I learned from this morning's News and Observer that both houses of the General Assembly have courageously tackled one of our most urgent educational crises - the disappearance of cursive writing. Not to mention multiplication tables.
I was first exposed to the discipline of cursive writing in 1945. Our rural school district assigned a handwriting teacher to visit each elementary school a couple of times a week to put students through the agony of handwriting exercises. Are there any qualified handwriting teachers out there now in this day and age?
Maybe we should put out a call for retired handwriting instructors.
So far as I can tell from the articles, the legislators have not addressed one of the most important issues - what penmanship style must be used. Surely we need to adopt a standard. Should cursive be taught in the Spencerian style? That style is elegant and has a distinguished history. Should cursive be taught by the Palmer method? That method is somewhat simpler and faster. Then there are Getty-Dubay, Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting, Icelandic (Italic), Zaner-Bloser, and D’Nealian methods. Shouldn't the General Assembly specify a standard?
The General Assembly really needs to develop a more complete systemic approach to our penmanship gap. For example, we seem to have a crisis in penmanship that spans many years. In view of the importance of correcting that gap, maybe we need to task our Community College system with developing continuing education courses in penmanship.
There must also be a program of incentives. Here are some ideas:
1. Require applicants for driver's licenses to fill out forms in cursive;
2. DMV only issue licenses to applicants with legible forms;
3. Require legible cursive in unemployment insurance applications;
4. Empower all local, county and state officials to reject any form not completed in legible cursive writing;
5. I'm sure you can come up with other ideas.
We may have to exempt written doctor's prescriptions from the legibility requirement.
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2 comments:
Do the above styles take into account either a forehand or backhand style. My mother had a distinctive backhand style.
All checks written by any payee should be completed completely in cursive.
Actually some of the styles were "teaching methods" and required the writer to use the right hand, whether left-handed or not. They were kind of authoritarian in those days.
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