in any doubt as to what he thinks. I can be very blunt back to him and he doesn’t take offence.
Until I was 5 or 6, all my best friends were boys. I sometimes wonder if this was because I generally prefer directness rather than the kind of bitchiness that little girls can practice.
Manners these days are appalling – truly.
It’s not just a matter of being considerate it’s having the techniques to do so. it’s generally agreed that Western manners derive from the etiquette of the French and British courts of the 17th century on.
Unsurprisingly these manners are now thought of as archaic. Manners in an aristocratic style will tend to cultivate techniques in which making people comfortable means knowing one’s place and letting other people know their’s as well.
In a global multiethnic democratic culture etiquette lessons from the Sun King and James II don’t help much. Neither does the fact that teaching your kids manners has to compete with the noise of modern life.
But observing people I reckon that people are just unable to be polite because they don’t know how. And in many cases they don’t care either.
I recommend this this as a treatise on manners. It’s not an etiquette guide.
The English upper middle class excel in being able to be rude while still technically observing manners.
You’ll find this is common to all ancien regime dominant cultures: the French, the Italians, the Japanese and the Chinese all excel at politely making you feel like you should just fall thru a crack in the floor now please.
I’m afraid I know how to do this as well. Don’t often. But it comes in handy when there’s some pillock from Porlock who won’t scarper smartly.
Incidentally L’eagle I’m afraid I must correct you…
sticking one’s little finger out when drinking tea is a sign of “breeding
Should read:
sticking one’s little finger out when drinking tea is a sign of inbreeding.
Still you’ve gotta admit that the posh classes are superior.
Just compare this fine specimen of British Patrician Grace with the admittedly useful but nevertheless utterly scummy prols such as this.
I keep forgetting that David Bowie is a merle (has two different coloured eyes). Every time I see a pic of him I get a surprise.
Re preparing kiddies for school – my Aunt was a prep teacher (first year of school – five year olds). She always said that the best thing a parent can do to prepare their kid for school was – teach them how to use public toilets (particularly little boys – they need to know how to use a urinal), teach them which bag, lunchbox and shoes are theirs, and not to touch anyone else’s, and teach them how to ask questions nicely.
She was always irritated by parents who had spent ages teaching their kids to read before they went to school, but hadn’t thought to train the little one to identify their bag or use the loo without Mum standing there. She always said “I can teach them to read – that’s what I’m trained to do! – but I have nightmares about little kids asking me how to use the loos, because I’m terrified they’ll mis-report it later to their parents and I’ll be up on harrassment charges”.
Sorry I missed this post when it was fresh. When Keven Rudd announced the education revolution that was in store for Australia (a computer on every lap etc etc) my response was along the lines “The education revolution that we need will not cost a cent of public money, or indeed any other money. It will involve a partnership between teachers, parents and children to discover the disciplines and the joys of genuine learning…etc”
David Bowie is a merle
Actually he’s not. The ‘green’ eye is an optical illusion caused when George Underwood belted him for pinching his girl.
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