Manners Maykyth Man
Ridgeview has for many years now welcomed students to school each morning—not by greeters, but by administrators and board members. Each morning we say hundreds of hellos, but our hundreds of hellos are of late only rarely returned. Not only is there the absence of a verbal response, but eyes rarely meet, and smiles are rarely seen. The pandemic has mitigated our once determined civility. Faces, half hidden by masks, social distancing, and remote attendance disjointed by latency have caused our estrangement with one another to grow deeper and our sociability more stunted and strained. This is not an insignificant deficit.
As we wipe the sleep from our eyes and begin the gradual process of returning to ‘polite society’, we must renew our unspoken pledge to civilization in order to achieve our goals of intellectual and moral improvement.
In the case of civilization’s relationship with education, and its connection with our manners, there are few light and transient matters. While it is easy to depict manners as the simpleton’s morals, they are nonetheless foundational. As the historian J.A. Froude averred, “Everyone of us, whatever our speculative opinions, knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.” Edmund Burke, writing in Letters on a Regicide Peace, went further: “Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt of purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals; they supply them or they totally destroy them.” Echoing both Froude and Burke is Tennyson, “Ring in the nobler modes of life, / With sweeter manners, purer laws.”
We must now regain what circumstances have caused us to neglect because in manners, in Froude’s “better law,” in Burke’s refinement, and in Tennyson’s nobility, are the consideration and gratitude shown to others as a matter of course, and the etiquette we endeavor to master is neither mere ornament nor politesse. It is the undergirding that must be built and maintained if the kind of conversations that aspire to truth or virtue are to flourish. If this is too abstract or lofty, we may reduce it to a consideration of the kind of adults our children shall become and the quality of the civilization we shall enjoy in old age.
Recently, in the parent reading group, we touched upon this subject while reading an essay by Samuel Johnson. Johnson posited that it was insufficient to merely know a thing—in order for it to be shared, it must be said with interest and in such a way that it could be received with pleasure. It is in error to believe that if we should know enough, we will be appreciated on those merits alone; that is, that we will be appreciated irrespective of how we treat and interact with one another or how we comport ourselves in society.
Lord Chesterfield, in advising his own son, wrote that, “Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but it will never be worn, nor shine, if it is not polished.” Information can be given, material learned, but this polishing comes about only as the result of habituation.
Our youngest Hoplites begin with Munro Leaf’s How to Behave and Why (1946)—it is a primer of course, and manners such as these are really the unexamined placeholders for the more complex manners to come. André Comte-Sponville, writing on manners in A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, contended that manners were the beginnings of morality, and certainly they culminate later on, with a greater and more self-critical examination in something like the admonitions of William Johnson Cory (1823-1892) articulating what a great education is for. It is, he contends, “For the habit of submitting to censure or refutation, / For the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, / For the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, / For the habit of working out what is possible in a given time, / For taste, / For discrimination.” Between Munro Leaf and William Johnson Cory is not some endless or fatuous indoctrination. Good manners are not some Herculean challenge—they rarely involve deep heroics. “Good manners,” as Emerson suggested, “are made up of petty sacrifices.” Namely, they are principally about setting aside thoughts for our own comfort and giving consideration to others in hopes of recognizing their inherent dignity and developing ourselves in the art of making others comfortable.
Emily Post, the American doyenne of etiquette, wrote in 1922 that, “Good taste or bad is revealed in everything we are, do, or have. Our speech, manners, dress, and household goods—and even our friends—are evidence of the propriety of our taste…Rules of etiquette are nothing more than the sign-posts by which we are guided to the goal of good taste.” If we are not scrupulous in our attention to such matters however, the good we do and our achievements and accomplishments in other venues will be diminished. As Shakespeare wrote in Henry IV, “Defect of manner, want of government, / Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain; / The least of which, haunting a nobleman, / Loseth men’s hearts, and leaves behind a stain / Upon the beauty of all parts besides; / Beguiling them of commendation.”
Our return to former ways need not begin with our heads deep in philosophy or the recitation of Emily Post. Instead, it can begin as simply as following Leaf’s advice to our youngest students: “Get up in the morning wherever you are and go to school or play or work or parties or new places glad to meet new people and make old friends of them.” Set yourself aside, look at the person who is speaking to you, smile, and be glad to be alive. If that fails, listen to Bing Crosby belt out Swinging on a Star (1944) and remember that you can indeed “be better than you are.”
It is by these simple manners that we begin our march back towards normalcy and resume the kind of civility that will allow us to weather all kinds of turmoil and controversy. Manners and etiquette are not the private reserve of some archaic elite: “Manners maykyth man” was the personal motto of William Wykeham (1320-1404) who was born a peasant, and by his learning and industry, ended his life in harder times than ours, a patron of education having founded both Winchester College (1382) and New College, Oxford (1379). We can, indeed, be better than we are, and we should insist that those in our charge be better as well.
D. Anderson
Principal
