Last winter Sandy Glass had a lot on her mind. The Naperville mother of four had learned her father was dying of a brain tumor. At the same time, she found a lump in her breast.
“I said to myself, `If it turns out to be bad news, what is it that I want to leave my kids?’ I decided that I wanted them to be well-mannered, to have social graces,” she says.
That might not be the first legacy every mother would decide to leave her children. And Glass’ own test results came back all clear, so the 50-year-old likely will be minding her kids’ manners for years to come. But Glass doesn’t regret footing the bill for her son, a daughter and a daughter’s friend to take a daylong etiquette course after her health scare. At her father’s funeral, her 18-year-old son amazed her by standing up and shaking hands with strangers, introducing himself to friends of his grandfather with poise, even during the emotional time.
Glass, the owner of a Chicago metal finishing firm, was so thrilled by the social graces they learned, she is now trying to get her 26-year-old son, a PhD candidate, to take a similar class for business etiquette pointers before he leaves academia.
Whether they’re toddlers or 20-somethings, young people today often get a bad rap. Many younger tweens barely know a butter knife from a salad fork, and even those older than adolescents often blaze through doors ahead of women and elders.
But Maryann Downes-Bagley, owner of Chicago-based Social Presence Inc., the program in which Glass enrolled her kids, says today’s youngsters aren’t lazy oafs. They’re merely uninformed.
“I’ve been teaching finishing school programs since 1982, and I haven’t had a bad kid yet,” says Downes-Bagley. “It’s just that the last two generations skipped teaching etiquette. Parents don’t have a chance to do it and they think it is being covered at school.”
Downes-Bagley’s tutorials–she shies away from using the word etiquette because “it scares people; I prefer personal achievement”–fill in where working parents don’t have the time (and sometimes don’t know the rules, either). She teaches kids from age 8 and up the basics: sit-down dining, helping others don a coat, party conversation, even appropriate answering machine messages. (Note to college-age job seekers: Take the background music off your outgoing message.) The result, say both moms and teachers, are kids who have higher self-esteem and are better prepared to meet peers or elders, whether they are Girl Scouts or headhunters.
These are not the white-glove finishing schools of the 1950s. Downes-Bagley and other new-millennium manners mavens are taking a different approach to teaching kids what they need to know to be well polished. Downes-Bagley typically starts classes by tripping over her own feet. That shows them, if she can recover from a faux pas, so can they.
“It is said that at the end of every century and at the beginning of a new one, there is a sort of resurgence for civility and etiquette,” says Carmen D. Heitz, director of The Etiquette School, a Munster, Ind.-based program that holds courses throughout the Chicago area. “Until the early 1960s, part of a well-rounded education included etiquette training. With the more relaxed views and attitudes, training became obsolete. It is impossible to pass them [manners] on to future generations if they have never been learned.”
While the message of reinforcing age-old guidelines of courtesy is the same for all students in these programs, the methods aren’t. When trying to engage kids at St. John’s of the Cross in Western Springs, for example, Downes-Bagley turned the classroom into a replica of Louis XIV’s France, with costumed kids learning the history of etiquette. As part of Chicago-based Latin School’s Project Week, teens interested in careers in the restaurant business got a dining tutorial before heading over to lunch at Charlie Trotter’s. Prom do’s and don’t’s are taught to other teens before the big dance. Heitz offers 21 different themed tea parties, such as one for girls 4 to 9 years old dressed as characters from the Madeline books to teach them proper dining rules at area Borders bookstores.
“Etiquette has not changed, but the people have changed,” says Downes-Bagley of her unconventional approach to teaching the staid art. She has been called in to help country clubs on the North Shore deal with unruly preteens at bar and bat mitzvahs and has created private family programs for parents who want to be a part of their children’s polishing process. For those youngsters who don’t see a need to know which fork to use when or to stand when a woman walks into the room, Downes-Bagley tries to help them see what’s in it for them.
“This is a good act that does not cost them much but gets them recognized. It is great stuff to throw into your backpack of life,” she says.
Admittedly, between soccer fees, school clothes and saving for kids’ college tuition, not all families can afford to spend discretionary income on courses that teach the fine art of dining right, particularly when private lessons can carry a price tag of $75 an hour. But organizations ranging from the Junior League of Chicago to Roosevelt University are adding such finishing programs to reach kids who couldn’t otherwise get started. Social Presence and others offer discounts for informal groups of students in semi-private classes. Some of Heitz’s etiquette programs at Borders stores are $9 each.
Brian Glass, Sandy’s 18-year-old son, says his girlfriend of two years has been shocked–but thrilled–every time he has pulled out a chair for her in the past few months. And knowing the little social secrets–such as how to introduce one’s self and perfecting his own handshake–has made him confident job-seeking.
Dawn Neisen, a 23-year-old consultant in Chicago, says she owes part of the credit for nabbing her job to the etiquette course she took before graduation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In fact, the basics on remembering clients’ names, the order of introducing higher-ups and what to wear for formal business events are now in a binder she refers to for last-minute polishing.
Julie Dillon, a Chicago mother of an 8-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, wants her children to memorize those basics even earlier. Last year she arranged a four-week program at the Saddle & Cycle Club to help curb what many parents saw as rude behavior among the kids there, particularly when they thought parents weren’t watching. The result since the course has been completed is an increased sense of civility through the club, even when parents aren’t around, Dillon said.
Showing respect when talking to others is one thing, but Heitz and Downes-Bagley say it can be difficult to convince today’s kids the significance of actions they may find antiquated, like removing hats while indoors or using a proper letter salutation when sending an e-mail.
“I make the analogy that Michael Jordan has do’s and don’t’s. If there is not a code book, balls are going to be flying, there is going to be chaos in the bleachers,” says Downes-Bagley. “Etiquette is just the rule book for life.”
Details of decorum
Even grown women can learn a thing or two from kid-centric etiquette classes. For instance, did you know these decorum details?
– If a business client has a reputation for a lethal handshake, slip your rings into your pocket before he arrives. It’s a move that will save you both from being stabbed by the prong on your ring.
– While eating, place your napkin on your lap with the fold toward your waist, rather than away from it. That way, when you bring it to your mouth, it won’t unfurl in front of your fellow diners.
– If you are in an office when someone else’s telephone rings, ask whether he or she would like you to leave the room so that he or she can have some privacy. That way, you won’t overhear anything you shouldn’t.
– When making business introductions, start with the executive who holds the highest rank.
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For more information, contact The Etiquette School at 219-365-1960 or www.TheEtiquetteSchool.com, or Social Presence at 312-951-6062 (also at www.globalprotocol.com).
