They sat down primly in front of gold-trimmed china laid out on a bed of white linen. In the ornate dining room at Manhattan’s opulent Park Lane Hotel, the silverware gleamed under a crystal chandelier. A waiter in a single-breasted tuxedo jacket and bow tie promptly served consume.
The setting looked fit for a state visit, but the decadent luncheon was actually held for 16 elementary-schoolers, who begrudgingly followed their parents” wishes and attended Mila Bloch’s Introductory Etiquette and Dining Skills class. While the children typically spend Sundays observing the slovenly state of America’s manners on television–perhaps best embodied by the belching, pork-noshing Homer Simpson–on this day, their parents forced them to sit in front of an etiquette expert instead of the TV set.
One mother said her German husband suggested the class because his family was shocked by the loutish ways of American children. Another enrolled her daughter to prepare her for an upcoming visit with the grandparents. Still, the parents said, it was not easy to convince their children to sit for manners tutoring.
“She loves the hotel,” said Mary McKenna, a parent of one of the children. “But when she found out we were going for a lesson, she said, ‘Mom, I don’t feel like being fancy.’”
In the latest example of the outsourcing of parental duties, manners classes at hotel ballrooms and four-star restaurants are quickly replacing the family dinner table as the place children learn to sit up straight and chew with their mouths closed.
At one time, etiquette schooling was reserved only for a royal or a Rockefeller, but today some lessons are as inexpensive as $50, while others have adapted to our drive-through society by offering instructions on ordering etiquette and trash disposal pointers for fast food dining.
“Nothing could be more rewarding to a parent than to have someone else compliment them on their child’s good manners,” Bloch said. “Parents spend all this money on music, dance and art lessons. Manners are just the icing on the cake.”
At Bloch’s class, the girls wore Sunday dresses with scuffed black shoes and the boys sported wool sweaters with shirttails messily poking out. Throughout, parents watched on as the pupils practiced the continental style of eating and proper napkin use, which Bloch demonstrated by pinching the napkin with two fingers and gently dabbing the corner of the lips.
The two-hour class, which costs $65, began with a lesson on posture. “We sit with our back up straight and our feet on the ground,” Bloch stressed.
“What happens if our feet don’t touch the ground?” a child named Jeremy interrupted, his legs dangling.
After a lesson on silverware technique, the children clumsily practiced on their chicken fingers and fries, keeping their fork in their left hand and knife in the right, as instructed. One student inadvertently pushed half his fries onto the pressed white tablecloth while cutting his entree. Another unwittingly held a chicken finger in his raised hand as he asked a question about his cutting technique.
“We don’t saw back and forth with the knife, but we cut in one motion,” Bloch reminded as she walked along the table, eyes glancing down at the children. “When finished, we place the tines of the fork facing down on the plate.”
In the parent gallery, few saw future Emily Posts. Instead, several mothers simply expressed hope that they might now take their children out to fancy dinners. “Right now we typically go to places like Burger Heaven,” McKenna said.
But burgers and shakes remained the meal of choice for McKenna’s daughter, Gillian. The strawberry blond first-grader said McDonald’s was still her favorite restaurant.
While etiquette and McDonald’s might sound like a culinary oxymoron to some, Theresa Thomas has incorporated the finer points of Big Mac dining into tutorials at the elegant Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, Calif.
Thomas’s classes for 8- to 12-year-olds offer a slide show, instruction and a three-course meal of skinless chicken breast in light herb sauce finished with sorbet and fresh seasonal berries. Boys are required to wear ties and girls must wear a dress.
While the class resembles life at the manor, its goal is not to transform every child into a blue-blooded elitist. The stated goal is to polish social skills so a child can excel in school and life.
“I remember taking my son to birthday parties and seeing other children uncomfortable in the social setting,” Thomas said. “As a mother, I know I want my kids to be comfortable, to have that advantage.”
The advantage of good manners is something that many job-seeking young adults lack, said Michelle O’Reilly, director of the Connecticut School of Etiquette. Remarkably, the school is receiving an ever-increasing number of requests for etiquette tutoring from college students unsure of how to behave at luncheons and cocktail parties.
“For children to be successful in life, they need to have social skills as well as academic skills,” O’Reilly said. “In fact, they need them even more than academic skills.”
While there has been a dramatic rise in the number of classes that prepare children in case they are invited to Sunday dinner at Buckingham Palace, children should be forewarned that mastering the basics of dining etiquette is not simple, said Stephanie Kent, a junior cotillion instructor in San Diego.
“If you haven’t grown up eating dinner at a table with servants,” Kent said. “It’s very complicated.”
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