Ailantha
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Down With Penmanship!  Off With Its Head!

8/23/2015

4 Comments

 
     This post appeared on my Facebook page a few days ago:
Picture
    In truth I was unaware that, in deference to the electronic age we live in, the schools in this country are phasing out the teaching of cursive in elementary school in favor of just showing the kids how to print and then being done with the whole handwriting thing.
    But apparently there are some traditionalists out there who believe that learning to pen those curved, loopy letters as a means of human communication should continue to be part of the standard academic curriculum.
     Not me.  I celebrate the demise of cursive.   And not just for the sake of future generations of young children who might be spared my childhood travails,  but from the satisfaction derived from seeing an old nemesis vanquished.
     Back in the late 1950's to mid 1960's when I was an elementary school student penmanship, or the art of fine handwriting, was an academic subject held at the same level of importance as Reading Arithmatic, History, Geography, Science,  English and every other required field of knowledge or skill.  We were taught the Palmer method,  the goal of which was for us to learn to reproduce on paper  those graceful glyphs which at the time bordered the top of every blackboard in every school in the country.

    Occasionally they float through   the background scenery in my "still-in-school-and don't-have-my assignment-done" nightmares (see post from 9/15/2014 and 9/16/2014).
Picture
     Alas, I could not conquer the Palmer method.  No matter how I practiced - and I practiced a lot - my letters constantly strayed from their axis, listed left and right, dipped above and below the line, the lines separating and the loops closing, the whole mess smeared with the erasure marks or cross-outs of my many futile attempts.
     It would be over half a century later before it would be revealed to me that my inability with a writing utensil was likely due to a congenital weakness in the first joint of the index finger of my right hand.  At the time the weakness in my joint was, I believed, perceived as a weakness in my character.  In any case, I was pronounced sloppy. 
    As with occasional rowdy behavior, boys could better get away with rowdy handwriting;  boys weren't realistically expected to behave all the time or have neat handwriting.  Girls were expected expected to do both.  All the time.  Good girls didn't get into trouble at school and, unfortunately, bad handwriting could get a girl into trouble back then, earning a public reprimand, even a smack on the hand with a ruler, and definitely a bad academic reputation. I believed that my teachers took my bad handwriting and sloppy papers personally.  But they were just doing their job.
    Nor, apparently, was was my experience based on the fact that I went to a Catholic school;  my husband Tom, who went  public school, once told me that in elementary school his handwriting was so extremely beyond the acceptable pale that he was sent down to the principal's office and pronounced (but fortunately, only temporaily) learning disabled.
   But then high school came along for which I went to a private college preparatory girls' school where all of a sudden nobody cared about handwriting anymore.  I marveled at the smart, high-achieving girls in my class whose handwriting was even worse than mine.  I'm sure nobody even knew I had awful handwriting because nobody seemed to notice mine the way I noticed everybody else's.  Classmates, teachers, nobody seemed to care about my handwriting.  It was liberating.

     To this day nobody cares day about my handwriting.
Picture
   And so, in answer to the question posed on the above Facebook post as to whether we should keep cursive writing alive in the schools I say, nay I shout,  "The tyrant cursive is overthrown!  Long live the keyboard!"
4 Comments
Romaine
8/24/2015 02:43:07 am

I myself am sad to learn that cursive will soon be a thing of the past. I can understand your dislike of it due to early childhood experiences. Personally I find the whole act of writing to be an extremely interesting sensory experience. I'm very particular about the pens and pencils I use because each provides a different type of sensory experience as it glides along the paper. I've eschewed laptops for notebooks when I attend meetings throughout my career because I so prefer writing to typing.

Reply
Patti
8/24/2015 02:59:01 am

Well, I can understand that, because you are, after all an artist. I think cursive writing really is more related to art. They should maybe at least keep it in the schools as an art subject. Of course I can appreciate beautiful calligraphy as much as anybody. I guess I should also admit that I write as little as possible anymore so as not to aggravate the arthritis in my hand, so I guess I'm sort of biased towards typing for that reason.

Reply
Marianne
8/25/2015 11:04:04 pm

RomIne, I understand your experience, and another advantage to writing notes is, according to some studies, you remember more of what you wrote as opposed to typed.
I understand Patti's point, and letting go of Palmer makes great sense. I am concerned that schools don't spend time on letter formation and printing: surely kids need to know how to words on paper--I volunteer in a first grad classroom, the kids are supposed to be writing stories but they can't write a legible letter

Reply
Noah C. Johnson
9/13/2021 11:00:22 am

yes, it is a great thing that cursive is vanishing form the curriculum. CURSIVE SHOULD BE OFFERED BUT NEVER REQUIRED. Cursive is no more relevant then Latin, and in my opinion less interesting. It should be an elective. there are just not enough good reasons for it to be compulsory, but there more then enough for it to be offered, on the understanding and acceptance of the fact that many people will say no, but the interested will say yes. of course, I am a believer in the principle of a society that values freedom, so my default position on everything is that people are allowed to do something if they want to, but under no circumstance should they be mandated to do it; I require significant evidence to sway from that position, indeed if that is not how you are, there is no place for you in a society that values freedom. but anyway, Cursive has no role in modern life, and by the time anyone who is in school now is old enough to be employed, it will have even less of one; the arguments cursive proponents use can be debunked as follows:
• 1. the general benefits argument: its benefits are wholly unproven, no study has even proven benefits of cursive specifically, the closest is demonstrating that handwriting generally has some benefits, but no distinction between cursive and print; I have read dozens of studies about the issue, and none back up cursive when you read what they actually say. every study cursive proponents quote turns out to be either misquoted, taken out of context, overtly lied about, or cites a source that engages in this behavior. often they do not cite the anything at all. rarely do they articulate what benefits they think cursive has
• 2. the speed argument: this one is based on a flat out distortion of fact if not full blown lies, and it doesn't pass the smell test of truth either; I have found even illegible cursive to be incredibly slow, much more so then print. you want me to believe that adding a bunch of pretentious, ornate, intricate, and gratuitous loops, curls, tails, flourishes and curlicues to letterforms speeds up writing? how could anyone have so little common sense so as to think that? this one is exceptionally stupid, but to be sure, I checked the research, and there are studies that show that cursive can, for some people, but not others, be faster only if legibility is not a concern at all, but those same studies find that legible cursive is significantly slower then legible print, which shouldn't be a surprise given all those ornate loops and curls cursive letterforms have; cursive is much slower compared to print of equal legibility. also I happen to find illegible cursive to be significantly slower then legible print, or even illegible print. did I mention that cursive cannot be written "close enough" (or good enough that you can read the letterforms though they are imperfect), whereas print can, cursive has to be perfected before it can be used
• 3. the historical documents argument: this one is especially ridiculous when you think about it, and let me explain why:
• A. it is possible to know how to read something without being able to write it yourself (for example I can read blackletter and Gaelic Script [which is not even typically used for writing English, though it can be used for that, outside of rare decorative inscriptions in Ireland, and a single house decoration my grandma owned; it never is, and never was; Irish Gaelic, by some accounts an endangered language is what is typically written in Gaelic script], but I will never be able to write either of them myself, in both cases my ability to read them is in fact better than I can read cursive; which I was years ago forced to waste excessive amounts of time learning to write, but no one ever bothered teaching us how to read); indeed many courses in dead languages like Latin focus on being able to understand what is already written in the language, not on being able to speak it or write it yourself
• B. there are thousands of places you can find print versions of America’s founding documents, both hard copy and digital; some of the hard copies are from that era, those versions actually being what most people read, not the “originals”; and changing the font in which words are written does not change the meaning of them; if anyone asks I can show you some of those locations
• C. the cursive versions of those documents are not in ‘modern’ (palmer style) cursive; but instead an older form known as “copperplate”, which is very different; also, the spelling is not the same as is typical today (for instance the constitution contains the words “chuse”, “Pensylvania”, “controul” and “defence” [that is how the document actually spells them]; among others); and they documents use the long s (an archaic form of a letter that cursive classes never mention even exists); add to that the fact that I have seen t

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
     by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
    Picture
    ​"Hail Mary"
    by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
    Picture
    "Tropical Depression" 
    by Patti Liszkay
    ​Buy it on Amazon:   
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    RSS Feed

    I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
    hopefully of interest to my fellow travelers.

    Categories

    All


























































































  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact