Manners maketh man - so let's teach them

"Manners maketh man" was one of William Horman's proverbs lovingly set out in his Vulgaria all the way back in the 16th century. It is still the motto of Winchester College and New College, Oxford and we should perhaps pay it a little more attention.

I recall one (middle class) parent, when pulled up on her childrens' poor behaviour at the table, exclaiming, "oh, table manners, they're so middle class". As if this did her children any favours. There's a reason why we think manners are important, why we frown on eating with mouths open, speaking while eating and the correct use of the cutlery provided. And there's a reason why we insist on children saying please and thank you, not interrupting and showing respect to older people.

That reason is that politeness and good manners make for better people - easier to live or work with, more pleasant to deal with and more likely to get on. Good manners, politeness and charm go a long way just on their own and, as that old teacher William Horman knew, they allow for brains, skills and creativity to shine through. Without manners all we see is coarseness, unpleasantness and rudeness. It's not that manners are everything but that they are an essential component of the successful person.

Manners and politeness aren't innate, they have to be taught. Left to their own devices children won't say please and thank you, won't show respect to others and won't become pleasant, charming adults. We seem, in our frantic age, to have forgotten all this and to have arrived at a point where aggression, bullying, vulgarity, cursing and rudeness are celebrated while politeness, charm, respect for others and good manners are become weaknesses.

I was at a posh dinner and, in a conversation with the gentleman besides me, the subject of a TV interview with former spin doctor, Alistair Campbell came up. My neighbour was blown away by Campbell's behaviour - he was being interviewed along with a woman (and remember Campbell is a very big man). "While she was talking," gushed my neighbour, "he folded his arms and leaned in dominating her, it was brilliant". It struck me at the time that, far from being brilliant, Campbell was just being an ill-mannered, rude bully. The argument wasn't won by the brilliance of Alistair's argument but by his intimidation of the other, far smaller, person.

Everywhere you look, people are celebrating this sort of behaviour - the sort of people who use violent metaphor in political debate have always been with us but it has never been normalised in the way it is today. And when the leaders in school begin to act, to once again teach children politeness, good manners and respect, the response from those celebrants on modern coarseness is shocking:

Top of the things that make me despair this week (there are many options) is the decision by Ninestiles secondary school in Birmingham to enforce silence on “all student movement, including to and from assembly, at lesson changeover and towards communal areas at break and lunch”. It is difficult to think of a more harmful and mean-spirited policy than taking away children’s means of communication for a significant part of the day.

To watch the opprobrium poured onto Katherine Birbalsingh for her advocacy of teaching working class young people manners, good behaviour and politeness is to see that "manners are so middle class" made flesh. Today, Ms Birbalsingh's Michaela School is routinely described as 'Britain's strictest school' because it insists on a set of standards in children's behaviour, enforces those standards and expects parents to back the school in this work. Hardly a day passes without some comment about behaviour in schools, how it stresses teachers, disrupts learning and contributes to mental ill-health. Yet when a school does something about this, the same folk pile in using words like "prison", "institutionalising" and "controlling".

I appreciate I've little room to talk but it really is time we called out ill-mannered behaviour and gratuitous rudeness. For sure, you can invoke free speech (and have my backing) but it's perfectly possible to support free speech and, at the same time, believe that good manners and politeness are preferable to vulgar insult or crude metaphor. Right now our political discourse is become corrupted by its language - the two extremes, having adopted an absolute position, do not seek to debate but rather to adopt that Alistair Campbell behaviour of aggressive domination, rudeness, ill-manners and wind up all spiced, if you're on Twitter, with gross language.

It is, for example, right that we call out the use of children by parents as vehicles for their political prejudice. This is a ghastly exploitative practice and grown ups should know better but calling the grown up using his child this way a 'cretin' isn't right or justified however angry we might be about the action. And using the "he said, she said" argument to defend this sort of language doesn't wash either - "we are better than that" is a far better argument.

I wish every success to people like Tom Bennett and Katherine Birbalsingh as well as Alex Hughes and Andrea Stephens, the joint heads at Ninestiles School in Birmingham. Civilisation is built on an assumption of good behaviour, politeness and respect, without these values it's hard to do all the other collaborative, co-operative and creative things that make for a great, successful society. Manners really do maketh man and for this to happen we need to teach those manners because they don't happen without that teaching.

....

How signs should be written....

From the footpath passing by Stoneyhurst College is an example of how signs should be written. It is polite, courteous and treats the passer-by as an adult. Rather than the usual abrupt and peremptory signs that little public spaces a few more like this would be welcome.

So Yorkshire Sculpture Park - do take note!

...

All government can do is make and enforce rules - a polite society needs more than that, it needs us to defend it

***

While driving to the cinema I had an interesting conversation with my wife and son regarding behaviour. This began with the usual litany of things we dislike – old people who think their age grants them the right to queue jump, people putting their feet on bus or train seats, those heading for early deafness who think the whole carriage should hear their music, litter, chewing gum and not letting folk off the carriage before embarking. All pretty regular stuff for a discussion in the Cooke family of grumps!

However, the discussion moved on a step further to discuss how ‘society’ might respond to such problems. And why there is such impoliteness and disrespect. We managed to blame parents, teachers, the telly and computers games before sanity returned and we remembered to blame the government. They’re in charge of rules so it must be their fault.

And here lies the problem. We have abrogated responsibility for good behaviour – passed it over to the government. In doing this we forget the fundamental limitations of government – all it can do is make and enforce rules. Government can only use threats, can only punish, ban or bar – government cannot set example, explain the reasons for politeness or provide moral direction.

The result of making polite behaviour ‘someone else’s problem’ is precisely the disrespectful, rude and selfish society we rant and rail against. Yet our response isn’t to ask how politeness might become commonplace again but to call for more rules, more enforcers and tougher punishments. It appears that until we become Mega-City One, we will not be satisfied.

It may just be me but I fear this way madness lies – rather than ever more draconian enforcement and even more controls, laws and regulations would it not be better to start expecting polite behaviour beginning with the youngest? To have children address their teacher as “Miss”, “Mrs” or “Sir”. To expect children to stand when grown ups enter the room. To cherish silence. To encourage quiet speaking. To celebrate quiet order.

You and I don’t litter the streets because of the minuscule change of being fined. We hold open doors, help people with heavy bags and say “please” and “than-you” because it’s the right thing to do not because we might be punished for not doing so. Yet we seem like rabbits frozen in society’s headlights at the prospect of expecting politeness from those around us. We’re told by the enforcers not to challenge bad behaviour – they might attack you or something. And we keep our heads down and hope that the enforcer arrives and deals with the perpetrator. But Judge Dredd never does arrive.

Those of us who can retreat to a safer world – to our homes, to the safety of the car’s bubble and to offices with door security – and sit it out. We avoid public transport, busy town centres at night and places where the impolite might gather and disturb us. We have to take our share of the blame. We have to start challenging impoliteness and rudeness.

But we have also to ask our government to lift the shackles of restraint – to allow police officers, teachers, shopkeepers, pool attendants, bus drivers and train conductors to be intolerant. In fact to permit all of us – all the polite people – to question, challenge and confront ignorance, rudeness and bad behaviour.

...

Free speech: some lessons on politeness from the 18th Century

Free speech is a pretty simple concept. It means I can say what I like, doesn’t it? Perhaps it does but what about deliberate offence? Bullying language? Prejudicial language? Where does the limit to free speech lie? Today we have become less worried about sexual swearwords or blasphemy that would have been the case with our forebears. But where they worried greatly about “fuck”, “shit” and “Jesus Christ”, we now obsess about “nigger”, “poofter” and even “paddy”.

Perhaps we are right, maybe making such prejudicial words beyond the pale is correct. For sure, using them is rather asking for a smack in the gob but we do appear to have lost – among all the legislative frenzy – the idea of politeness. Yes, politeness is often a deception – a white lie (are we still allowed to say that). But is its loss making it harder for us to justify the defence of free speech?

In his magnificent examination of English culture in the 18th Century, “The Pleasure of Imagination”; John Brewer looks at the conflict between politeness and sensibility:

“Many of the ideals of sensibility seem to contrast with those of politeness – authenticity rather than show, spontaneous feeling rather than artifice, private retreat rather than urban sociability, the virtues of humble rank rather than high station. They appear to stand in opposition to the values of polite London society.” (Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination, Pg 115)

Such a comment reminds us of the explosion of “spontaneous” feeling at the death of Diana, of Oscar winner bursting into tears and rambling about their inspiration and of the slight discomfort some of us feel at the seeming need for every comedy to have at least three swear words in every sentence.

However, politeness was not enforced by statute. There were no laws requiring polite behaviour in the 18th Century. People were polite because it was expected of them and for them to play any role in society failing at such expectation was to risk being rejected. Today we have begun to seek legal remedy to the enforcement of selected standards of behaviour – these may be the vast collection of law and case around so-called “equalities” or the growing judgmentalism of “standards boards”.

If we are to rescue free speech from its emasculation by self-interested groups and their public agents, then we have at some point to challenge the regulation of language that supports the interventions of these agencies. Conservatives should ask whether it is better to regulate politeness through society rather than through the law. It is incredibly rude to call someone a “paki” but is it really any ruder than calling that person a “cunt”? The law says it is since it privileges one word as a special condition subject to the possibility to punishment under the criminal law while the other remains just very rude.

I am not one of those people who think that the entire edifice of “equalities” should go. But I do think that the regulation of language through the criminal law is wrong and that those aspects of equalities legislation should be repealed. And the growing collection of “standards” applied to councillors, doctors, public servants and the like are also attempts to use the law to control speech – breeching the principle of liberty.

Free speech comes at a price – that of offence. But since we cannot ban or bar every possible word or combination of words it cannot work to select a few words for special treatment. However, I would point out that using offensive language has a societal price – getting thumped is part of that price but the other part is to colour our view of that person to their detriment.

So – as a good Tory – let’s look to our history. And teach our children this:

“Politeness created a complete system of manners and conduct based on the art of conversation. It places the arts and imaginative literature at the centre of its aim to produce people of taste and morality because they were considered a means of achieving a polite and virtuous character.” (Brewer, Pg 111)

...