Handwriting

There have been a few articles going around recently about the importance of cursive handwriting. On Monday, one of my favorite tech blog/news sites, techdirt, reported on an column in the Calcutta Telegraph. The journalist says that only around 15% of kids today choose to write in "cursive", or as I've always called it, "rumply handwriting". They go so far as to quote Rhona Stainthorp, professor of literacy at the Institute of Education at University College London as saying, “Handwriting has become the Cinderella skill of literacy. Unless children learn to write legibly and at speed, their educational achievements may be reduced and their self-esteem affected. Handwriting is a skill and needs to be taught to a level where it flows automatically.”

I laughed at this. Especially when the techdirt writer added his editorial comment, "Next up: we'll be hearing about how awful it is that children, these days, no longer churn their own butter."

I thought it was an interesting story but not at all important until yesterday. Only 4 days later, the Calgary Herald did a cover story on this same topic in their free community paper, Neighbours. I read this article, which was 787 words long and I'm quite sure Cindy Stephen didn't hand in to her editor written in longhand cursive, and actually laughed out loud.

Stephen opens with a nostalgic look back at the time when, "Penmanship was graded and teachers held high expectations for neatly written work -- an A+ for lovely loops and sharply crossed T's, slanted ever so slightly to the right. Teachers were known to rap the knuckles of students holding their pens incorrectly and carelessly written papers were tossed back to be rewritten in proper form." I look back on my childhood and wish things could be like they were too. I wish I could let my kids walk to Kindergarten by themselves, I wish they could ride their bikes to the corner store and trade glass pop bottles for candies. But I've never wished they'd get their knuckles rapped for printing.

A mother quoted in the article says, ""I'm concerned that people will look down on my kids if all they do in the future is print. People will say to them, 'you don't know how to write?' or 'didn't you go to school?' Or what if they have a job where they have to decipher handwriting?"

This is hilarious. I am a college graduate with a degree in music. Possibly one of the most artsy degrees you can get. My hood was actually a beautiful shade of pale pink. I worked in a classical music shop for 6 years. One would think that being in such an artistic, creative setting I would be one of the most likely people to see and use this style of writing. Guess what? I haven't used cursive for probably 20 years. The only time I have seen it is when I get a letter from my grandma - a second-grade school teacher who retired in the mid 80s.

The closest thing I can imagine to this mother's feared situation is people saying, "You only print? Don't you know how to type? Didn't you go to school?"

It gets better. We then hear from a teacher - not a 62 year old woman who has been teaching the same way for 40 years, but from recent graduate in her first year of teaching. She says, "A lot of employers are looking for handwritten cover letters -- I tell my students this to convince them that they should be using handwriting."

What??? I have NEVER handwritten a cover letter. If I did, I am sure it would be the first thing thrown in the recycling bin. No matter how legilble it is, longhand cursive is harder to read and looks far more informal than neat printing or typing. Amber told me that she has heard that some secretarial positions want a sample of handwriting to see how organized and neat you are. I guess if you want to be a secretary or handwriting analyst, it may be important.

I just tried writing a paragraph in cursive. It took my much, much longer than if I printed, and typing would have been even faster. However, when I looked back at it, I could kind of make out what I had written. I felt a little twinge of pride at my ability to do this - especially because I had tried to include hard letters like Q, Z, and G. This pride is the same kind of feeling I get when I work out long division by hand, or successfully read something in French, or remember the order of the planets. These are things I am happy I can do and look back nostalgically upon, but they are not things I use in my real life. A good calculator, translation software, google search, or word processor can do these things much more efficiently and neatly.

I hope my kids learn cursive as a link to the past, but I will never make them actually write anything important in it. There's a reason why all forms say "Please Print".