When I was in 2nd grade, we had what was called “courtesy class.” We were taught how to answer the telephone, how to use the bathroom when visiting someone else’s home, how to address our elders. And we were taught that the sidewalk is a street for feet, so you walk on the right just as cars drive on the right. I am 46, and never until I moved to the city five years ago had I experienced this basic rule of courtesy and common sense violated so thoroughly and regularly as on Chicago’s sidewalks. Waves of people, facing each other across a red light, proceed to walk directly into one another, scowling and elbowing for passage. I walk on the right and refuse to budge, and I get elbowed. I tried walking on the left and I got cussed out even more.
I view this loss of civilized behavior as a failure of the school system to teach simple manners to children whose parents never learned them either.
