Czechs get a lesson in good manners

The Czech Republic's public broadcaster Czech Television is showing a program, which tries to teach Czechs good manners. It seems Czechs need to brush up their etiquette? So have the twists and turns of the country's modern history taken their toll on the country's manners? Radio Prague's Ian Willoughby has been finding out.

"Our world prepares a lot of new situations and we need to know how to handle them. Our life is very fast; we eat during the social occasions more and more often. And we also have more time to socialise, and not only with family members or good friends. We want to know how, where and when to invite our colleagues, and maybe even bosses."

Jarmila Skopalova, the producer of the new programme, explains why Czech Television felt the time was right to help improve the country's manners. Many people in the Czech Republic say that Czechs, who pride themselves on their nation's sophistication during the inter-war period, lost some of their social graces thanks to the malign influence of communism. Philosophy professor Erazim Kohak says that is a myth.

"I would not say that, not because I'm any friend of what happened here after the communist takeover. There were many changes. There was the period in the early 50s in which the gross discourtesy which was common in this country towards working people was replaced by discourtesy to the middle class. I'm not sure that this was a desirable change, but I think to think of it as somehow a destruction of common morality is a lack of perspective. I can show you documents from ancient Egypt, 3,000 years before Christ, in which old men complain about the deterioration of manners."

In the first programme in the series the presenter brought up the subject of drinking. On social occasions one should drink just a little or not at all, he said. That's something, which may not go down too well with Czechs, who are fond of a drink. But it may say something about why the programme exists; as Professor Kohak points out, the Czech Republic has oriented itself towards the United States and Western Europe since the Velvet Revolution.

"I think what Czech Television is doing more is introducing normal Western patterns of behaviour to a country which has patterns of its own. I'm not thinking simply of things like our habit of taking off our shoes before we come into somebody's house, which I consider much more civilised. But it's not Western European."

Do the Czechs need Western European manners, so to speak?

"If we are going to interact with West Europeans I think it's very useful to be able to function normally in a situation."

Czech Television is planning to run the "etiquette" programme every week until the end of the year at prime time on Saturday evening