Degree in Etiquette Never Offered

                          

From what we at Etiquipedia have researched, NYU never did offer the degree mentioned in Dix’s 1916 article. It is disappointing, though, as it would have been one way of actually “certifying” someone as knowledgeable in etiquette and manners. — Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer was an American “Agony Aunt” who wrote under the pen name, “Dorothy Dix.” A forerunner of today’s advice columnists, Dix was America’s highest paid and most widely read female journalist when she died in 1951. Her advice was syndicated in newspapers around the world, with an estimated audience of 60 million readers. Along with her column, she campaigned for woman suffrage.

— Public domain image

School of Manners, Dorothy Dix Says, Is Badly Needed American Child Too Often Lacking in Politeness and Little Graces of Human Intercourse

It is announced that the New York University is going to establish a school of manners, and that the degree of M. E.—Magister Elegantiarium—may be conferred on such students as perfect themselves in the etiquette of polite society. This news sounds almost too good to be true. Let us hope, however, that such a course of study is really to be established in one of our great schools, and that it will be compulsory, for nothing is more sadly needed.

For whatever other charms and virtues the American youth may possess, good manners are seldom among them. As a child he is almost invariably a little savage. As a hobbledehoy he is generally a hoodlum, and as a grown man, he is only too often an awkward blunderer, who is like a bull in the social china shop. On every side we encounter multitudes of men who have intelligence, force, power, men who have achieved success in their own particular calling, but who are as ignorant as babes of any of the graces of human intercourse. 

They cannot enter or leave a room without falling over their own feet. They do not know what to say when presented to a stranger, or how either to pay or receive a compliment. At dinner parties you may see them hopelessly floundering around among the silverware. At restaurants you may observe them with their legs twined like snakes around their chair legs, grasping their forks as if they were about to harpoon an attacking whale, and, alas, you may even pass away an evening listening to them eat their soup. 

Of course, we excuse such men by saying that they have been too busy with big affairs to give their attention to such small matters as the proper use of a fork or a spoon. We say that it's more important that a man’s heart should be of gold than that he. should wear the right sort of coat for the occasion, and we try to gloss over his boorishness by calling him a rough diamond. All of which is sheer nonsense. Nobody will contend that a rough diamond is as valuable as one that is cut and polished, and the truth is that while a man may succeed without good manners, he would succeed better with them. 

To know how to do things, to possess what the French call savoir faire, is always a help, never a handicap in life. People have always appreciated this fact, so far as women were concerned. In all girls' schools special attention is paid to deportment, and girls are taught the niceties of etiquette that they perhaps de not have an opportunity to learn in their own homes. More than that, at home stress is laid on little girls behaving like ladies, and wherever you go, the small daughter of the house will receive you charmingly, drop her little courtesy and endeavor to engage you in courteous conversation. 

But apparently the mothers of the same families make no effort to instill politeness into their boys, and their lads will storm into the room with their caps on. They will never stop to speak to the visitors, and only grunt by way of reply when addressed. And when these boys are sent off to school, no effort seems to be made to supplement their lack of home training in manners. They are grounded in all the arts and sciences except the most important art and science of all, which is that of making oneself agreeable to one’s fellow creatures. 

For, when all is said and dont, good manners will carry one further than anything else in the world. They are a letter of credit» that every one of us honors* at sight. The clown may compel our grudging respect, but present our hearts as a free gift to the courtier. A young man may be of the most sterling worth and yet wear a decollete collar that exposes his Adam’s apple and a coat and trousers and waistcoat of different makes and colors so that he looks like an animated patchwork quilt, but if he and another youth who knew how to dress, applied for the same job, the good clothes would get it. 

A man might he a genius and yet eat peas with his knife, but he would have a hard time getting close enough to those who might help him to get a chance to show what he could do. A man may have almost superhuman ability in any line, but if he is rude and crude in his manners, if he does not know how to please, he lives and dies neglected. On the other hand, the man who has what we call a charming personality, who is gracious in speech and polite in manners, finds a helping hand always at his elbow and a friendly shoulder ready to boost him up the ladder. That is why it is so important to teach boys good manners and why the opening a department in the New York University is epoch-making. — By Dorothy Dix, 1916

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia