Posted on 08/12/2005 7:17:04 AM PDT by RosieCotton
Such attitudes are worrying to a growing number of parents, educators and historians, who fear that computers are speeding the demise of a uniquely American form of expression. Handwriting experts fear that the wild popularity of e-mail, instant messages and other electronic communication, particularly among kids, could erase cursive within a few decades.
At technology-savvy Horrall Elementary - where students take keyboard lessons in third grade, precisely when they learn cursive - Monique's teacher, Ed Boell, is fighting the trend. He refuses to give extra points when students turn in laser-printed homework assignments with fancy computer fonts, and he urges kids to send handwritten letters to parents and friends.
Still, about half his students use computers for some assignments, up every year since the late 1990s. He ends his cursive lesson with a warning:
"The truth is, boys and girls, even if you write a lot of e-mail on the computer, you will always need to write things down on paper at some point in your life," Boell says. "The letters you write to people are beautiful, and they'll cherish them forever. Have any of you ever received an e-mail that you cherished?"
The students eagerly shout, "No!" and return to loops and curves.
Since switching from print to the more free-flowing handwriting earlier this year, Boell's students are writing faster and more legibly.
But in many other classrooms, traditional cursive is on its way out. So many students have trouble with it that teachers are increasingly adopting a simpler style known as Italic or "print cursive."
Online discussion forums for teachers estimate that as many as 7 percent of third graders are using Italic, whose printed letters are "semi-connected" with small tails. It's not as loopy or slanted as the 20th-century style developed by Austin Norman Palmer and adopted as a standard in schools nationwide.
Sue Bolton at Kings Mountain Elementary School in Woodside teaches the Palmer Method to her second- and third-graders, but many of her students turn in homework with touches of Italic they've picked up from siblings or other teachers.
"They've got good handwriting now, and they love cursive," Bolton says as her students filter in from recess. "But it wouldn't surprise me if they just walked around with their little keyboards and typed everything a few years from now."
According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 90 percent of Americans between the ages of 5 and 17 use computers. It's not uncommon for kids to type 20 or 30 words per minute by the time they leave elementary school.
The trend pervades Silicon Valley, where many schools have computer labs and kids gravitate toward careers in the computer industry. But some say students' struggles with cursive have reached alarming proportions nationwide.
Michael Sull, a 54-year-old artist in Overland Park, Kan., says today's third graders have not developed proper forearm and hand musculature, seated posture or mental discipline. The former president of the International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting says keyboards, joysticks and cell phone touch pads have ruined kids' ability to hold a pencil properly, let alone write legibly.
"Penmanship these days is thought of as a vestigial organ because it's not translated into dollars, like computer skills," says Sull, who honed his writing skills under Paul O'Hara, a pre-eminent 20th century penman.
"If you need to relay information immediately and have just a half-second to grab anything, maybe just a napkin, penmanship is so valuable," Sull says. "It doesn't rely on batteries or power. It's like breathing - it's always with you."
Parents who pride themselves on their penmanship often bemoan their children's cursive - particularly when they can't read sloppy notes or notice that their kids increasingly turn in homework via e-mail. Many adults pine for a return to the Palmer Method or even its fancier predecessor, Spencerian.
"Cursive was so character-defining when I was in school," says Amy Greene, whose 9-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son prefer keyboards to cursive in their Palo Alto classrooms. "The way you wrote something was considered part of your inner being, your core, your worth. ... Now it's considered an anachronism."
Cursive's ultimate fate is unknown. Few statistics mark its demise. Some passionate penmen say it won't go the way of the feather quill pen, noting that the style survived electric typewriters.
Nabeel Khaliq, an 11-year-old sixth-grader from Mississauga, Ontario, comes from a family of cursive enthusiasts and can't imagine not writing. He took first place in his age category in the 2002 World Handwriting Contest, sponsored by the Albany, N.Y.-based Handwriting for Humanity club.
"It must be a natural thing that my family has, except for my brother," Nabeel says. "I write all of my rough drafts by hand."
Still, Nabeel's cursive is rivaled only by his typing. He types 40 words per minute - he was the fastest typist in fifth grade, a close second this year to a classmate who hit 50 words per minute.
"I e-mail my cousins in Pakistan and chat on MSN," Nabeel said, referring to Microsoft's popular instant messenger service. "If I had the choice, I'd rather do it on the computer."
I was homeschooled, and my Mom could have done the examples in the handwriting text books - she had near-perfect writing. Mine was lousy - I most definitely inherited my Dad's!
Just recently I decided I wanted to improve it. Silly in this day and age? Maybe. I picked up a textbook called Write Now and worked through it. It made a big difference. Also got me interested in going further and learning some calligraphy hands.
Anyone here old enough to remember "Zaner-Blowser" pens? The specially designed pens that went along with their series of elementary school penmanship books? I always got the lowest grades in penmanship and my handwriting stinks to this day.
Now that I think about it, she was a work of art too.
When I was in grade school -- 1950s -- we were supposed to write with a half dollar balanced on the back of our wrist. I never did learn to do this, although I could write well enough. Legible penmanship is still useful at times. But I think the real issue is that handwriting teaches fine motor skills, and I tend to believe that physical coordination and logical thinking are related.
I spend hours every day at the keyboard and it's hard to motivate myself to pick up a pen and hand-write letters at night. But people love getting hand-written thank-you notes, Christmas card notes, congratulations, etc. Elderly people cherish hand-written letters. They seem to mean something to older people that even a longer computer-generated letter doesn't. Maybe it's because handwriting shows personality so much more than the printed word. So I do try to hand-write some things and make them as handsome as possible.
Funny, my 12-year-old son who loves Playstation and computer games would rather hand-write homework and stories than type them.
I could've gotten into medical school just on the illegibility of my handwriting alone. I literally had a high-school composition teacher tell me that he was going to fail me--despite the fact that I was a good writer and an excellent speller--unless I learned to type, because my handwriting was so bad he couldn't read my papers.
By the end of that semester I was typing 55 wpm, and I got a B+ in the class.
I have to say, I do hate handwriting anything long because my writing is just so terrible. It's a skill that we do need to preserve and I wish I was better at it, but for now, I'll just hammer along on my keyboard at 90-100 wpm instead of chicken-scratching out a letter.
Besides, none of y'all on FR could appreciate my dubious wisdom and bad jokes if I had to handwrite it! :)
}:-)4
Pictures then?
Amen to that. I was 2 years ahead of my peers in school...being held back for poor handwriting would have put me back on track with the kids my age. But, I studied engineering in college, which forced me to adapt my handwriting...nowadays it's mostly a variation of All Caps, in different sizes, according to whether the letter is supposed to be upper- or lower-case.
"Cursive is for sissys anyway."
LOL! Real men write "engineering style". ;)
You should try reading admissions orders pages, ACK!
I get calls "The Dr. wrote an order for you" so I trot over and well, yeah....I see something, but I can't tell what he wants....
So I do what I THINK he wants, then I find out later it wasn't what he wrote. :0
Heh...my Dad's "only" a respiratory therapist, but I swear...the folks in his department are in competition with the doctors. His writing is bad enough, but once in awhile he'd bring home notes from two of the other guys that were...just amazing.
My daughter and her peers have atrocious handwriting, grammar, and spelling. They aren't stressed in school.
I remember getting dinged for my spelling in classes other than English. Now the other teachers don't care how terrible the grammar and spelling is; that's the English teacher's problem.
I used to have an 8X10 on which she had written on the back in her beautiful hand, "You have come to mean more to me than you will ever know".
When I got married I got rid of all pictures letters etc. Now that I think about it, I sort of wish I had kept them.
Thanks, CBS! I didn't realize that Americans were the only people who use handwriting as a means of expression.
Don't be so surprised, RC. There is so much to do during the school day, what with counting on condoms and so forth, one scarcely has time for cursive writing.
I agree, people no write good anymore.
I often look at older documents and I marvel at the beautiful calligraphy. But I can hardly make any sense out of it. For example, try reading the Declaration of Independence in it's original script. Or anything that George Washington or any other one of our Founding Father's wrote.
Personally, I'd rather have everything typed out so I can read it. Though I realize our historical documents wouldn't look quite so impressive if people like John Hancock used a typewriter instead of a quill.
I remember my mom (a teacher) would say that if she can't read my signature or writing no one could. I think to myself "can Mom read this?" everytime I sign my signature.
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