MY daughter of some two score years and a bit is a feisty lass who is disinclined to call a spade a manually operated digging utensil.
Nor is she disposed to ignore boorishness, however, and wherever it manifests itself. In the recent past, for example, she was swinging from a strap in a packed Melbourne tram — literally swinging because she is somewhat vertically challenged! — when she espied a boy on the cusp of puberty occupying a seat within touching distance of an elderly lady, also standing but festooned with shopping bags.
The boy was wearing the uniform of one of Melbourne’s so-called “Greater Public Schools” which would probably be costing his parents something like $25,000 a year in fees and add-ons. My daughter took in the situation and leaned over very close to the lad and, at the top of her voice, yelled “GET UP!” The boy did just that — scarlet in the face and doubtless experiencing a sudden dampness in his rompers — as my daughter assisted the elderly lady to the seat. Every eye in the tram was riveted on the boy as he waited for the next stop to beat a hasty retreat.
Bloody marvellous. When I first heard the story I was beaming for days and even more proud of my daughter than previously, if that were possible.
Struggling
So I pose the questions – What is wrong with manners? What happened to manners? My answer to the first question is that nothing is wrong with manners. Indeed, manners are — or surely should be — one of the principal outward manifestations of a caring and civilised society. My answer to the second question is that, while there is no cause to overstate the case, there seems to me to have been an erosion of manners as practised when I was young.
I am closing in on 68 years of age but I still stand back for women and elderly people, especially women, entering lifts; I would always offer to help a woman struggling with loads of goods and with small children hanging on to her when she is trying to cross a street or negotiate steps; I help short women struggling to retrieve goods from lockers on airplanes; and so on. And, I hasten to add, so too do a lot of other people extend these courtesies … but I fear that they may be declining in number.
Back when I was at school — and for a decade or so thereafter — good manners were an integral part of social intercourse in this country. They were certainly an issue at home, as well as at school — at Hobart High School and the other schools I attended — as an integral part of civilised behaviour and to be ill-mannered was to incur the displeasure of teachers and ordinary citizens alike. For example, adult citizens would often report ill-mannered behaviour to the school the uniform of which the student concerned was wearing. Now, sadly, it seems that attention to good manners at the school level may be the exception rather than the rule.
When in Melbourne I too use the tram system, especially for travel in and around the city and adjacent areas, because it is quick and economical to do so. However, when one offers one’s seat to a woman or elderly man, the person concerned is mostly grateful but also surprised and often even embarrassed. The other passengers, especially those under the age of about forty seem, by their furtive glances, to consider one some kind of pervert or pariah. I imagine it to be the kind of reaction that would be evoked by breaking wind — loudly — at a Buckingham Palace reception.
Simplistic nonsense
I have heard it argued that the decline in manners bears a direct relationship to the emergence of the women’s movement. In other words, independent women do not need male help of the kind canvassed above. I think that is arrant, simplistic nonsense. I am sure the women’s movement is about more substantive matters than courtesies from men, boys, girls or indeed other women. My own inadvertent mini-survey involved separate occasions when I assisted two well known feminists, whom I have not otherwise met, to retrieve their hand luggage from the overhead lockers on aircraft. Both of them were charming and gracious in their responses. They may also be feisty and independent but they are not crude or ungrateful in response to a simple courtesy.
No, I believe the decline of manners is a reflection of social change generally. People of my age grew up in a gentler, more measured, perhaps more courtly, society. By today’s standards our cities were then towns — irrespective of the actual number of citizens — and those citizens had more time for each other. Despite all the positive advances, contemporary society seems — perhaps inevitably — faster, more competitive, less personalised than those which preceded it.
And, so, we get the checkout girl in a country supermarket taking a private mobile phone call with arrogant disregard for the queue of waiting customers, as I observed recently; we get people, some young and some old enough to know better, pushing into queues in front of elderly people who had been waiting patiently for some time; and we get able-bodied people ambling past women struggling alone with heavy loads as they seek to enter or leave buildings or public transport.
For all that, however, there are a lot of very kind, courteous, decent young people about. It’s just that they seem to be declining in number relative to the discourteous types. If there is a trend here let’s hope that it can be reversed. However, any such reversal must happen first in the home because the public education system seems to have stepped back from the social graces and much else as well — including sport as an integral part of school activity.
