LETTERS: We often associate politeness with behaviour, such as saying "please", "thank you" or "excuse me".
So too like holding a door open for someone with their hands full at the supermarket and convenience stores or helping clear the table after meals at the restaurant.
Such gestures are appreciated by everyone. However, manners are more than words or actions.
They are a deliberate way to show respect, care, gratefulness, or remorse and are essential social abilities to build, maintain relationships, or behave in a civil manner.
It is sad to observe that many among the younger generation lack manners, though older people neglect it too.
Our younger generation may be seen making numerous critical remarks on social media sites about teachers' or lecturers' teaching techniques if they dislike them.
Some educators are doing the same too about their students' attitude and that is even sadder. Freedom to speak leads them to become unethical.
Does this show that the education syllabus has failed to play its part to produce a polite generation and strengthen our soft skills?
To all educators, as students become sharp observers and do exactly what the mature persons and superiors do, we must be aware of our behaviour. Educate, show and encourage them with good examples.
Model the behaviour we want from them and be clear of our expectations. Talk to them about the consequences they may face and the benefits of having good manners.
It is important to teach them how to communicate, interact and respond to others in a polite and kind manner. One method that works well with the youngsters — praise publicly, criticise privately.
Saying thank you for attending classes or conferences, asking for permission to postpone a class due to emergency cases, or even responding to their questions within working hours are good examples to teach the younger generation manners through words and actions besides respecting other individual's valuable time.
We might even see positive improvements in the near future.
For instance, they will inform us earlier if they could not attend classes instead of going missing-in-action (MIA), become transparent and honest if they cannot commit to a group task or discussion or tell their teachers or lecturers if they are unable to hand in homework or assignments on time owing to unforeseen circumstances.
Neither teachers nor lecturers are encouraging students to create excuses but merely enabling them to comprehend about responsibility, empathy and politeness.
Without realising it, they might have learnt how to be courteous and discard the bad habits.
Manners do reflect who you are but it stresses more on how manners make us human. Putting empathy, politeness, respect and responsibility in oneself develops a strong personality in every human and that minimises the possibility of having a person go astray.
We have to keep reminding ourselves that some were just raised differently. Parents or guardians have a wish in ensuring that their children have the best education and become a good person.
So, educators also could play their role as facilitators to assist parents to achieve their dreams.
This continuous process will give our society honest, trustworthy, patriotic, faithful, engaging and ethical human beings and that day will be the realisation of our dreams in a very real sense.
Thus, stop looking out for the youngsters' fault. Hold their hands and show them how to become a better generation, with good manners. Tomorrow, they will pass this on to the next cohort.
NURULADILAH MOHAMED
Akademi Pengajian Bahasa,
Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM)
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times