HARTSVILLE, S.C. — Of the many places to learn the nuances of traditional Thanksgiving etiquette, none are quite like Wardie Sanders' high school classroom.
In this small Southern town, home to a Fortune 500 company, 30 Baptist churches and acres of cotton fields, Sanders has for 16 years taught seniors in her history class at Hartsville High how to eat a proper Thanksgiving meal.
First period Monday morning this week was no different. Desks had been pushed together to make tables. Her family silver, including her late mother's silver goblets in the Francis I pattern, was laid out in proper formation. Place cards were read. Napkins fluttered to laps. The 29 students spent the next hour eating turkey and making polite conversation.
"It's a lost art we must carry on," Sanders said as she made last-minute adjustments to butter knives and plate chargers. "There's got to be civility."
Sanders is a warm and energetic traditionalist. Gentlemen should button their blazers when they stand to greet someone. Salt and pepper shakers are passed in pairs and set politely near whomever asked for them. She preaches the gospel of inclusion through manners, and her students are willing disciples.
"It's about respect," said Brian Youngblood, 17. "This is how we got here as a civilization, so if we don't learn this, we're not going to evolve."
At a time when cultural disruption seems to be winning an epic battle with tradition and there is no shortage of people willing to argue that table etiquette is as anachronistic as a rotary phone, some experts say the art of the table must be modernized to appeal to a generation that cares more about how people feel than how things look. Even the role of the cellphone is being reconsidered.
Sanders would not disagree with those experts, because that would not be polite. Besides, they can all agree that graciousness and hospitality build the framework for good manners. But upholding the traditions of the Southern table is something she takes very seriously. It is a quest driven by details.
"Every year we have some children who have never seen a table set properly and they call silver 'aluminum,' " she said.
Steven Petrow, the author of five etiquette books, is more of a modernist. "Good manners are not about the fork you use or the way the table is set," he said. "It's about being aware of those around you and being respectful and engaging."
Thanksgiving in particular can be a forced march through superficiality, with too much emphasis on floral arrangements and place settings, Petrow said. Teenagers and young millennials can find the emphasis on mechanics off-putting.
He interviewed a couple of dozen people under the age of 18 for the Thanksgiving edition of the Digital Life column he writes for USA Today. A leading complaint, he said, was that adults at the table don't talk to them about anything relevant to the teenagers' lives.
"Imagine if the relatives spent a fraction of the time they spent on the flowers thinking about how can they engage everyone at the table," Petrow said.
Lizzie Post, whose great-great-grandmother was Emily Post and who shares her views about manners in the Awesome Etiquette podcast, is also a manners evolutionist. For traditional manners to survive, adults need to do a better job explaining to young people that etiquette is really about consideration, respect and honesty, she said. The goal is to make the table a comfortable place for everyone.
Describing why things are done a certain way can melt resistance.
"It really changes for people when you start to explain that 99 percent of our Western dining style comes from practicality," Post said. "Remind them that table manners exist because we need to find a pleasant way to do this gross thing called eating."
One chews with a closed mouth so the people around you won't lose their appetites. Napkins go beside the plate and then onto the lap so food doesn't get transferred to the chair and then to one's clothes. Placing the knife to the right with the blade facing toward the plate is a throwback to the days when people brought their own knives, sharp ones, to the table.
"Tell them it's like 'Game of Thrones,'" she advised. "In the days when a fight could possibly break out at the table, you wanted your knife closest to your dominant hand." (A point that is not lost within the modern family.)
Etiquette can even include the use of mobile phones at the table. In August, the Pew Research Center released a study of American attitudes toward the proper use of cellphones and smartphones.
More than three quarters of the people who own them (and that is 92 percent of Americans) say they rarely or never turn them off. And 88 percent said it wasn't OK to use them at the table. But increasingly, people are using cellphones to enrich or enhance a social situation; something that actually translates well to the Thanksgiving table, said Lee Rainie, the director of Internet, science and technology research at the Pew Research Center.
"It's a much more nuanced picture than the one in which everyone is wringing their hands and saying the world is going to hell," Rainie said.
Perhaps a dinner guest casually wonders aloud which state produces the most sweet potatoes. A nimble cellphone user could produce the answer: North Carolina.
"A quick search of a pertinent fact can enhance the conversation," Rainie said. One can text Grandmother a photo of everyone at the table, or even use FaceTime to include a faraway family member, he said. The polite approach is necessary, though. Ask if anyone minds that a cellphone be employed to better the experience for everyone at the table.
Post loves the idea of texting a relative a photo of the table. But there are limits. "It's not that we want to exclude Grandma from the meal, but do we want to FaceTime her while we are chewing?" she said.
On Monday, Sanders deliberately refrained from discussing cellphone use as she took students through the finer points of a proper Thanksgiving. "I want to see if they chew gum and if they remember to put their napkins on their laps, too," she said.
The students passed each test. Not one cellphone or piece of gum could be seen, and all laps were properly covered.
She held her first formal classroom Thanksgiving meal in 1999 after a student told her she wasn't going to be able to have Thanksgiving because she was going to be out of town for a sporting event. Soon, the event became a formal study in manners and a highlight for the students, who are part of the school's international baccalaureate program.
The students' relationship to the table is varied. Some grew up drilled on the finer points of Southern etiquette. Others rarely eat together, even at Thanksgiving. But not a single one on Monday said they regretted taking time from their lessons on the Cuban missile crisis to learn the placement of a dessert fork.
Manners, it turns out, really matter to the young. "When I know what I'm doing," said Kiisha Hilliard, a 17-year-old on her way to the University of South Carolina, "I can just relax."