Bringing education to the tableby Howard Goodman | Commentary
When you pick up the knife -- with the right hand, of course -- you place your palm over the handle and your forefinger on the top of the blade. That finger on top allows you to press firmly in the event the knife is dull or the meat tough.
While you're chewing, you place your knife and fork on your plate in the so-called resting position. That is, you arrange the utensils in a cross, with the fork face down, the tines bridging the knife.
So much I never knew!
And to think I'd learn it by watching fifth-graders in one of the lowest-income elementary schools in Palm Beach County.
We're in Rebecca Hinson's class on the Art of Table Manners. The art teacher at South Grade Elementary in Lake Worth has put away the paints and pottery. She's dimmed the lights, piped in soft piano music and laid out a lace tablecloth.
One by one, over the past few days, her five fifth-grade classes have been coming in for high tea.
This, in a section of Lake Worth that no one would confuse with the town of Palm Beach.
In this neighborhood, people don't read French on the menus. They speak Spanish, Creole and Guatemalan languages at home.
Some 97 percent of the kids get federally funded free lunches -- the highest proportion of any school in the county's coastal areas, said Principal Michael Riley.
The teaching staff here doesn't think any of that is reason for them to think small.
"We want them to go to college," Hinson said, "and when they get there, we want them to fit in. We don't want them going to Duke, Harvard and Stanford not knowing the proper way to behave."
Table etiquette is not a subject that Hinson's students were exactly dying to learn.
Let's face it. For most kids, dinner manners mainly involve whether it's proper to grab the remote with greasy fingers.
"The boys especially are always saying to me, `I'm never going to use that,'" Hinson said.
She tells them they never know. When they're older, they might be invited to a wedding. Or expected to make a toast as a best man. Or taken to lunch on a job interview.
"They need to know these things," said Hinson.
She is no socialite herself. She grew up, she says, on the wrong side of the tracks in a small South Carolina town. A single mother, she works two jobs ("so I can afford to be a teacher").
As she sees it, learning the proper way to use a knife, fork and napkin isn't a frill. It's an essential life skill.
"In order to dig yourself out of poverty," she said, "you have to know what to do in special settings."
We've got a school system obsessed with teaching the three Rs. At South Grade, at least, students are also taught to mind their Ps and Qs.
"We must teach our youth to respect themselves and others," Riley said. Table manners are a way of doing that. But not the only one.
At South Grade, little kids will hold the door for you and say "Please" and "Thank you." That's no accident.
The school runs an array of character-building programs. Kids are encouraged to deplore bullies and celebrate random acts of kindness.
A little after 1 p.m., kids are filing into Hinson's room. They're gingerly taking seats at a long table set out with three-deck silver trays.
English muffins with ham and melted cheese on the bottom tray. Chocolate-covered cream puffs in the middle. Strawberries on top.
Very proper.
The 19 kids in Wednesday's session all had passed a test based on Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers by Walter Hoving, a former Tiffany & Co. chairman. But they look nervous, like they're afraid of breaking something.
Hinson gives instructions: Unfold the napkin and put it in your lap. Hold the serving spoon and fork in the palm of each hand and serve yourself two cream puffs and two strawberries. Cut the strawberry in pieces around the stem.
It's a lot to keep straight.
I soon spot Cordarius Joseph eating a strawberry with (horrors!) his fingers. Claudeson Azurin holding his fork with the (egad!) tines facing up.
Monique Horne, on the other hand, daintily finishes off her English muffin like a natural. She's a singer.
She says this stuff might come in handy "when I'm older, or if I become famous."
Before long, lots of kids are standing up and, following Hinson's example, giving toasts.
Kevin Bradlow, a glass of fruit punch aloft, toasts Hinson as his "best teacher."
"I'll miss her in the sixth grade," he says.
I know. There's something inherently silly about a course in table manners.
We've always made fun, in America, of hoity-toity types who jut their pinky fingers while drinking tea. Our movies are filled with stuck-up debutantes getting their comeuppance, snobs in top hats brought to earth by Joe Average.
But if you ask me, this course is a pretty good testament to the American ideal of social mobility.
Every one of these kids, this course is saying, can rise above their backgrounds. Go places. Be somebody.
Every one is capable of someday eating at the Ritz.
While you're chewing, you place your knife and fork on your plate in the so-called resting position. That is, you arrange the utensils in a cross, with the fork face down, the tines bridging the knife.
So much I never knew!
And to think I'd learn it by watching fifth-graders in one of the lowest-income elementary schools in Palm Beach County.
We're in Rebecca Hinson's class on the Art of Table Manners. The art teacher at South Grade Elementary in Lake Worth has put away the paints and pottery. She's dimmed the lights, piped in soft piano music and laid out a lace tablecloth.
One by one, over the past few days, her five fifth-grade classes have been coming in for high tea.
This, in a section of Lake Worth that no one would confuse with the town of Palm Beach.
In this neighborhood, people don't read French on the menus. They speak Spanish, Creole and Guatemalan languages at home.
Some 97 percent of the kids get federally funded free lunches -- the highest proportion of any school in the county's coastal areas, said Principal Michael Riley.
The teaching staff here doesn't think any of that is reason for them to think small.
"We want them to go to college," Hinson said, "and when they get there, we want them to fit in. We don't want them going to Duke, Harvard and Stanford not knowing the proper way to behave."
Table etiquette is not a subject that Hinson's students were exactly dying to learn.
Let's face it. For most kids, dinner manners mainly involve whether it's proper to grab the remote with greasy fingers.
"The boys especially are always saying to me, `I'm never going to use that,'" Hinson said.
She tells them they never know. When they're older, they might be invited to a wedding. Or expected to make a toast as a best man. Or taken to lunch on a job interview.
"They need to know these things," said Hinson.
She is no socialite herself. She grew up, she says, on the wrong side of the tracks in a small South Carolina town. A single mother, she works two jobs ("so I can afford to be a teacher").
As she sees it, learning the proper way to use a knife, fork and napkin isn't a frill. It's an essential life skill.
"In order to dig yourself out of poverty," she said, "you have to know what to do in special settings."
We've got a school system obsessed with teaching the three Rs. At South Grade, at least, students are also taught to mind their Ps and Qs.
"We must teach our youth to respect themselves and others," Riley said. Table manners are a way of doing that. But not the only one.
At South Grade, little kids will hold the door for you and say "Please" and "Thank you." That's no accident.
The school runs an array of character-building programs. Kids are encouraged to deplore bullies and celebrate random acts of kindness.
A little after 1 p.m., kids are filing into Hinson's room. They're gingerly taking seats at a long table set out with three-deck silver trays.
English muffins with ham and melted cheese on the bottom tray. Chocolate-covered cream puffs in the middle. Strawberries on top.
Very proper.
The 19 kids in Wednesday's session all had passed a test based on Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers by Walter Hoving, a former Tiffany & Co. chairman. But they look nervous, like they're afraid of breaking something.
Hinson gives instructions: Unfold the napkin and put it in your lap. Hold the serving spoon and fork in the palm of each hand and serve yourself two cream puffs and two strawberries. Cut the strawberry in pieces around the stem.
It's a lot to keep straight.
I soon spot Cordarius Joseph eating a strawberry with (horrors!) his fingers. Claudeson Azurin holding his fork with the (egad!) tines facing up.
Monique Horne, on the other hand, daintily finishes off her English muffin like a natural. She's a singer.
She says this stuff might come in handy "when I'm older, or if I become famous."
Before long, lots of kids are standing up and, following Hinson's example, giving toasts.
Kevin Bradlow, a glass of fruit punch aloft, toasts Hinson as his "best teacher."
"I'll miss her in the sixth grade," he says.
I know. There's something inherently silly about a course in table manners.
We've always made fun, in America, of hoity-toity types who jut their pinky fingers while drinking tea. Our movies are filled with stuck-up debutantes getting their comeuppance, snobs in top hats brought to earth by Joe Average.
But if you ask me, this course is a pretty good testament to the American ideal of social mobility.
Every one of these kids, this course is saying, can rise above their backgrounds. Go places. Be somebody.
Every one is capable of someday eating at the Ritz.
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