Manners

Elbows of the Table “Good manners: The noise you don't make when you're eating soup.” -Bennett Cerf Going through a school cafeteria, in a sea of children, how many times do the words “Please” or “Thank you” come across your ears' Manners are becoming an extinct behavior in our younger generations. If etiquette was taught and or enforced in every school, mandatorily, our youth may stand a chance at attending a fastidious dinner without food falling out of their wide open mouths. Parents are often the ones fixed with the obligation to teach their children proper manners, but many parents, after the 1950’s youth generation, do not have perfect manners themselves. In the 1950’s etiquette classes were very common. My Dad told me of how his junior high school did offer etiquette classes, which was in the late 1960s, but he did not take them. Parents find that with the current role models out in the world for their children, they are not positive models. “Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. “ -Author Unknown No one is ever featured in the mediafor having proper etiquette. With an increased rate of split households in America, manners may not be on the forefront, there comes in the idea of manners in school. At Girl Scout camp back in third grade, this was sung to me: “Maddie ,Maddie ,strong and able get your elbows off the table this is not a horses stable but a first class dining table Round the outside you must go you must go you must go Round the outside you must go, you get going.”