Thread: Cursive

Originally Posted by TomPike

Would we have our kids always appear in public looking like total scrubs? Well, maybe we would or maybe we have no choice sometimes. Still, our penmanship represents our character to others. If it looks like crap, so do we. Our parents and grandparents understood this well; that's why most of them had such a beautiful hand. Like anything worth keeping, good penmanship takes practice, determination and dedication to acquire.

The problem with our schools and with these kind of policies is one of focus. It's more important for the schools to get good marks in their assessments than it is for the students to be given a high quality education that prepares them for life (and teaches them why it's important to not look like crap when they represent themselves to others). Change the focus, change the results...

There are ways to encourage kids to develop good penmanship. Probably the best way is by example. What percentage of elementary teachers in our education system are in their early 20's? I'll wager that many (most) of them have poor cursive handwriting skills themselves. You can't teach someone else how to do something if you don't know it for yourself. So, given that many elementary teachers have poor penmanship, I say the answer is to bring in outside help. Calligraphers are incredibly inspirational to those learning how to form their letters and words. They inspire students and teachers alike. Our schools should require our teachers take handwriting repair coursework, so they can learn what they should be teaching.

Don't get me started on math and science...


Cheers,
Tom

Well said. And welcome to the board.

Jordan

Maybe I'm just a special case, but I don't know that knowing how to do cursive did anything positive or negative for my reading skills. Age and practice I think did that for me. By the time I was learning/writing in cursive (3rd grade), I already read at almost a college level. You can imagine my surprise when I attended a speed reading seminar in college and found out that I naturally developed their methods. It depends on the subject and how well written it is, but I can generally blast through about 100 small-regular print pages in under an hour. It's not enjoyable, but my recollection is 85-90%. But that's neither here nor there...

Learning it is important, but forced usage of it is too far. Like Tom pointed out, most teachers are in their 20's and have poor penmanship anyway.

I don't understand only teaching digital clocks. So many clocks across the world are analog. Besides, digital clocks are all simply functional. None of them can be made to look nearly as beautiful and elegant as analog clocks can. Besides, what else do kids in first grade have to learn?

Originally Posted by Quick Orange

. By the time I was learning/writing in cursive (3rd grade), I already read at almost a college level.

That's funny. Me too! I was also tested in 3rd grade and it was said that I read at a 12th grade 9th month level! The way my 7 year old is blowing through books beyond his age group level I think he will have similar results!

I think it has to do with the way you're raised to be honest. My parents read to me but also had me read with them. They would quiz me with magnetic letters on a small board to help me with spelling. Now it's got me curious though...one doesn't remember a whole lot about learning to read when you're 3

Originally Posted by Quick Orange

I think it has to do with the way you're raised to be honest. My parents read to me but also had me read with them. They would quiz me with magnetic letters on a small board to help me with spelling. Now it's got me curious though...one doesn't remember a whole lot about learning to read when you're 3

I don't have kids, but I think this is one of the most important factors in guiding children to learn and find what they're interested in. I remember my father reading to me from a history book about the revolution and reading "Watership Down" to my brother and me. It made all the difference, IMHO.

Jordan ?

my father's a cop, so his, well, his everything is difficult to read and that's where my and my younger brother get our ink blot test-like handwriting from. admittedly, my print is better than my cursive but i find myself doing both when i write things down at work. everyone gets a kick out of it. one guy even said my brain was at war with itself.

i think it's crap that they are phasing it out. it made you pay a little more attention to what you are writing. but then again... kids nowadays have attention spans that, if measured in nano-seconds would look something like ".0032"

Originally Posted by jnich67

?

It's Mark's thread. I don't think he cares about thread jackers

I write with a fountain pen, and have been considering taking up calligraphy. On some of the fountain pen boards and websites, there are folks who advocate writing with, and teaching kids, a modified form of italic writing. This makes some sense to me, as it is easier to read - as long as it can be written quickly. Any thoughts?

Jordan

I agree that teachers need to be knowledgable. A lot of the things a teacher might not know can be found in a well written text book. But that only goes so far as being able to get a student to understand a concept.

Originally Posted by jnich67

I write with a fountain pen, and have been considering taking up calligraphy. On some of the fountain pen boards and websites, there are folks who advocate writing with, and teaching kids, a modified form of italic writing. This makes some sense to me, as it is easier to read - as long as it can be written quickly. Any thoughts?

Jordan

I like the idea of teaching kids Chancery Italic rather than Palmer Method or Zaner-Bloser Method Cursive. It's more intuitive, more easily readable and is easier to master. It follows naturally from printing. Really though, the only reason it's easier to read is that it's closer to the kind of type we read the most of - on internet sites, in books and in newspapers. All typeset stuff. If you read cursive penmanship all the time, it becomes second nature, even when it's far less than masterful.

The important thing (to me) is that kids learn to write legibly and to care about how their handwriting looks, both to themselves and to others. Chancery is fun because it can be written with a pencil, a bic, or an edged-nib fountain or calligraphy pen. It looks great no matter what you use and there's always something new to learn.

I do not think that all people should write the same way. We're not robots being programmed to execute a task. However, a good foundation of writing skills IS what allows most of us to develop our own hand. Think of it like the jazz musician learning her scales and chords before being able to really hear and to improvise.

When my grandparents learned penmanship, there were a series of steps. After printing, the first was to learn good business writing skills. If one were accomplished at that, they could move onto some form of ornamental penmanship (Engrossers Script, Spencerian or Cppperplate, for example). The real artists became Engrossers, or more commonly, Penmen.

The reason I bring this up is to point out a significant difference between then and now. Back then, they had a high bar for which to reach. Getting through the first step of mastering business handwriting provided them with beautiful cursive penmanship. They could go much further if they wished. Now, the goal is to get the teacher to quit bugging you about your handwriting and to get a keyboard so you don't have to worry about that junk. Again, a change of focus makes all the difference.

By the way, for any of you guys or gals (or your kids) that might be interested in learning to write in an italic hand (it's fun, really it is), here are a couple of books I'd highly recommend:

Write Now, a book from Portland State University's Continuing Education Press a book publisher with publications in history, grant writing, legal interpretation, and Getty-Dubay italic handwriting

Italic Letters, a book from Portland State University's Continuing Education Press a book publisher with publications in history, grant writing, legal interpretation, and Getty-Dubay italic handwriting

Most of you with reasonable hand/eye coordination (that should be everyone that shaves with a Straight Razor!), would probably want to go straight to the second book, above. If you've got kids that you're homeschooling and you're interested in this stuff, here's the whole series designed for K-6:

Books in the Series of Italic Handwriting Series, a series of books from Portland State University's Continuing Education Press a book publisher with publications in history, grant writing, legal interpretation, and Getty-Dubay italic handwriting

That said, this is not some kind of sales pitch. I just think that the only way we'll preserve this skill through future generations is to do sometihing about handwriting as being a "dying art", when in reality, it's something we all need to be able to do well enough to communicate. FWIW, my dear partner in life (SWMBO) has the handwriting of a serial killer. Rorschach squared... My own penmanship is nothing to wrtie home about, but it's legible, it's mine and it's something that's been fun for me to improve upon over the last few decades. I find that I have to make time to write these days. I'm a software engineer, so I'm in front of a keyboard all day. I write letters, keep a journal, and make handwritten lists and draft plans at work. Like shaving, it's something very fun to look forward to each day.


Cheers,
Tom