Good Breeding in Teachers, Part 2

I have one perpetual and bitter quarrel with slang, and that is because of its tendency to impoverish and bankrupt the English of the user. Few young people can become proficient in both slang and correct English, and too often they become skilled in the wrong one. Be sure your sin will find you out; you cannot use slang and slovenly English in daily conversation without paying the penalty. The goblin of habit will get you.

Observance of Social Forms

Of equal, or perhaps of greater importance than personal appearance, are personal manners. To be well-mannered stamps one as a gentleman or a lady, and to be a gentleman or a lady, in the true meaning of the terms, is worthy the ambition and effort of every one. The difference between a community of savages and a community of cultured people does not lie wholly in the latter's intellectual superiority, but fully as much in its respect for the gentle courtesies and refinements of life. Many estimable people are totally regardless of even the most obvious social forms. I have known admirable teachers who did not think it worth while to return calls, to send acceptances or regrets in reply to formal invitations, to give heed to be prompt when guests at a dinner, or to make “party calls” afterwards on a hostess. To be remiss in such social courtesies is to cause comment and to reflect on one's good breeding. Young men are especially sinners against the rules of social etiquette. They are often quite oblivious of them, or they look upon them with a species of mild contempt, as something quite beneath the attention of a strong, independent manhood. This attitude of mind is wholly wrong and limits the possibilities of anyone who holds it. Society will not and should not tolerate a boor. A person who has so little regard for cultivated society that he will not attempt to qualify himself to become an agreeable member, should not expect much consideration, and certainly should not be a teacher. I am not pleading for snobbery or foppery, but for culture and refinement in men and women.

Good English

If one should give heed to his manners and dress, much more should he give heed to his speech. It would be difficult to over- estimate the importance to a teacher of a command of English that is at once correct, effective and graceful. A great thought or a fine sentiment in slovenly English is like a genius in soiled linen; our attention is attracted from the thought to its garb as from the genius to his clothes. I have one perpetual and bitter quarrel with slang, and that is because of its tendency to impoverish and bankrupt the English of the user. Few young people can become proficient in both slang and correct English, and too often they become skilled in the wrong one.

Be sure your sin will find you out; you cannot use slang and slovenly English in daily conversation without paying the penalty. The goblin of habit will get you. At the very moment when you desire to appear at your best your speech will betray you. How many times have I seen young men and women humiliated (at least they should have been) by using slang in company where such language was most inappropriate! Many times the teachers in normal schools are compelled to criticise the use of slang on the part of practice teachers. I have known students, and high school graduates at that, who were withdrawn from practice teaching because of their inability to use good English. Slang expressions kept creeping into their conversation in the schoolroom. The goblin of habit caught them. On the other hand, few characteristics of a teacher are more quickly noticed by a good superintendent than his ability to use good English; and as I have already said, this ability counts for promotion.

Even were it otherwise, I should still put in a plea for our noble language and urge upon every teacher the duty of preserving to future generations its dignity and its beauty, undiminished and uncorrupted. Our mother tongue is one of our great inheritances. It is a priceless treasure. It is incomparable as a medium of expressing every shade of human thought and emotion. It proved equal to the genius of a Shakespeare and a Milton, a Thackeray and a Webster, an Emerson and a Tennyson. This language, which more than any other seems destined to become the world language, it is the especial duty of the school to keep pure and uncorrupted; but the schools will fail in this responsibility if the teachers are slack and indifferent in their use of their Esther tongue. To be a master of good English should be a goal of daily effort.– From “The Personality of the Teacher,” by Charles McKenny, 1910

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia