Does Emily Post still matter?

October 10^th and 11^th, I had the privilege to go to the North American Montessori Teachers’ Association (NAMTA) conference on Grace and Courtesy.  It was a wonderful reminder of the integral role these lessons play in the creation and maintenance of a Montessori community, and of the important role that all adults have in the development of the moral and social life of the child.

When I left the conference, I was struck, more than anything else, by the necessity of teaching grace and courtesy and the impact that these simple lessons can have.  After all, grace and courtesy are the foundation of all human life, and are incredibly important to work at during all stages of life, including adulthood. 

Looking back over my album work, I came across a few definitions.  As my trainer Kay Baker explained, "grace is the harmony between mind and body… There is a balance between the mind thinking and the hand doing.  It’s something you can feel, a harmony, a balance.  This applies to all aspects of life.”  A quick internet search will yield the etymology of grace, from the Latin gratia meaning a pleasing quality, a favor or goodwill, or gratitude and thanks.  Taken together, these two concepts give us something more, a sense of thankfulness and purposefulness infusing our actions and all that we do.

Courtesy is similar.  Again, according to Kay, “Courtesy is the harmony between oneself and others.”  Its history comes from Old French, curteis, meaning to have courtly manners or bearing.  It implied a good education, and a knowing of how to behave in different social situations.  So courtesy is a knowing of the proper way to behave in a given situation so as to promote peace and harmony between all social players.   Taken together, grace and courtesy form the foundation of a society of peace, where people move through their lives with purpose and thanks, making others feel comfortable, welcomed, respected, and loved.  We do this by understanding and using the customs and manners of our culture.

In our modern world, where so many traditions and formal behaviors seem to have fallen out of practice (does anyone else remember calling their friends’ parents Mr. and Mrs. Panizari instead of just Bob and Donna?), we need to think about the new kinds of interactions we have, and how important it is to teach our children how to behave properly.  It may be socially acceptable now for our children to call adults by their first name, but it isn’t acceptable to post pictures of others on the internet without permission.  These may be things that we understand as adults, but for children, especially elementary aged children, these things need to be explicitly explained and discussed.

Grace and courtesy ultimately foster community.  As technology becomes more and more a part of our everyday lives, we need to be conscious of how it impacts our relationships.  We, as the adults and role models for our children, need to think about how we want our children to interact with technology, the role it should play in our daily lives, and the impact that those decisions will have on our daily interactions with other human beings.  Unless we take the time to consciously create rules of grace and courtesy around our use of technology, we risk losing the value of face to face human interactions.  For example, when in a conversation with another person and you receive a text, what do we do?  What are appropriate times to use a cell phone and what are not?  How does using our phones inhibit relationships? What kind of information can be posted on social media, and what kind of information is best kept private?  Then we need to teach our children how to live kindly within this framework, through lessons of grace and courtesy. 

Mary Hanyok