by Mandy Ochoa
Raising three babies at one time, Mike and Yanci See taught their daughters to mind their manners from the beginning. “It would have been bedlam with three babies,” she said.
Now that twins Meryl and Madison, 13, and sister Mallory, 12, are older, they’ve added a little polish to their manners with the help of Columbus Junior Cotillion, a several-month course in manners, etiquette and social dancing. The twins have completed two years, and Mallory is in her second year.
In today’s fast-paced, laid back society, some social skills learned at Cotillion seem to bring back an “oldfashioned sense,” See said, adding that it “seems more important now than ever.”
In Cotillion, youngsters learn everything from a
handshake to a five-course formal dinner. Lessons are
designed to make them feel comfortable in any social
setting for years to come.
“We’re teaching girls to be ladies, and guys to be
gentlemen,” said Judy Fields, Columbus Junior
Cotillion director.
While Junior Cotillion is for sixth, seventh and eighth-graders, Fields also offers a pre-cotillion short course for younger children. Now there’s an ongoing course at Clubview Elementary for fourth-and-fifth graders that meets after school. Some 50 children are enrolled. The Junior Cotillion program enrolls more than 300 youngsters.
Essentially, manners encompasses “how to treat other people,” Fields said, adding, “You treat others the way you want to be treated.”
Parents can teach many things long before a child starts school, Fields said. For example, young children can learn to say “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me.” They can learn the napkin goes in one’s lap at the dinner table. As soon as they’re able, they can learn to use a spoon instead of fingers to pick up food.
Patsy Avery, who has been a substitute teacher in Muscogee County schools for 18 years, teaches a respect-based course that currently concentrates on Fox Elementary, a “Be Nice School,” she said.
 |
Three generations of the See famiy continue to teach and practice good manners. |
The “Be Nice” philosophy hinges on five basic rules:
• Be aware of and respect others.
• Walk quietly and orderly in the hallways.
• Obey teachers and staff who are here to help us.
• Take care of materials and facilities that are given for our use.
• Speak kindly and truthfully.
She uses a troupe of six Richards Middle School students who visit
every grade at Fox, showing children “how
to do things the right way and the wrong
way,” Avery said. The program involves getting
children to look at and listen to the
speaker, and to use correct grammar.
The program started four years ago in response to a “growing trend of rudeness and lack of respect” in schools, Avery said.
The Fox program is a pilot that Avery hopes to take to other schools. The actors have already performed at Clubview, River Road and Edgewood elementary schools.
Like parenting, teaching manners includes “expecting respect” and using consistency, said Avery. Children are not necessarily going to respond the first time they’re asked to do something, but parents and teachers must stay with it until they understand.
“Two years ago the program was expanded to include training for our firstgraders at Fox where they learned how to set a table and use proper table manners. Later these students had a luncheon in our cafeteria and demonstrated what they had learned,” Avery said.
Expectations for good behavior at Fox are communicated daily through morning announcements and are posted on signs throughout the building. Adults at school reward students “caught being nice,” with a drawing for prizes held each week. A discipline slip has been designed to let teachers know when their students use inappropriate behavior.
“The concept of teaching children how to behave responsibly has evolved over the past four years from a fledgling attempt to impact the attitudes of second graders to a school-wide commitment to change the mindset of students and adults to one of pride, self-control and respect for others,” Avery said.
Like Fields, Avery emphasizes that manners are about “how we treat each other.” All three women interviewed emphasized that manners are not snobbish, but rather designed to help people get along with each other.
Fields and See both pointed out the huge impact technology has had on our culture, but Fields said the essentials of courtesy are the same regardless of the technology.
She cautions students, for example, not to put anything in an e-mail or on the Internet that they don’t expect to be around permanently.
Telephone etiquette has not changed, but the pervasiveness of cell phones has opened the door for abuse of those rules.
“I think usage of cell phones is fast becoming one of the most abused elements of social behavior today,” Fields commented.
Children and adults seem to feel “it’s perfectly OK for everyone to hear their personal conversations,” she said.
More than telephone calls, text messages are the communication mode of young people today.
“I tell them there’s a time when it’s appropriate, and a time when it’s not,” Fields said.
When a person talks on the phone or text-messages while with another person, it is discourteous, Fields said, adding, “It says this other person is more important than being with you.”
Along with the technology that pervades modern life, the schedules that keep us away from the family dinner table on a regular basis contribute to the decline in manners.
“Sometimes those nice, long dinners don’t happen,” See said. The dinner table is an excellent time to catch up on each other’s lives and for parents to model, as well as instruct in, good manners.
As with so many things, parents are the first teachers when it comes to manners. Whether you realize your children are paying attention or not, the first cues they get about how to behave come from how their parents behave.
In a society where adults are ignoring the principles of good behavior, See asked, “How are children learning what is mannerly?”
Careful! Make sure your elbows are off
the table, use your inside voice, don’t interrupt
and, for heaven’s sake, turn off that
cell phone during dinner.
