I owned and ran a health clinic. We did NOT run to the computer to make labels for every product that was used in the office. We whipped out a pen and labeled it, or dated it, on the spot.
So?....Is is nicer to have clear, neat, easily read, and **beautiful** printing on a label, ( using calligraphy principles) or not? Well...Beautiful is a nice thing to come across once in awhile, especially since beautiful didn't take one nanosecond longer than ugly. It is in this context that I use the word “useful”.
I don't carry a printer in my purse and there are situations when I need to leave someone a handwritten note. Is neat, clear, easily read printing ( using calligraphy principles) or cursive better than ugly? Well...Beautiful and clear is definitely more pleasant to read. It is in this context that I use the word “useful”.
Finally....When I come across someone who has very strong feelings against teaching penmanship to children, these people have been ( without a single exception) those who have terrible handwriting, and struggled in school but failed to learn cursive. This is NOT an ad hominem attack at you. It is my anecdotal observation.
It’s a label, the point of a label is to be concise, accurate, and easily read, not to be beautiful. And it most CERTAINLY took you longer to make your labels in calligraphy than it would to just write it in nice plain text. And the advantage if you’d done it on the computer is then it would be permanent, in case you re-arrange things and need to redo all the labels, bam 1 print job.
You keep throwing up this complete silly false choice of beautiful vs ugly. There’s the important middle ground you seem to love to ignore: functional. If you leave me a note for something ALL I care is can I read it. Beautiful is often not clear and not pleasant to read, because it often involves flourishes that distract from the text. Give me the words, make them concise and then we can all move on with our lives.
I never said anything about teaching penmanship. That’s more of you making assumptions. You really like to ass-u-me. I’m against teaching CURSIVE. Good PRINTED handwriting is handy. Cursive, good or bad, is 100% useless.
I don’t have strong feelings about this question, but don’t believe I missed much when I switching to printing when I was in junior high. My handwriting wasn’t terrible. It was always clear. I don’t fit into your category of “those who have terrible handwriting, and struggled in school but failed to learn cursive.”
When I reached junior high, though, I decided that my handwriting wasn’t satisfactory in an aesthetic sense. Perhaps I could have improved it by practicing, but I didn’t think doing that would be worth the time, so I switched to printing. My printing was even clearer, and had traces of elegance (though admittedly it wasn’t as impressive as a really good hand).
Later I did have a need to read cursive (old letters and census records), so the time I’d spent learning to read it wasn’t wasted. The question, though, is how much time is justified in learning cursive — for the average student. I’d say not much.
I’d have no objection to students being exposed to it, and learning to read it (or decipher it, at least) but don’t think it’s a good idea that most students spend years trying to improve the quality of their own cursive. Acquiring a passive knowledge shouldn’t take long. That’s comparable to learning to recognize a serve, forehand, and backhand in tennis versus mastering the strokes themselves and being able to execute them effectively. Of course, individuals would be free to learn to write cursive if they wished. It just wouldn’t be an important part of the curriculum anymore. (As an elitist skill it even might have more appeal to them.)
As you yourself say — and I agree — having a legible and attractive handwriting is an asset, but “not a critical asset or an essential asset” (when there are many other things they might be learning). I favor it for those who can learn to write it without the investment of much time — or who are highly motivated to learn and willing to put in extra time — but I don’t think that others should be required to spend a lot of time on it.
[You say that your method makes it easy to learn, which would decrease the demand on their time, but that’s not something we can evaluate well here.]