Fayette: I know what my grandma would say

By Jill Howard Church

My grandmother, like many Southern ladies her age, had a colorful way of expressing herself. For all of the 44 years I knew her, it was like having our own Polly Holliday in the family, although she was more genteel. She exhorted you to eat her grits, not kiss them.

But whenever she heard me, my brother or my cousins say something rude or unkind, she would lower her gaze to ours and say softly but firmly, “Don’t be ugly.” She never raised her voice or her hand to us, but she made it clear when our conduct wasn’t acceptable, and held adults to similar standards. You could disagree with or dislike someone, but you mustn’t “be ugly” about what you said. She seemed determined to practice what her Baptist minister preached, and did so for 94 years.

Her words come back to me a lot lately as I see and hear so much rancor around town: “Tea parties” of the decidedly unsweet variety, insults traded online, and the astonishing refusal to show President Barack Obama’s back-to-school talk, not just in Fayette County but elsewhere in a state whose average SAT scores are among the lowest in the nation.

Much of what my grandmother espoused, both as a person and as a teacher who spent 30 years in a small-town elementary school, is reflected in Georgia’s “character education” program. This supplemental curriculum aims to offer children lessons that “help them develop their beliefs about what is right and good.” Granted, those concepts can be subjective, but with political and religious rhetoric getting so out of hand, perhaps it’s the adults who need to get with the program. That can be hard when you have strong feelings about things, but shouldn’t informed debate and critical thinking define both democracy and maturity?

The Georgia character curriculum talks about such things as courtesy, moderation, cooperation, self-control and that which seems to be most elusive, tolerance, which is defined by the Department of Education as “indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own.” I can’t help but wonder how our children could possibly be learning these things when they see so many adults ignoring them. If our children behaved in class the way some adults behave at town hall meetings, we’d call them brats, question their upbringing and march them to detention. Instead of learning to listen before they speak, think before they act and consider before they condemn, they’re learning life is a shouting match, even in the U.S. Congress.

After Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift on stage at the MTV awards, Jay Leno asked him what his late mother would have thought about his outburst. He tearfully acknowledged that she would have disapproved. Maybe we need a similar standard for public conduct in Fayette and beyond. It’s fine to ask “What Would Jesus Do?” But I’d add to that, “What would Grandma say?” I know what mine would reply: “Don’t be ugly.”

Jill Howard Church, a freelance writer, has lived in Fayette County since 1994.