and me as someone whose hand cramps up after writing just one check...

[acroyear]

The Handwriting Is on the Wall - washingtonpost.com:

The computer keyboard helped kill shorthand, and now it's threatening to finish off longhand.

When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.

And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive.

Many educators shrug. Stacked up against teaching technology, foreign languages and the material on standardized tests, penmanship instruction seems a relic, teachers across the region say. But academics who specialize in writing acquisition argue that it's important cognitively, pointing to research that shows children without proficient handwriting skills produce simpler, shorter compositions, from the earliest grades.

Scholars who study original documents say the demise of handwriting will diminish the power and accuracy of future historical research.

Well, one problem I always had was the artificial criticism. My hands simply were NEVER EVER going to be under control for that sort of thing. Never.  I couldn't draw; I couldn't sketch; I couldn't write.  And I absolutely couldn't STAND being graded down simply because I was not going to and would never ever have any ability to do that kind of stuff with my hands.

If there's anything that made me hate school and the arbitraryness of grading, it was penmanship.

The second thing was going through 4 years of the same f'in' arithmetic lessons I got right the first time thank you.

At any rate, I'm kinda of mixed minds on this.  I do agree that we're throwing way too much variety at kids to "keep them interested" while still following No Child Gets Ahead standards planning, but at the same time, the fact that an otherwise A student gets Bs simply because they can't physically do something has always seemed harsh.

They complain about how they are "hurting morale and self-image" by punishments once used to maintain discipline, yet they kept on with hurting the self-image of students (like me) who actually were normal simply because they couldn't do one particular thing.  The Animal School indeed...

Comments

[i-kissandra.livejournal.com]

It's funny - I struggled with this for a long time as I watched my son's handwriting go from "pretty good for a beginner" to bad to worse. I finally realized that as long as I was able to read what he wrote, I didn't give a fig how he formed his letters. He prefers to print and he puts together his thoughts pretty well for a 16 year old. To me, that's what matters. (and actually, at least 'round here - they don't grade down for bad handwriting...unless it's simply illegible)

When I think about it, for some, cursive writing (aka script) isn't too far off from expecting someone to just pick up a paint brush and be able to produce the Last Supper. I'm just happy that my son likes to write. As far as I'm concerned, he may use whatever mode and media he wishes to do so.