Late last week, Lisa told me that one of her students is putting together an article about the art of cursive writing and, more so, about the teaching of cursive writing.
He was looking for sources to interview.
At first glance, I didn’t give the piece much thought – a kind of ‘oh, that’s a quaint idea’ for an assignment. Later, when he was struggling to find sources about the teaching of penmanship, she asked if I would put out a call to my Facebook friends for suggestions.
The art of teaching ‘handwriting,’ it seems, is becoming a lost art form.
This notion was driven home when one of her teacher friends wrote back a story about a recent encounter she had with some high school students on the topic. This teacher was recently proctoring a session of the SAT exam – one of the two pre-eminent college entry tests. There is a section on the test (and I had no idea this was the case) where the students have to write a sentence in cursive and then sign their name.
The problem, in this instance, is that many students in this classroom had never been taught how to write in cursive!
I recall that Paul and his classmates learned handwriting, but it could very well be that his class – the current high school seniors – was the last one in Tennessee to do so. And, upon further review, I learned that as many as 41 states have dropped the requirement from the core curriculum that cursive writing be taught. States can choose to have the practice taught; they just aren’t requiring it.
Clearly, the folks putting together the SAT tests have missed this fact…and they may need to re-write that section of the exam for future generations.
It wasn’t an issue for us, of course, as we were drilled in the art of perfect penmanship. I remember us working on handwriting for day after day, filling out worksheets that are similar to this one I downloaded from superteacherworksheets.com.
One of the fun things I remember about learning cursive writing was comparing ‘straight’ letters to their cursive counterparts. I remember thinking that some – like ‘c,’ ‘o’ and ‘x’ looked very similar to each other (so if your surname was ‘Cox,’ you had it made!).
Others were quite different. I remember thinking about how the cursive ‘z’ looked a lot like a fancy ‘3.’ I remember thinking about how similar the “Bs” and “Ds” were (almost like they were script cousins). And I really liked the loopy ‘J.’
In fact, for years, I perfected a logo-style version of my initials – JG – which I still use on occasion when a document calls for me to provide my initial.
I haven’t seen Paul do his version of a PG and I do wonder where all of this is going for future generations.
The art of check-writing seems to be dying, as we go more and more to online and electronic bill-pay. The practice of writing thank you notes, letters and greeting cards is also becoming less and less common. I hate to think that, one day, ‘e-cards’ would be the standard. But, I know that Lisa seems do enjoy doing Christmas cards less and less each year as our holiday season becomes more and more hectic.
When my friend Bill Cooke moved to S.C., he and I kept up a prodigious letter writing effort during our college years – of course that predated Facebook and email. Even still, in those days we typed our letters instead of handwriting them.
You wonder if documents such as contracts may one day allow for some sort of e-signature to replace the practice of ‘giving your John Hancock’ to someone.
One of my readers needled me a bit after I wrote, somewhat romantically, about “the ‘Stang” a couple weeks ago. I promise that I’m not planning to take my blog down the road to become a nostalgia-filled ‘Remember When’ sort of pursuit.
Still, the article that Lisa’s student is attempting to write did prompt some thinking on my part. I wonder where the art of perfect penmanship is going to go in the near future if no one is teaching - and no one is learning – how to do it.
JG
Question of the Day: Do you remember handwriting lessons and, if so, what about them do you remember?
(Source: abcnews.go.com)
Originally posted 10/22/2012
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