I just find it very difficult to imagine how such an elective c1ass could be implemented or taken seriously by students. If you live in a very culturally diverse region, you could get conflicting forms of etiquette. For example, eye contact may be deemed polite in certain cultures while in others it could be considered rude. Hand motions while talking is another example - some people are very expressive with their hands or through their facial gestures during a conversation, while others see it as improper. Say you try to teach as many forms of etiquette as you can in your class - do you think you would be doing justice to all cultures? There will probably be complaints of favoritism or bias.(1)I can even see some people claiming that such a program indoctrinates kids or young adults (in the extreme case), which will not sit well with a lot of people. (2)
While your suggestion has good intentions I don't think you could pull it off in a c1assroom. I think we could both agree that people are the partially the product of their environment, which includes your home-life and the society you live in. I think in the vast majority of cases, people are in a better position to learn about what is valued from their family or city/region/country. (3)Come to think of it, now more than ever, people are connected (via the internet for example) and have greater access to information from various sources to learn about these things on their own to prevent being stuck with a certain mindset. (4)
Life (understood through individual experience) is the best teacher. I know from first han d experience that children know their parents' faults and strengths from a very young age. Bad habits, say in the form of poor manners, are not perpetuated from generation to generation as easily. Couple that with the fact that different types of people are not as isolated as they once were in the past and you have a natural system in place to modify behavior. (5)
I am not sure if any of this makes sense or is cogent - I am a bit tired :P
entropyecho
It's all good, you brought up many valid points :)
1. You can only teach so much in any given class on any given topic. Personally I've never been in a class where the teacher/lecturer/professor cover all of the class materials. One way to circumvent it is to offer different classes for different culture/geographical locations/religion
2. Teaching science at school doesn't sit well with a lot of religious folks either. That doesn't mean we shouldn't teach science because some folks find it offensive
3. Yes that much I agree, and having a proper education could further ones ability to analyze and think critically. Not to say people who didn't go to school couldn't have done so, but schooling should further cultivate ones ability in that regard, plus learning new things that one's immediate family or place of residence isn't able to offer otherwise
4. True. Interweb has given us much and it becomes much easier to learn about different things all thanks to it. Many schools has even offer online courses for those who can't attend in person due to various reasons. However, oneissue Ihave with online learning(at least for now) is that it doesn't really offer you the real world interaction one would gain otherwise in person. Knowledge wise, online learning really isn't lacking much vs in person learning imo. But the interaction between students and instructor is something online learning just couldn't be replace, at least not yet
5. I pretty much agree with everything you said in this last paragraph, but am not sure how it is relevant with what we are discussing here :P. I would say that some people are more observant and keen to pick up on implicit messages than others. Some people are just clueless about it. Again, I agree that teh interweb make knowledge-base learning easier, but I'm not entirely sure if the same can be said of learning socially acceptablebehavior. If anything, just by browsing through some sites and look at the comments people left there people actually treat it as a place to "become what they want to be" instead of "become better than what they are"... two very different mindset. Instead of treating it a place to learn, I'm sensing people are treating it place to have fun and relieve stress, which is what I am doing here :P
Of course, there's no study to support anything I've said here, and the hope of it being verified through empirical study is fairly slim at the moment, but learning etiquette is something I see people really need to exert much effort on... sometimes its difficult to do what's right in one's opinion while no one agrees with him/her, and I definitely think that being well manner and having proper etiquette qualified as such
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