The boys at recess. Via Gauis Caecilius @ Flickr.
Ivanyi said he was inspired to start demonstrating what he considers proper etiquette after witnessing the coarse behavior that some of the boys in his classes displayed toward the girls.
“Boys treat girls pretty roughly,” he said. “And there was so much disruption, so I decided to do something about it.”
Ivanyi is pleased with the results of the chivalry training.
“There’s a different tenor in the class, a gravity attached to the girls. They’ve been more feminized in the boys’ eyes,” Ivanyi said. “These girls are reading Jane Austen novels in class. For them, chivalry hasn’t gone out of style.”
Oh god this makes me so uncomfortable. They’ve been more feminized? Implementing different sets of rules for girls and boys will draw attention to the fact that the girls are female. I wish the article expanded on what sort of coarse behavior the boys were engaged in. Groping the girls? Calling them sexual slurs? I don’t know. I do know that the answer to sexual harassment is not more sexism. That the boys treated the girls like dirt was the problem; making them treat the girls like delicate flowers is not the solution.
I understand the man’s frustration with rowdy students. I’m not opposed to teaching kids manners and common courtesy; I wish adults would do so more often. But why must the approach be sexist? Girls and women don’t need chivalry. We need men to stop oppressing us. If boys are mistreating girls because they are girls, they need a dose of feminism.
Oh, GAWD, this brought back memories of Mrs. Spicer, my 9th grade history teacher who had a “chivalry day” where the boys wore jackets and the girls wore skirts…something very similar to this. BARF. I still cringe thinking about it.
If you want your students to treat one another with respect, fine. Teach them about basic human decency and leave gender out of it.
Are we also returning to droit du seigneur?
And if this guy thinks Jane Austen is going to teach the girls how to be dellicate flowers who need a fainting couch nearby at all times, he’s in dreamland.
My high school latin teacher was an 82 yr old nun who spoke about 6 languages fluently and was teaching herself Hebrew. At 82. She loved gory classical poetry. Ultimately she lived in the moment. I wish more people realized that you can teach manners without evoking some romanticized past.
I think teachers should be encouraged to implement super-strict “courtesy” rules in classrooms, but this particular approach seems way off the mark. Like he skipped right past no chewing gum, don’t speak until called on, address teacher by Mr. So-and-so (not Joe), and went right to “stand up when a girl enters the room”? That’s not even something that the most fancy-pantsiest polite older men that I know do. (And I know a few, working in the law.) Stand up when a lady rejoins the table at a meal, maybe, but enters a room?
This is problematic from the standpoint of treating boys and girls differently, but also because if those boys take these manners on the road they’re going to look like they learned civility from a 18th century book and probably get mocked.
What a lack of imagination.
This kind of heightening of differences is beginning to remind me of war time propaganda, and sets the stage for the acceptably masculine boys hating girls because they have to act special to them and the insufficiently masculine boys hating girls because they see the girls getting special protection while they remain open to high school predation.
Ugh. Also this idea that there’s “a gravity attached to the girls”? Just, yuck. This feels too much like training boys to be the Nice Guys ™ that we’ve all come to know and despise as adults.
Hmm, I think this is just going to make the boys more resentful of the girls in the long run. They’ll feel like they’re putting in extra work while the “lazy,” “ungrateful” girls benefit and nothing breeds resentment like feeling like you’re going the extra mile while getting nothing in return.
I also doubt that most of the boys take any of this standing up when a girl enters the room, etc. shtick beyond the one teacher’s classroom. (I’m guessing these students are at least middle school age, and are switching classes ala most American schools.) In fact, I wonder if the girls in some of these boys’ following classes get double the bullying as a result of this teacher’s policies. He doesn’t see it anymore so they mustn’t ever do it anymore, right?
Why do respect and civility have to be so strictly gendered? I truly dislike the notion that boys should learn one set of manners/behaviour and girls should learn a different set. That causes at least as many problems than it solves.
This is enraging to me for some reason that I can’t put my finger on. To me, the whole point of having manners is to treat others the way you would want to be treated. I also think people should see each other as equals on a base level (e.g., if a guy getting on my elevator has a ton of stuff in his hands, I will push the button for him, and I certainly don’t mind when people do that for me). So, separating the class into haves and have-nots seems counter to that proposition. Why not just teach all of the students to hold the door for everyone, regardless of gender?
[...] The Pursuit of Harpyness: I wonder what the girls have to do in exchange… [...]
To me, the whole point of having manners is to treat others the way you would want to be treated.
Yes! It’s not about dividing up the world into classes of people, some of whom should be deferred to and some of whom shouldn’t; it’s about treating every person you meet as an actual human being, just like you are.
I appreciate that he had a problem with the prior treatment but it leaves a stale taste in my mind that makes me wonder why he is so far off the mark on his tactics.
How is this “practical ettiquette”? Anyone I know would definitely classify it as “the white-glove, snobby kind.” And the part at the end about parents calling to make sure their daughters say thank you- ew. Just ew. Condescend some more, why don’t you?
Is he teaching the boys how to joust, too?
To this day I HATE people opening doors for me (I mean some will stand there when I’m 50 feet away and I feel as if I have to hurry up), yet I do feel guilty as a man not opening for women. I know I shouldn’t feel that way. Must be my 60′s conditioning.
This is an issue I frequently find myself fervently arguing with other women. In the end I’m way too passionate and they think I am crazy. But I truly do not understand why so many people (trust me, it’s not just this guy, though the standing up upon a lady’s entrance is a new one for me) still think of manners in terms of gentleman vs. lady. My brain explodes constantly when people try to explain why they like this form of manners.
Honestly I wish some people would just out and out say “I like feeling masculine/feminine in this context.” Which doesn’t work for me, but I think is the true issue.