Thursday, January 22nd, 2009...10:40 am
What about cursive – and all handwriting for that matter?
I just read this article in the Boston Globe about penmenship. The article discussed both sides of the issue that basically goes like this: nobody writes anymore because everyone types, so teaching penmenship is an archaic use of our educational time vs. penmenship is an ancient art and people need to be able to write and read cursive as a complete, literate person.
I thought this was persuasive and a little sad – the idea that our handwriting was a distinct element of our personality. I know that I have friends whose handwriting I don’t know or recognize. Just the other day I was with a friend who wrote something down with me. I looked at the piece of paper and was shocked that I didn’t know her handwriting. When I was growing up, I knew my friends’ handwrititing as well as I knew their face or their voice. My friend whose handwriting I don’t know: she IMs me and texts me several times a day…
However much you studied your Palmer, though, your “hand” was distinctive – as personal as your voice or laugh. But as typewriters proliferated after World War II, handwriting gradually became less important. Authors typed their manuscripts and students typed their school papers. As telephones became universal, letter-writing virtually disappeared. In the e-mail age, most people seldom need to write more than a grocery list or a short note, or sign a check. It’s not only kids; many who formerly wrote fluently and neatly have forgotten how.
but… I found this to be just sort of scare rhetoric… I’m not sure how valid this argument is…
“It’s a very disturbing problem,” said Kate Gladstone of Albany, N.Y., who has a website specializing in handwriting improvement. “I see people in their 20s and 30s who cannot read cursive. If you cannot read all types of handwriting, you might find your grandma’s diary or something from 100 years ago, and not be able to read it.” There are practical concerns as well. Sometimes we don’t have a computer, or the professor won’t let us bring it to class to take notes. Or sometimes, as happened in New Orleans hospitals during Hurricane Katrina, computers lose power and medical orders and records have to be written out by hand.
I feel like most people who have a variety of literacy skills and who are generally well prepared for a 21st century literacies are still able to read handwriting and handwrite themselves. Perhaps it’s not as beautiful, or distinctive, or careful, or practiced as years ago, but they can still communicate when they need to? I’ve been to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Katrina, and the writing is still on many of the houses and all over the community. I think those people, whether trained in cursive and penmenship, were able to communicated their messages in writing just fine.
What do you think? Is cursive and penmenship something that we should be holding on to or letting go?
When our tiny, sticky little students are learning to read and write, how much should we concern ourselves with the quality of the letters they draw?
2 Comments
January 30th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Hi Julie – this is a topic dear to my heart. While my own handwriting is not extremely legible, I am very old-school on the topic of handwriting. There is nothing so sweet as a handwritten “I love you, Miss Susan” from a student or a handwritten note from a friend. Having said that, I will admit that I started writing thank-you notes to my own students with a word processor a couple of years ago for two reasons: my hand gets very tired after just a few minutes of writing and I found myself writing very short notes because I had so many thank-yous to write with my hurting hand.By typing them on the computer and then printing them out on cute paper, I was able to make my notes more personal (because I wrote more).
My own two daughters were taught handwriting (or not taught handwriting in one case) in two different ways. My older daughter was taught penmanship by a teacher who herself has beautiful handwriting. My older daughter consequently has lovely handwriting herself. My younger daughter wasn’t taught any penmanship as far as I can tell. Even at a young age, she would dictate her stories to me on the computer because she loved to write stories, but her handwriting couldn’t keep up with her thoughts. In her case, I believe that being able to dictate her stories to me on the computer and later to do her own typing actually made her a better writer because, like me, her handwriting is very difficult to read. By the fourth grade, her teachers were actually encouraging her (and her peers) to do everything on the computer. In high school, she rarely does anything to be turned in by hand (except math).
When I taught kindergarten, we used the Handwriting Without Tears program which I think is wonderful. I would like to see a return to some program such as this so that children at least learn to print legibly (perhaps helping them with reading!) and so that they will be able to write stories, captions,etc. even if they don’t have anyone to dictate to.
February 1st, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I think your reference to the 9th Ward makes the point… writing is for purposes of communicating a message. There are many ways to do that effectively. For some, that may mean handwriting, for others that may mean wordprocessing. As a teacher who worked with children with disabilities, any way one found to get their message across was a success. I also have personal experience. My youngest child had fine motor difficulties. In grade school, handwriting was an extremely laborious process. The results were barely legible. It’s not much better now and she’s a freshman in college. I was so thankful when her fourth grade teacher agreed to modify her writing assignments so that she didn’t spend hours every night trying to get her homework done. Now the expectation for writing is the computer and she is able to communicate her message perfectly well.
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