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| Hearsay: |
Is America facing a new kind of illiteracy? The inability to read handwriting? These kids today. Oy. No penmanship, no ability to read cursive. I tell you, if it’s not in Arial, they can barely understand it. Mind you, I implore Lady Ninja, she of the indecipherable chicken scratch, to continue communicating with me via word processor. If you ever get a chance to read one of her grocery lists, you should. It’s like experimental poetry. “Melh, butler, yoynurt, abbles, leltuce, tomaloes”. Man, that’s deep.
the problem of bad handwriting is not new. But as Kitty Burns Florey argues in “Script and Scribble,” a witty and readable (and fetchingly illustrated and glossed) excursion through the history of handwriting, we have today reached a point of crisis. Typing and texting have caused cursive skills to atrophy, and schools regard standards of style and legibility the same way they regard standards of dress. There may even come a day when longhand writing can no longer be deciphered by ordinary people — you’ll have to bring those old letters in the attic to some fussy museum curator. In 2006 only 15% of students taking the SAT wrote out their essays in cursive script; all the rest — no doubt to the relief of the examiners — used block letters.
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January 26th, 2009 at 11:27 am
This is not so surprising. Shorthand used to be standard training for secretaries and reporters; now it’s illegible to all but an aging cohort and a few eccentrics. Looks like longhand will be the next shorthand. It’s an interesting sensation to be amongst the last group of people to receive formal training in a certain skill. I also learned typing on an electric typewriter, and have actually dialled a telephone. Now get the hell off my lawn.
January 26th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
My father has horrible handwriting, I have horrible handwriting and my daughter has horrible handwriting. There have always been people with horrible handwriting. The common advent of the typewriter and then the computer meant we never had to improve our horrible handwriting. I can read almost anyone’s handwriting anyway.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
It’s funny to think that cursive might become a thing of the past, but my handwriting is terrible. I never improved it even though I didn’t grow up with computers. My kids can’t read it, but half the time neither can I.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
“Typing and texting have caused cursive skills to atrophy”.
I am young enough to have started my first year of school in 1992, and I am capable of writing in the cursive handwriting I learned in third grade. I also learned proper English grammar and arithmetic! Cursive handwriting skills are being lost because they are not being taught. The seeming illiteracy of young people today is a symptom, not a cause.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Far as I know, cursive is alive and well in Toronto. It is taught in grade 3 and 4 at the TDSB.
January 27th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
My kids have much better handwriting than I do. Go figure!
January 28th, 2009 at 1:30 am
We started using fountain pens at the start of grade two. Cursive handwriting was mastered by Christmas or the nuns beat you longer than normal. Today I understand many schools don’t teach or require it. I wonder how Sophie and Emile are making out.