The Writing On The Wall

dat is sum stoopit sheee-uuuuuttt 2 rite all purty an *** u no whut i sane??

Was dicussing the importance of cursive writing with my 3rd grader this evening. There are two things that I clearly remember about my third grade experience (1970 I think): the year I 1) learned to write in "script" as we referred to it then and 2) memorized my times tables. I couldn't begin to tell you specifics about my other years in elementary school. I can't imagine how the rest of school years and subsequent career in market research would've turned out if these skill sets were not taught - er, drilled - into our brains back then.

In a country from where knowledge is outsourced to the maximum, emphasis on handwriting is the minimum.Is it because of the growing strength in schools making it almost impossible for teachers to focus on handwriting or is it that we are just ignoring it ? Any comments?

Apart from being the key to learning and fluency in self expression, learning to write legibly and neatly also helps in disciplining an individual.Qualities like patience, tolerance,self composure and self_discipline become more evident in a person with a good handwriting.Sad to say,in a country like India where I reside and train children in good cursive handwriting Penmanship Curriculum is unheard of in schools.

OK, I'm off to think about how learning to form legible letters correctly and automatically can logically have nothing to do with calligraphy or how smart we are ... ah, I know, I'll just redefine calligraphy as a pile of pretty curly-wurleys!

To be serious, I wonder if this research could benefit from a re-examination of the benchmarks. If the mental skills we pick from writing and drawing are the benchmark, then off course the average "texting" kid is going to look dumb, but what about that amazing skill they pick up of innovating with words to make them quick and short and still understood by their peers. Such a skill has to be historically new in children and is bound to have some as yet unmeasured benefits. (That is not to underestimate the benefits of learning a disciplined form writing.)

-Andrew van der Merwe, calligrapher

OK, I'm off to think about how learning to form legible letters correctly and automatically can logically have nothing to do with calligraphy or how smart we are ... ah, I know, I'll just redefine calligraphy as a pile of pretty curly-wurleys!

To be serious, I wonder if this research could benefit from a re-examination of the benchmarks. If the mental skills we pick from writing and drawing are the benchmark, then off course the average "texting" kid is going to look dumb, but what about that amazing skill they pick up of innovating with words to make them quick and short and still understood by their peers. Such a skill has to be historically new in children and is bound to have some as yet unmeasured benefits. (That is not to underestimate the benefits of learning a disciplined form writing.)

-Andrew van der Merwe, calligrapher

No matter how cute or sophisticated the teaching props (anything from the "magic bunny" ballyhooed by NEWSWEEK to ultracomputerized multisensory gizmoes purveyed by another commenter and claimed "the latest in research"), 98% of USA handwriting programs refuse to document that any results last beyond the period of instruction. Recently established programs presume the customers will take it on faith that the kids now under instruction will still write well by hand 20 years later (or even in 10 or 5 years later) - longer-established programs (such as the one with "the magic bunny"), when asked to show how their former students write today as teens or adults, change the subject or refuse comment or (in at least one documentable instance) offer falsified data. In my experience and observations as a handwriting curriculum and remediation specialist working throughout the USA and in Canada, only 3 programs (out of the 200-plus now marketed on our continent) give students results that typically last (instead of typically evaporating) in "life after school": Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting, Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting, and Handwriting Repair: all have existed for long enough to demonstrate effective lifelong results throughout the decades after instruction inevitably ends. Will someone at Newsweek please explain why the magazine chose to ignore the three programs that focus on (and achieve) lifelong lasting results?

This issue is not about calligraphy, or how we learned to write, or how smart we are, or even how handwriting curriculum is marketed. As several "posters" have emphasized: It is about helping today's kids express what they are learning in written form.
We can do this by:
* basing handwriting curriculum on up-to-date research in motor development and brain function (helping kids--with or without learning disabilities--write legibly).
* providing multi-sensory instruction and real-time feedback so that children learn to form legible letters correctly and automatically.
* equipping over-extended classrooms with useful, individualized handwriting curriculum.
Check out www.writeonhandwriting.com.

This issue is not about calligraphy, or how we learned to write, or how smart we are, or even how handwriting curriculum is marketed. As several "posters" have emphasized: It is about helping today's kids express what they are learning in written form.
We can do this by:
* basing handwriting curriculum on up-to-date research in motor development and brain function (helping kids--with or without learning disabilities--write legibly).
* providing multi-sensory instruction and real-time feedback so that children learn to form legible letters correctly and automatically.
* equipping over-extended classrooms with useful, individualized handwriting curriculum.
Check out www.writeonhandwriting.com.

I was most amused by this article since as a youngster in school, I took a penmanship course which shaped my life forever. I liked to write anyway but I have maintained a very good penmanship through all of my 69+ years. I was a big chagrined by Professor Stephen Peverly's comments that the quality and quantity of an elementary school student's writing was preferred over legibility. No wonder the doctor's and others in the world don't write so that you can read anything. It is very destructive that in this world today not many people can write legibly so that you can even read their name. It frightens me that handwriting is not a art, but a lost art. It's better to be quick than right. Sadly I wish penmanship courses were to return if only for a year when writing is important. I took my course in the eighth grade but had many occasions as an elementary school student to practice my penmanship. Your article was very well written and to the point and I wish that it would have some impact now!!! Thanks. My husband handed it to me to read this morning as I had not had the occasion to pick up this week's issue as yet.

Dear Bharatisahu ??? you may find some help and suggestions through the Handwriting Repair web-site at http://www.learn.to/handwrite

I'm in my ninth year of teaching third grade. This year almost all of my students have serious handwriting issues: letters float in the air even on handwriting paper; g's, j's, p's, q's, and y's hover above the line; there is little or no distinction made between the sizes of letters, including letters that are otherwise the same in lower case and upper case, such as Cc or Ss; some students indiscriminately mix upper case and lower case letters, even in the middle of words; and many students form letters or digits in unorthodox and inefficient ways. My students this year are worlds ahead of the students in my class eight years ago in their reading ability, vocabulary, thinking skills, verbal expression, and written expression. But when I read the writing of many of them, I do lots of slogging, as I try to decipher what they have written. When we write, we try to let it flow and fix it later (Thank you, Erik Cork!), but sometimes when students come back to fix it, they can't tell what they wrote! So this year we HAVE to address handwriting issues -- it's a matter of communication. When my students are older I am sure they will use computers for most of their communication, as most of you and I do. But right now in third grade, their access to computers is limited-- through no fault of their own -- and does not include use for written communication except on rare occasions. So somehow we'll find ways to fit handwriting into our days, so each student can use it as a tool for recording and sharing their thoughts and ideas with others. --K.S. Downing, Syracuse, NY

I'm in my ninth year of teaching third grade. This year almost all of my students have serious handwriting issues: letters float in the air even on handwriting paper; g's, j's, p's, q's, and y's hover above the line; there is little or no distinction made between the sizes of letters, including letters that are otherwise the same in lower case and upper case, such as Cc or Ss; some students indiscriminately mix upper case and lower case letters, even in the middle of words; and many students form letters or digits in unorthodox and inefficient ways. My students this year are worlds ahead of the students in my class eight years ago in their reading ability, vocabulary, thinking skills, verbal expression, and written expression. But when I read the writing of many of them, I do lots of slogging, as I try to decipher what they have written. When we write, we try to let it flow and fix it later (Thank you, Erik Cork!), but sometimes when students come back to fix it, they can't tell what they wrote! So this year we HAVE to address handwriting issues -- it's a matter of communication. When my students are older I am sure they will use computers for most of their communication, as most of you and I do. But right now in third grade, their access to computers is limited-- through no fault of their own -- and does not include use for written communication except on rare occasions. So somehow we'll find ways to fit handwriting into our days, so each student can use it as a tool for recording and sharing their thoughts and ideas with others. --K.S. Downing, Syracuse, NY

It must to be hard to be a child today! When most of us were growing up in elementary school, we were allowed recess (not organized physical education). Swings are being removed from many schools because of the liability. When I ask children what they do after school, the reply is often "my friends come over and we play video games". Many children do not have that trunk strength and proximal stability that is achieved during gross motor play which is necessary for fine motor skills. I do not use one particular method when handwriting is an issue for a student. We try different methods because every human being is different. If the child just cannot get it, we begin thinking about alternative means of written communication such as using an alphasmart word processor. However, I do feel that an important point of teaching handwriting with correct formation (top-down, left-right) is that we use that same movement in reading, we start at the top read left to right. When the children, parents, teachers, and therapists are doing the best that they can, that is all that we can request. We just educate to the best of our ability (including continued education) to get these children ready for adulthood.

I see some posters posing the argument that legibility has no relation to content. That's true. However, what good is great content if no one can read it? That's the point of having decent handwriting. It doesn't have to be caligraphy, but anyone should be able to pick up what someone has written and be able to understand it. THAT'S the point. Everyone should learn and master the basics of handwriting, be it print or cursive. As we move on in our lives, we'll develop our own distinctive handwriting styles. I just find it ridiculous that a hight schooler can't produce a signature, or can't print in a legible fashion.

Halfway through my message, my computer crashed. (Another point in favor of handwriting: pens and pencils do not render their user suddenly incommunicative anywhere nearly as often as computers do.)

So please read this message as the second half of a single message from me:

In a way, I suppose I should thank the so-called "Handwriting without Tears" program for leading to a goodly chunk of my income ??? about half of the children, pre-teens, teenagers, and young adults who come to me for handwriting help have previously failed dismally (and often tearfully) with that program. Plainly, when considering a handwriting program we need to look at its long-term results. Given all this concern over the state of handwriting, why not do so? Better yet ??? why not investigate the high-pressured and none-too-ethical pitchmanship world of handwriting program marketing and recruitment?

Teacher-training courses of the "big name" print-then-cursive companies (including those you covered) often resemble Mary Kay or Amway sales-rallies: with most of the emphasis going to "how to sign up more customers: more teachers, more schools, more school-districts, even if the program doesn't seem to be working." Getting teachers and schools to sign onto, and stay with, a handwriting program ??? to use it for everyone, even when it fails a significant number ??? often takes higher priority than making sure that the kids actually learn to write in a legible and fluent manner. (Reportedly, many if not all of the "big name" handwriting programs resort to thinly disguised marketing incentives to keep the numbers up: e.g., signing a school to a long-term contract with a substantial discount then removing the discount unless each and every child in each and every school in the district uses exclusively the handwriting textbooks, other handwriting materials, and even the handwriting paper that the program makes and sells: irrespective of whether those textbooks and other materials actually work for everybody whom the contract requires to use them. Other programs, reportedly, have had sales-reps doing such things as offering to buy the school principal or the district superintendent or some other official a new car, to supply the school or district with free spelling-books or math-books or readers, or even to buy the school or the district 100 or 1000 new computers: if, and only if, the school principal or the district decides to buy a particular handwriting program and to make sure that nobody in the school or district uses anything else for handwriting instruction. (In at least one case, the decision-makers receiving such an offer did not even open or look at the program materials before deciding that these best met the educational needs of their students. Their "examination of materials" consisted of examining the various personal and material incentives offered to the decision-makers by the various sales reps.)