Teaching Etiquette at a Think Tank

I’m not sure when I and two colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute started an etiquette seminar for research assistants and interns. As a poll watcher, I was writing about the first poll on presidential greatness, published in 1948 by Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. While doing the research, I stumbled across a book he had written called “Learning How to Behave: A Historical Study of American Etiquette Books.” Intrigued, I read in one sitting the slim 71-page volume that traced four waves of American etiquette.

I thought AEI’s research assistants and interns would be interested in this history, and a colleague suggested adding a demonstration on contemporary dinner-table place settings and a discussion of wine. Thus the seminar and practicum were born. Not only were we interested in how this group of smart young people would react, but we also hoped to learn more about the new world of contemporary manners from them.

There are no hard data of which I’m aware on the state of manners in America, but there is a widespread, long-standing conviction among Americans that things are getting worse. In a 1999 ABC News poll, 73% said that compared to 20 or 30 years ago, most Americans’ manners were worse; only 5% said they were better. In a 2010 Fox News poll, 65% of registered voters reported that they heard more foul language than in the past. Some of this is nostalgia, of course, but these poll findings and others suggest that the public worries about the fraying social fabric, and manners are an especially visible instance of that fraying. Caring about how we treat one another at the dinner table, at work, on the road and on the campaign trail is important, as Schlesinger understood.