Unity or manners?

This is a little off my self-imposed beaten path, but Unity Day is on my mind, and this is a potentially less incendiary venue than other social media for committing my thoughts to writing.  When the children brought home notes from school a couple weeks ago, urging them to wear orange on a specific day as a sign of....support(?) for....anti-bullying, I was equal parts annoyed and confused.

Confusion first, and on several fronts.  First, my well-established trope that bullying became the new word for ill-mannered or ill-bred, after those descriptors fell out of fashion.  And bullying appears to be short-hand for "I disagree with you" or "I don't like what you said".  Children know that adults get all excited when they start tossing around the b-word, and most children are smart enough to use that to their personal advantages.  So, the word appears to be a poor vehicle for conveying what appear to be good intentions.  Ill manners should be addressed.

Second, I'm confused that only one day out of the year should be devoted to celebrating the imminent demise of/setting aside of/condemning poor manners.  Adaptive social intercourse can hardly be taught or meaningfully modeled in one day.  What about the other three-hundred and sixty-four?  If I really want to punch someone, should I just wait for tomorrow, when Unity Day is over?  Or is every day Unity Day?

Third,  who exactly is in charge of leading the crusade toward civility?  Those of us of a certain age have heard that "good manners begin at home" (no burping at the table, etc) but the race by education in general to both be in loco parentis and to "get parents more involved" leads inevitably to some clashes over turf and over parenting styles (the schools' version and the parents' version).  Finger-pointing, sometimes with different fingers, is fashionable, but hardly addresses the question.  

My annoyance comes from being solicited, and having the children solicited, to signal their approval of the aforementioned flawed thinking by wearing orange.  If they do not have or choose to or remember to wear orange, is that bullying by omission, by disrespecting the idea of anti-bullying?  Follow this line of thought, and you will be in a Gordian knot in no time.  I also do not respect the naive assumption that by creating a behavioral vacuum ("Don't do that") that an adaptive or pro-social behavior automatically fills the void.  The other half of "Don't bully", whatever subjective and personal definition one attaches to "bullying", is "Do this instead."  As good manners are equal parts rehearsed behavior and generalizing concepts of what constitutes good manners, this is hardly a one-day project, nor is it solely a school-based project.

Children, adolescents and adults all reflect what they have practiced most, or what they have been suddenly and meaningfully encouraged to do.  Most of this comes from home, so perhaps encouraging entire families to wear orange all the time would have a more meaningful impact on raising the societal social bar.