Leisure Time Pursuits and Manners

Children possessed of good manners have more poise and self-respect. We try in our school to find frequent occasions when our boys and girls can practice these gracious social arts.

“Every year we have to fight to retain in our schools the experiences most valuable for our children,” a mother writes. “If the school helps my boy and my girl fill their leisure time full of worthwhile recreational activity, then I know they're not going to turn to crime or debauchery for adventure or excitement.”

 Thank you, mother. I think you’re absolutely right. Our children must know how to play if they are to express their best selves. But there are many people who feel that an education consists of a quart or so of facts about arithmetic, history, language and the other conventional school subjects.

But I believe that teaching children social etiquette is more valuable than the multiplication tables. To reduce feelings of inferiority and build self-assurance through the knowledge that one knows and practices good manners is more important than knowing when Columbus arrived in America or where Madagascar is located.

Children possessed of good manners have more poise and self-respect. We try in our school to find frequent occasions when our boys and girls can practice these gracious social arts.

And we feel that training in personal care, hygiene, cleanliness, neatness and proper dress should be emphasized just as much as rules of grammar.

Tells Vital Lessons

I think I’m talking today about vital lessons. We must have a chance in our schools to guide our youngsters into appreciation of the best in literature, art, music, drama, rhythm and human relationships.

We must help them to have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to understand the beauty, color, harmonies, truth and goodness that surround us.

Art and morality go hand in hand; they emancipate our children from the bondage of sensuality and enable them to take hold upon things unseen and eternal.

Emotions Ennobled

Music, art, literature bring uplift, joy and beauty into many dreary, drab days. They ennoble and spiritualize our emotions. They lift us out of the commonplace into the mysterious, spiritual, eternal world that surrounds us. – James Samuel Lacy, 1937

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