The power of good manners
A month or so ago a survey set everyone to talking about how rude Americans have become. We’re a nation of impatient, impertinent, ignorant idiots ready to push our way around and through the next guy. Few people doubted the survey’s results.
Let’s just hope as many people take this bit of news just as serious.
The Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine this week published a report by researchers from the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group on a program that involved 350 students, along with their teachers and parents, from 18 Seattle schools located in high crime areas. Some children took part in the program through elementary school in the 1980s, while others did not and served as the comparison group.
Those kids enrolled in the program were taught by their teachers how to control impulses, get what they wanted without acting aggressively and to recognize that others have feelings.
Researchers found that these kids are now young adults who, in addition to earning better grades and getting along better other kids as expected, also had substantially fewer teen pregnancies.
Imagine that. Teaching what amounts to good manners to children has a lasting impact on choices they make in respecting themselves and others.