In late September 1998, MARTHA STEWART LIVING magazine interviewed me
and two other Italic-teachers (Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay)
for an article on handwriting: one of two which actually ran in the November issue that year.
Even though this article did eventually see print, the Italic-teachers interviewed (myself included) had to fight to make that happen ... because ...
... a day or so before press-time, the reporter (who had done an excellent job of interviewing, on a subject very new to her) phoned me to say:
"Well, Kate, you'll be glad to know that Martha says she loves
the story, BUT she will need a very minor change before this can
appear. Remember the part where I asked you about the history of
handwriting because Martha asked me to make sure the article would
have some information on that? Well, Martha read what you told me and
she says it will have to be re-arranged a little so as to quote you
as saying that Italic came about in modern times as a very remote
descendant from Palmer Method Cursive, rather than the other way
around which I know you actually said. This is because Martha thinks
her readers will relate to that presentation better than
they'd relate to the way you actually put it with Italic coming first.
I have the whole thing written here, the way it needs to go, with
your name in there and everything so you can still be quoted as
the source: Martha just needs you to okay this so she can go ahead,
because it doesn't really change anything except the order of some of
the words, and if you didn't okay this change then the only other choice
would have to be to just cut everything you contributed to the story,
which would mean cutting out two or three whole pages but we could
probably fill it up with other people's material we have on file ... "
Shocked, I stammered out that I'd need "five minutes to think this
over, because I've never done this kind of thing before please call
back" then I:
/a/ quickly hung up,
/b/ IMMEDIATELY phoned Inga and Barbara (to whom I'd referred the reporter when she originally called and wanted to reach other "Italic people" for the story)
/c/ told them what the reporter had presented as a "need" for the story,
and
/d/ gladly (and INSTANTLY!) got their promises that they would each call the reporter at the very moment I hung up (if the reporter didn't call them first) to tell her:
"If you cut or alter Kate's history material, we will forbid you
to use any of OUR material, and you will have NO article or
at least next-to-nothing"
because Inga and Barbara, too, had contributed quite a lot: e.g., Inga had given the reporter a full-page Italic-handwriting chart and about a page-and-a-half of other info the reporter had asked for.
And, yes, Inga and Barbara each told me, a day or so later, that (yes, indeed) the very second after I'd hung up, the reporter had phoned and had said:
"Thank God I reached you, your phone was busy,
we need some last-minute changes made, and here they are ... "
to which each forewarned interviewee immediately Just Said "NO" in more or less the following terms:
"Whatever you want to change, Ms. _______,
if you go ahead with deleting or re-writing history at Martha's request,
then I I withdraw all permission to use any of my material whatsoever,
and you can go to press tomorrow morning with blank pages
for all I care."
This worked:
the article, as I said, appeared in press on the announced date (Nov. 1998 issue article title, "Learning Penmanship" pages 166-172 of that issue) and WITHOUT serious mangling of handwriting's history. Better yet:
a few days after that strange conversation, the reporter called me back to let me know that never before had an interviewee successfully managed to change Martha's mind when Martha
felt the "need" to alter facts that the interviewee had provided at Martha's or the reporter's request. (From what the reporter said, Ms. Stewart apparently felt such a "need" quite often.)
At that moment
and I don't care whether you believe me or not on this
I said to myself:
"One day, Martha Stewart will definitely end up behind bars."
Full Version: Martha Stewart
wow. this surely tells us a great deal about how highly martha stewart thinks of herself to believe that she can "change history."
would you know why she wanted you to say that the palmer came first?
would you know why she wanted you to say that the palmer came first?
What nerve! She seems really scary, that Ms. MS. 
You three were very courageous!
-Hana
You three were very courageous!
-Hana
I hate it when the media is fuzzy and corrupt like this 
Well done, the Italic muskateers! Make them write what is right!
Well done, the Italic muskateers! Make them write what is right!
Wow, I could really open a can of worms........hehehehe 
But I will leave it with a hardy GOOD FOR YOU and WELL DONE....!!!!!!
But I will leave it with a hardy GOOD FOR YOU and WELL DONE....!!!!!!
A friend of mine worked for Martha, indirectly. She's a bum. 
Re:
> would you know why she wanted you to say that the palmer came first?
Well, I never talked directly with Her Marthaness herself.
However, as the reporter "explained" it at the time (sounding truly upset, despite her effortfully calm words she obviously did NOT like having to tell me this!), Martha figured her readers would "relate better" to statements that fit what they already believed and wanted to think.
In the USA, at least, people really *do* think of Palmer Method (and similar styles) as the olden original ... if they've heard of/seen Italic at all, they figure it must have come much, much later.
(For documentation in writing of this attitude, see the following from one consumer-review of Getty/Dubay's WRITE NOW:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Program-Bet...ie=UTF8&s=books
"My first thought was that this [Italic] was some 'new' style and couldn't be as good as the 'basics' I was taught. Turns out, what I was taught is the 'new' style (19th century) and Italic is the more traditional (16th century). It is the style that was used by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo."
Back to my own experiences with the writing-history misconception that Martha "needed" to pander to:
When I speak to groups of teachers/parents, I generally begin the talk with a brief "pop quiz" on handwriting, The questions include: "How long has this handwriting style [picture of Palmer/Zaner-Bloser-esque cursive] existed?"
The answers usually range around 2,000 - 4,000 years, and say things like "It obviously goes back to the beginning of writing, because thousands of years ago when people invented writing and the alphabet they would need to invent the cursive style as an essential part of this." (One quiz-taker, it turned out, literally believed that when Moses came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments "they would have been inscribed by the finger of God in the very same cursive we use today!" ... and she didn't even teach in a religious school ... )
For this and other reasons, my presentations to teachers/students/parents now *always* include (right near the beginning) a very brief illustrated history of writing. The teachers/parents find this THE most mind-blowing part of the presentation ... I find it one of the most helpful and necessary things I do, because seeing that the venerated Palmer/Zaner-Bloser/etc. did NOT come first **really** opens their minds to the rest of what I need to teach them.
I used to call schools to try to get them to let me talk to the staff/kids about handwriting but they almost always told me that they would not allow this, because it might "destroy the children's trust in cursive" or some such thing. So now, when I talk to schools, I talk ONLY to those (few) that contact me and ask ... I wish I could get a wider audience among teachers/parents/non-pen-folk generally. (Any ideas/help?)
Re:
>Wow, I could really open a can of worms........hehehehe
Please open it! Some cans of worms *need* opening ...
> would you know why she wanted you to say that the palmer came first?
Well, I never talked directly with Her Marthaness herself.
However, as the reporter "explained" it at the time (sounding truly upset, despite her effortfully calm words she obviously did NOT like having to tell me this!), Martha figured her readers would "relate better" to statements that fit what they already believed and wanted to think.
In the USA, at least, people really *do* think of Palmer Method (and similar styles) as the olden original ... if they've heard of/seen Italic at all, they figure it must have come much, much later.
(For documentation in writing of this attitude, see the following from one consumer-review of Getty/Dubay's WRITE NOW:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Program-Bet...ie=UTF8&s=books
"My first thought was that this [Italic] was some 'new' style and couldn't be as good as the 'basics' I was taught. Turns out, what I was taught is the 'new' style (19th century) and Italic is the more traditional (16th century). It is the style that was used by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo."
Back to my own experiences with the writing-history misconception that Martha "needed" to pander to:
When I speak to groups of teachers/parents, I generally begin the talk with a brief "pop quiz" on handwriting, The questions include: "How long has this handwriting style [picture of Palmer/Zaner-Bloser-esque cursive] existed?"
The answers usually range around 2,000 - 4,000 years, and say things like "It obviously goes back to the beginning of writing, because thousands of years ago when people invented writing and the alphabet they would need to invent the cursive style as an essential part of this." (One quiz-taker, it turned out, literally believed that when Moses came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments "they would have been inscribed by the finger of God in the very same cursive we use today!" ... and she didn't even teach in a religious school ... )
For this and other reasons, my presentations to teachers/students/parents now *always* include (right near the beginning) a very brief illustrated history of writing. The teachers/parents find this THE most mind-blowing part of the presentation ... I find it one of the most helpful and necessary things I do, because seeing that the venerated Palmer/Zaner-Bloser/etc. did NOT come first **really** opens their minds to the rest of what I need to teach them.
I used to call schools to try to get them to let me talk to the staff/kids about handwriting but they almost always told me that they would not allow this, because it might "destroy the children's trust in cursive" or some such thing. So now, when I talk to schools, I talk ONLY to those (few) that contact me and ask ... I wish I could get a wider audience among teachers/parents/non-pen-folk generally. (Any ideas/help?)
Re:
>Wow, I could really open a can of worms........hehehehe
Please open it! Some cans of worms *need* opening ...
Hi,
Wow!
I learned my handwriting from Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty's handwriting programs some time back.
Dillon
Wow!
I learned my handwriting from Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty's handwriting programs some time back.
Dillon
Dillon writes:
> I learned my handwriting from Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty's handwriting
> programs some time back.
Did you learn from Inga's and Barbara's program "the first time around" (when you attended school) or "the second time around" (when you'd given up on your "school handwriting" and started looking around for something else)?
> I learned my handwriting from Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty's handwriting
> programs some time back.
Did you learn from Inga's and Barbara's program "the first time around" (when you attended school) or "the second time around" (when you'd given up on your "school handwriting" and started looking around for something else)?
Hi,
I learned the first time around.
Dillon
I learned the first time around.
Dillon
Dillon learned Italic:
> ... the first time around ...
Thanks for the info!
Do you have children, Dillon?
If so, who teaches/taught/will teach them to write and how?
> ... the first time around ...
Thanks for the info!
Do you have children, Dillon?
If so, who teaches/taught/will teach them to write and how?
Hi,
No, not yet, but I'll teach them of course! I'll teach them what I was taught.
Dillon
No, not yet, but I'll teach them of course!
I'll teach them what I was taught. Dillon
Good for you, Dillon do you plan to homeschool? If not, how will you make sure that the kids' schoolteachers don't undo all your (and your children's) good work?
Not too long after I began teaching Italic for a living, I ran into a UK expatriate who told me what her son had suffered 10 years earlier when the family moved to the USA.
The boy (then aged 10) arrived on these shores writing a competent Italic. His new schoolteachers, while praising the legibility and speed of his handwriting (which all admitted to exceed their own), quickly ascertained that [GASP! HORRORS!] He Did Not Write In "Cursive"!
Worse yet (in their eyes), This Kid Didn't Even PRINT! (because the school noticed that his handwriting differed from school-style "printing": it had joins and some other things that their printing forbade).
Even worse yet (in their opinion), he called his *own* writing "cursive" (because many UKers, including his former teachers, correctly regard Italic as one of the cursive styles).
So ...
... the teacher and the principal and the school psychologist had a Very Serious Talk with him and his mother .. which boiled down to the school's issuing orders that (in the teacher's words) "he must, *must*, MUST learn to write in cursive, or he cannot be allowed to pass any subject at his grade level."
They also accused the boy (and his mother) of lying for saying that he had in fact *learned* to write this way: "because everyone knows that there is no style where you sometimes join and sometimes don't join, and where cursive looks like printing. Obviously, you or the boy simply made this up, in order to get him excused from handwriting lessons." They would not bend in this opinion, even when the boy and his mother showed them handwriting-textbooks from his old school, letters written by his old school's headmaster/teachers, and so forth: the teacher and principal and other "responsible" adults present simply closed their eyes, turned away their heads, and/or otherwise refused to look at or even to acknowledge any evidence that the whole world does NOT write in print-then-looped-cursive. Said the teacher (and the principal and other school-staff agreed with her): "Your son's handwriting is a delight to the eye, but of course he MUST change it!"
So ...
To "help him learn," they pulled him out of class for one hour each day to send him down the hall to a "resource room" where he received insultingly infantile handwriting lessons in printing and then cursive (the book had pictures of pink kittens, elves blowing bubbles, and that sort of thing) in the company of other "problem students" who (for whatever reasons) also wouldn't/couldn't write in cursive: some of them (for medical or other serious reasons) in fact couldn't write (or read) at all.
Predictably, and quickly, the boy's handwriting worsened along with his attitude (and therefore his marks on schoolwork). His speed and legibility dropped amazingly: a fact again noted by all who dealt with him. The teacher hailed this as "SUCCESS!" (written in the teacher's large ungainly capitals in the "comments" section of the boy's report-card) ... she went on to say: "If we hadn't rescued this boy for cursive just in time, his handwriting would obviously have become even worse than it is now. The rapid decay of _______'s handwriting shows that any gains made by use of some alleged 'Italic' style are not permanent."
In further comments, the teachers and others involved made it plain that literally and bluntly they would far rather see this boy the slowest and least legible handwriter in the class (which by now he had nearly become) as long as he "did it correctly" than have a legible rapid handwriter who had achieved his skill by some "wrong" method which the school considered not to exist.
Not too long after I began teaching Italic for a living, I ran into a UK expatriate who told me what her son had suffered 10 years earlier when the family moved to the USA.
The boy (then aged 10) arrived on these shores writing a competent Italic. His new schoolteachers, while praising the legibility and speed of his handwriting (which all admitted to exceed their own), quickly ascertained that [GASP! HORRORS!] He Did Not Write In "Cursive"!
Worse yet (in their eyes), This Kid Didn't Even PRINT! (because the school noticed that his handwriting differed from school-style "printing": it had joins and some other things that their printing forbade).
Even worse yet (in their opinion), he called his *own* writing "cursive" (because many UKers, including his former teachers, correctly regard Italic as one of the cursive styles).
So ...
... the teacher and the principal and the school psychologist had a Very Serious Talk with him and his mother .. which boiled down to the school's issuing orders that (in the teacher's words) "he must, *must*, MUST learn to write in cursive, or he cannot be allowed to pass any subject at his grade level."
They also accused the boy (and his mother) of lying for saying that he had in fact *learned* to write this way: "because everyone knows that there is no style where you sometimes join and sometimes don't join, and where cursive looks like printing. Obviously, you or the boy simply made this up, in order to get him excused from handwriting lessons." They would not bend in this opinion, even when the boy and his mother showed them handwriting-textbooks from his old school, letters written by his old school's headmaster/teachers, and so forth: the teacher and principal and other "responsible" adults present simply closed their eyes, turned away their heads, and/or otherwise refused to look at or even to acknowledge any evidence that the whole world does NOT write in print-then-looped-cursive. Said the teacher (and the principal and other school-staff agreed with her): "Your son's handwriting is a delight to the eye, but of course he MUST change it!"
So ...
To "help him learn," they pulled him out of class for one hour each day to send him down the hall to a "resource room" where he received insultingly infantile handwriting lessons in printing and then cursive (the book had pictures of pink kittens, elves blowing bubbles, and that sort of thing) in the company of other "problem students" who (for whatever reasons) also wouldn't/couldn't write in cursive: some of them (for medical or other serious reasons) in fact couldn't write (or read) at all.
Predictably, and quickly, the boy's handwriting worsened along with his attitude (and therefore his marks on schoolwork). His speed and legibility dropped amazingly: a fact again noted by all who dealt with him. The teacher hailed this as "SUCCESS!" (written in the teacher's large ungainly capitals in the "comments" section of the boy's report-card) ... she went on to say: "If we hadn't rescued this boy for cursive just in time, his handwriting would obviously have become even worse than it is now. The rapid decay of _______'s handwriting shows that any gains made by use of some alleged 'Italic' style are not permanent."
In further comments, the teachers and others involved made it plain that literally and bluntly they would far rather see this boy the slowest and least legible handwriter in the class (which by now he had nearly become) as long as he "did it correctly" than have a legible rapid handwriter who had achieved his skill by some "wrong" method which the school considered not to exist.
Hi,
Oh, yes, I do.
Dillon
Oh, yes, I do.
Dillon
Ai, Kate, you are making my heart hurt.
What *do* you recommend for kids in a rigid school system whose parents don't have the resources to private or home school? Is there any way to work with such a school and not come out with a kid whose attitude about school and writing is severely damaged?
Dillon, .
Edit, I saw Bill's post relating to this in the other topic, which seems like a good start anyway. It's all got me pondering forming a homeschool group so we don't have to deal with the insane Alice in Wonderland logic. Not just on handwriting, of course.
Also, I had to remark on how much I love "we weren't going to change it that much, just rearrange some of the words." There goes Alice again.
What *do* you recommend for kids in a rigid school system whose parents don't have the resources to private or home school? Is there any way to work with such a school and not come out with a kid whose attitude about school and writing is severely damaged?
Dillon,
.Edit, I saw Bill's post relating to this in the other topic, which seems like a good start anyway. It's all got me pondering forming a homeschool group so we don't have to deal with the insane Alice in Wonderland logic. Not just on handwriting, of course.
Also, I had to remark on how much I love "we weren't going to change it that much, just rearrange some of the words." There goes Alice again.
I'm just hoping that within the next five to ten years, we will enter a new mode of teaching based on collaborative convergence rather than the producer-consumer dichotomy -- and it's already started. If anyone knows about Harry Potter fan fiction, that is a perfect example.
J. K. Rowling writes a few popular books (*). Kids (and adults) online create a virtual immersive world by writing new Potterverse stories and news -- boosting not only reading skills, but also writing skills (which Rowling may never have even thought possible). Members of these groups help each other with their writing skills. One thirteen year old girl goes on the legal offensive after Warner Bros. tries to shut down some Potter fan fiction sites -- and wins.
This sort of thing would not be possible without the collaborative convergence cultural engine we know today as the Internet. The collaborative aspect comes about in this great quote by Pierre Levy: "No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity." Getting at that knowledge residing in humanity is getting easier all the time.
Now, concerning grade school students not knowing where cursive comes from... I doubt very much that any self-respecting grade school student does not know what Wikipedia is (**). In the past, it would probably take a supreme, tiring, long, and boring effort to get kids to research and understand the origin of cursive.
Today, all it takes is a few words: "Psst, hey kid! Your teacher's wrong! Check out the wiki article on cursive!" The kids will do the rest. Instant revolt. ("Principal! Principal! The students... they're revolting!" "Yes, I know, that's why I don't let them into my office.") Well, maybe not revolt. But internal smirks everytime Teach says something obviously wrong
Of course, shortly after reading the article on cursive, no doubt they'll also read the article on cursing, but hey, at least they'll know where what they say comes from!
Anyway, that being said, good on you three for sticking to your principles in the face of Producer-Knows-Best!
If you're interested in more examples of how producer/consumer is dead, dead, dead, check out Convergence Culture -- Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins.
And, this very forum is a great example of convergence Thanks for it!!!
--Rob
(*) As a Potter fan myself, is this an understatement?
(**) With the exception of those too economically distressed to be connected. However, they can be considered to be at the tail-end of technology adoption. How many of them have cellphones today, compared to ten years ago?
J. K. Rowling writes a few popular books (*). Kids (and adults) online create a virtual immersive world by writing new Potterverse stories and news -- boosting not only reading skills, but also writing skills (which Rowling may never have even thought possible). Members of these groups help each other with their writing skills. One thirteen year old girl goes on the legal offensive after Warner Bros. tries to shut down some Potter fan fiction sites -- and wins.
This sort of thing would not be possible without the collaborative convergence cultural engine we know today as the Internet. The collaborative aspect comes about in this great quote by Pierre Levy: "No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity." Getting at that knowledge residing in humanity is getting easier all the time.
Now, concerning grade school students not knowing where cursive comes from... I doubt very much that any self-respecting grade school student does not know what Wikipedia is (**). In the past, it would probably take a supreme, tiring, long, and boring effort to get kids to research and understand the origin of cursive.
Today, all it takes is a few words: "Psst, hey kid! Your teacher's wrong! Check out the wiki article on cursive!" The kids will do the rest. Instant revolt. ("Principal! Principal! The students... they're revolting!" "Yes, I know, that's why I don't let them into my office.") Well, maybe not revolt. But internal smirks everytime Teach says something obviously wrong
Of course, shortly after reading the article on cursive, no doubt they'll also read the article on cursing, but hey, at least they'll know where what they say comes from!
Anyway, that being said, good on you three for sticking to your principles in the face of Producer-Knows-Best!
If you're interested in more examples of how producer/consumer is dead, dead, dead, check out Convergence Culture -- Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins.
And, this very forum is a great example of convergence
Thanks for it!!!--Rob
(*) As a Potter fan myself, is this an understatement?
(**) With the exception of those too economically distressed to be connected. However, they can be considered to be at the tail-end of technology adoption. How many of them have cellphones today, compared to ten years ago?
QUOTE(KateGladstone @ Dec 30 2006, 08:27 PM)
In further comments, the teachers and others involved made it plain that literally and bluntly they would far rather see this boy the slowest and least legible handwriter in the class (which by now he had nearly become) as long as he "did it correctly" than have a legible rapid handwriter who had achieved his skill by some "wrong" method which the school considered not to exist.
Holy cow... it's Kurt Vonnegut and the Handicapper General!
--Rob
Tee hee hee, from my report card back in 1978!
Other choice nostalgic quotes from back then:
"There's no such thing as a 24-hour clock!" -- reply by Teach after I took a trip with my parents to Europe.
"He'll never amount to anything if he doesn't play sports with the other boys!" -- A Teach quote to my parents. I never did play sports with anyone, and hate sports to this day. I currently hold two degrees, and pull a great salary from one of the largest telecoms in the world. Teach is probaby dead. Was that in poor taste?
"Your child painted all over this cabinet!" -- from Teach in kindergarten. I denied it. To be honest, I probably was guilty.
--Rob
Other choice nostalgic quotes from back then:
"There's no such thing as a 24-hour clock!" -- reply by Teach after I took a trip with my parents to Europe.
"He'll never amount to anything if he doesn't play sports with the other boys!" -- A Teach quote to my parents. I never did play sports with anyone, and hate sports to this day. I currently hold two degrees, and pull a great salary from one of the largest telecoms in the world. Teach is probaby dead. Was that in poor taste?
"Your child painted all over this cabinet!" -- from Teach in kindergarten. I denied it. To be honest, I probably was guilty.
--Rob
QUOTE(KateGladstone @ Dec 30 2006, 08:27 PM)
Not too long after I began teaching Italic for a living, I ran into a UK expatriate who told me what her son had suffered 10 years earlier when the family moved to the USA.
This is the problem with teaching penmanship in schools. Some teachers teach for the love of it, some teach as they couldn't think of anything else to do. Naturally the first group is a wonder to have teaching a child, the second, well....
I grew up in England, I was taken out of public school when my teacher (I was about 7) wanted to put me into the class for "special kids" (I'm now a surgeon, in the middle of my masters and have submitted 2 papers to journals and 9 papers to international meetings in the past month). Her reason for wanting to put me into that class was that I wouldn't read with the other kids and looked bored in class. My mum taught me to read and write early, and I was reading the lord of the rings at the age of 11 (in seven days, still kind of proud of that), so naturally I found what the other kids were reading kind of crap.
In the private system I went to one school where once a year we had a medieval week. We'd dress up in medieval clothing, eat with our hands and feed the left overs to the head masters dogs (which at 9 is kind of cool), and write with quills for the week. This school also taught us Latin and French (which I can't remember any of, but at least they tried!!)
I never did get handwriting tuition, and yes my handwriting is ugly. The emphasis was always on it being legible for the exams, I ended up writing in capitals for the exams, kind of cursive for my notes, and overall did very well. But then again all my teachers were teaching because they enjoyed it.
Re:
> "Psst, hey kid! Your teacher's wrong! Check out the wiki article on cursive!"
You've very nearly described the way I do handwriting-history stuff in any of my workshops that have children/teens (with or without adults present).
In this connection whenever I *do* have adults present with the children, the kids usually get things "write" (in terms of performance AND understanding) faster than the adults do. For example, take this scene from one of my parent-and-child workshops a few years ago ... with a name changed to protect the innocent ...
KATE: Did you know that the fastest, most readable writers DO NOT join all their letters? People who write very fast AND very legibly tend to leave out the hardest joins when they write, and use just the easiest ones [demonstrates by writing a line of semi-joined Italic "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" shows slide of similar writings by others, with letters-per-minute scores]. And as you can see from these samples of writing the high-speed high-readability handwriters tend to use very print-like shapes of letters wherever the printed and cursive shapes of a letter "disagree."
CHILDREN: [smiling and busily writing away, trying it out on "The quick brown fox": almost all of them "get it"]
ONE ATTENDEE, MR. JENKINS, TO HIS THREE KIDS [all doing a terrific job]: No, not like THAT! What Ms. Gladstone means is that ALL the letters have to join and be cursive if you want your writing to be fast and easy to read. Don't you remember she just said that? Here, I'll show you: [grabs a pencil from the hand of of SARAH JENKINS, age nine, and produces a semi-legible scribble which could read "The quick brown fox" or could read "Ten quack balloon fur" or could read as plently of other things besides.]
KATE: Sarah, please tell your father what I actually said.
SARAH [in a nice loud voice]: Ms. Gladstone said that the people who write the fastest and so you can read it best don't connect all their letters, and also they make their letters look a lot like print and not like cursive
KATE: Very good, Sarah. You got it exactly right. Now, please show your father how to do this. Meanwhile, I'll go 'round the room so I can see everyone's work. [immense scratching noise from all corners of the room as various PARENTS cross out their cursive "quick brown foxes" and start over again some asking their kids for advice.
As you say ...
> ... The kids will do the rest. Instant revolt. ...
I think the process (though not quite "instant") may have begun (witnes the SCHOLASTIC survey on cursive that I posted a few weeks back).
Even closer (to this notion of Kids In Revolt once they have the info) ...
Right before Christmas, I got an e-mail from a girl in eighth grade of Catholic school, who plans a science-fair project (with research and experiments) on what style of handwriting produces the fastest and most legible results. At the time she contacted me, she had not considered looking at any writing-style but conventional cursive & printing (the only two styles she knew of) ... I sent her loads of Internet resources on what else I thought she needed to consider, and also directed her to relevant articles in psychological/educational journals available in most libraries, providing citations for all. (For example, I gave her the citation for a JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH article from 1998 which demonstrated how high-speed high-legibility handwriters actually write, and how it disagrees with the way that their teachers think they "should" write.)
Her teacher, by the way, had already approved the project ... bwaaah, hah, hah: little does she know!
And remember that "those too economically distressed to be connected" often have friends in somewhat better circumstances. Kids who find out that "psst the teachers are wrong! They're lying!" do NOT keep secrets especially in our conspiracy-theory-obsessed culture.
Now, if only we can find some conspiracy-fiction-writer type here who can write a novel or a comic-book or a Net-video about the Conspiracy To Make Handwriting Hard!
To any aspiring Dan-Brown-esque _littιrateurs_ in this forum: I offer myself as 1/2 of an authorial team. You supply the plot, the characters, the car-chases, and other exciting escapades ... I'll supply the facts ... we'll split the profits.
I mean this very seriously.
Sample block of comic-book/Net-movie text:
SUPER-COOL, BUXOM HANDWRITING-TEACHER GAL to her COOL SUPER-SPY BOYFRIEND: You know who else got things this messed up? The Pilgrims.
SUPER-SPY: The Pilgrims?
HANDWRITING-TEACHER GAL [nods]: On the MAYFLOWER, exactly two people used the Italic style: colony leaders William Bradford and Elder William Brewster. Everyone else on the boat wrote in other styles. Some of those other styles died out the rest became ancestors of our conventional cursive. When the Pilgrims set up the colony's first schools, Bradford and Brewster probably the most literate people in the bunch did NOT teach there.
BOYFRIEND: Why?
HANDWRITING-TEACHER GAL: Bradford and Brewster belonged to the upper classes they'd learned Italic handwriting in their student days at Cambridge University.
BOYFRIEND: Sort of the way you only came across Italic handwriting by accident, when you started graduate school?
HANDWRITING TEACHER. Well, not exactly. Back then, only the "upper crust" went to college. By the time Bradford and Brewster enrolled, only the "upper crust" in England still had some Italic teaching going on. Lower-class people if they could write at all tended to use other styles, like the "Roundhand" which eventually became today's conventional cursive.
BOYFRIEND: So?
HANDWRITING-TEACHER GAL: So ... the "upper crust" tended to consider themselves far above such lowly jobs as teaching schoolkids.
BOYFRIEND: You mean ... if only these two guys had taught school in Plymouth Colony, instead of some other people, today people in this country might actually write so that other people could read it?
Re:
> Other choice nostalgic quotes from back then: ...
About three years ago, an e-mail pal of mine had a daughter in fifth grade, assigned to write a term-paper on the Great Depression. She wrote about its effects all over the world, using primary as well as secondary sources ... and FAILED! ... because her teacher (who knew NOTHING about the Great Depression beyond what the fifth-grade American History textbook chose to cover) crossed out page after page of the paper with red ballpoint slashes and the angrily scrawled words: "Wrong! No! Read the book! The Great Depression is AMERICAN history! This means that it DID NOT happen in England, Europe, or any other country!" Even when my friend and her daughter got a letter from the head of the history department at the local college (within walking distance of the girl's home and school) saying in effect, "Well, sorry, Teacher this fifth-grader got it right, you got it wrong; please read the items in her excellent bibliography to find out why" even then, the teacher refused to change the grade from F-for-Failure ... and the principal supported the teacher because (said the principal): "Obviously your daughter is correct and the teacher is wrong however, it would not be fair to teachers if the grades they assigned could be re-evaluated merely on a university professor's say-so. Teachers need to feel some confidence that, once they give a grade, the grade has been given and will not change."
> "Psst, hey kid! Your teacher's wrong! Check out the wiki article on cursive!"
You've very nearly described the way I do handwriting-history stuff in any of my workshops that have children/teens (with or without adults present).
In this connection whenever I *do* have adults present with the children, the kids usually get things "write" (in terms of performance AND understanding) faster than the adults do. For example, take this scene from one of my parent-and-child workshops a few years ago ... with a name changed to protect the innocent ...
KATE: Did you know that the fastest, most readable writers DO NOT join all their letters? People who write very fast AND very legibly tend to leave out the hardest joins when they write, and use just the easiest ones [demonstrates by writing a line of semi-joined Italic "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" shows slide of similar writings by others, with letters-per-minute scores]. And as you can see from these samples of writing the high-speed high-readability handwriters tend to use very print-like shapes of letters wherever the printed and cursive shapes of a letter "disagree."
CHILDREN: [smiling and busily writing away, trying it out on "The quick brown fox": almost all of them "get it"]
ONE ATTENDEE, MR. JENKINS, TO HIS THREE KIDS [all doing a terrific job]: No, not like THAT! What Ms. Gladstone means is that ALL the letters have to join and be cursive if you want your writing to be fast and easy to read. Don't you remember she just said that? Here, I'll show you: [grabs a pencil from the hand of of SARAH JENKINS, age nine, and produces a semi-legible scribble which could read "The quick brown fox" or could read "Ten quack balloon fur" or could read as plently of other things besides.]
KATE: Sarah, please tell your father what I actually said.
SARAH [in a nice loud voice]: Ms. Gladstone said that the people who write the fastest and so you can read it best don't connect all their letters, and also they make their letters look a lot like print and not like cursive
KATE: Very good, Sarah. You got it exactly right. Now, please show your father how to do this. Meanwhile, I'll go 'round the room so I can see everyone's work. [immense scratching noise from all corners of the room as various PARENTS cross out their cursive "quick brown foxes" and start over again some asking their kids for advice.
As you say ...
> ... The kids will do the rest. Instant revolt. ...
I think the process (though not quite "instant") may have begun (witnes the SCHOLASTIC survey on cursive that I posted a few weeks back).
Even closer (to this notion of Kids In Revolt once they have the info) ...
Right before Christmas, I got an e-mail from a girl in eighth grade of Catholic school, who plans a science-fair project (with research and experiments) on what style of handwriting produces the fastest and most legible results. At the time she contacted me, she had not considered looking at any writing-style but conventional cursive & printing (the only two styles she knew of) ... I sent her loads of Internet resources on what else I thought she needed to consider, and also directed her to relevant articles in psychological/educational journals available in most libraries, providing citations for all. (For example, I gave her the citation for a JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH article from 1998 which demonstrated how high-speed high-legibility handwriters actually write, and how it disagrees with the way that their teachers think they "should" write.)
Her teacher, by the way, had already approved the project ... bwaaah, hah, hah: little does she know!
And remember that "those too economically distressed to be connected" often have friends in somewhat better circumstances. Kids who find out that "psst the teachers are wrong! They're lying!" do NOT keep secrets especially in our conspiracy-theory-obsessed culture.
Now, if only we can find some conspiracy-fiction-writer type here who can write a novel or a comic-book or a Net-video about the Conspiracy To Make Handwriting Hard!
To any aspiring Dan-Brown-esque _littιrateurs_ in this forum: I offer myself as 1/2 of an authorial team. You supply the plot, the characters, the car-chases, and other exciting escapades ... I'll supply the facts ... we'll split the profits.
I mean this very seriously.
Sample block of comic-book/Net-movie text:
SUPER-COOL, BUXOM HANDWRITING-TEACHER GAL to her COOL SUPER-SPY BOYFRIEND: You know who else got things this messed up? The Pilgrims.
SUPER-SPY: The Pilgrims?
HANDWRITING-TEACHER GAL [nods]: On the MAYFLOWER, exactly two people used the Italic style: colony leaders William Bradford and Elder William Brewster. Everyone else on the boat wrote in other styles. Some of those other styles died out the rest became ancestors of our conventional cursive. When the Pilgrims set up the colony's first schools, Bradford and Brewster probably the most literate people in the bunch did NOT teach there.
BOYFRIEND: Why?
HANDWRITING-TEACHER GAL: Bradford and Brewster belonged to the upper classes they'd learned Italic handwriting in their student days at Cambridge University.
BOYFRIEND: Sort of the way you only came across Italic handwriting by accident, when you started graduate school?
HANDWRITING TEACHER. Well, not exactly. Back then, only the "upper crust" went to college. By the time Bradford and Brewster enrolled, only the "upper crust" in England still had some Italic teaching going on. Lower-class people if they could write at all tended to use other styles, like the "Roundhand" which eventually became today's conventional cursive.
BOYFRIEND: So?
HANDWRITING-TEACHER GAL: So ... the "upper crust" tended to consider themselves far above such lowly jobs as teaching schoolkids.
BOYFRIEND: You mean ... if only these two guys had taught school in Plymouth Colony, instead of some other people, today people in this country might actually write so that other people could read it?
Re:
> Other choice nostalgic quotes from back then: ...
About three years ago, an e-mail pal of mine had a daughter in fifth grade, assigned to write a term-paper on the Great Depression. She wrote about its effects all over the world, using primary as well as secondary sources ... and FAILED! ... because her teacher (who knew NOTHING about the Great Depression beyond what the fifth-grade American History textbook chose to cover) crossed out page after page of the paper with red ballpoint slashes and the angrily scrawled words: "Wrong! No! Read the book! The Great Depression is AMERICAN history! This means that it DID NOT happen in England, Europe, or any other country!" Even when my friend and her daughter got a letter from the head of the history department at the local college (within walking distance of the girl's home and school) saying in effect, "Well, sorry, Teacher this fifth-grader got it right, you got it wrong; please read the items in her excellent bibliography to find out why" even then, the teacher refused to change the grade from F-for-Failure ... and the principal supported the teacher because (said the principal): "Obviously your daughter is correct and the teacher is wrong however, it would not be fair to teachers if the grades they assigned could be re-evaluated merely on a university professor's say-so. Teachers need to feel some confidence that, once they give a grade, the grade has been given and will not change."
well me and my mom always listen to her show in Sirius radio Ask Martha Stewart Show thats EST-9:00am.. Well in spite of her issues right now she is still a trendsetter... it doesnt mean that Martha is a bad person. Well in most cases people would say that she is a criminal... But when you going to think that Martha is still a good person and shes a good talk show host too..
many thanks!
noctUrnalD
many thanks!
noctUrnalD
Well, I've grown to like Ms. Stewart. I think she has learned her lesson about humility, and she really does seem to have a firm command of the subject at hand, whatever it may be.
She prides herself on being a "teacher", and I believe that now, anyway, she would listen to the well-made argument for the importance of truth above all and would abide accordingly.
As regards the original post, she did publish the article as written, though it was rather shameful of her, I think, to have initially wanted to do otherwise. And, besides, with respect to the "time-line" mentioned, she should have known better, logically speaking.
But she redeemed herself in the end, and we all should be permitted to "think aloud" before the completed work is presented.
You owe me, Martha.
She prides herself on being a "teacher", and I believe that now, anyway, she would listen to the well-made argument for the importance of truth above all and would abide accordingly.
As regards the original post, she did publish the article as written, though it was rather shameful of her, I think, to have initially wanted to do otherwise. And, besides, with respect to the "time-line" mentioned, she should have known better, logically speaking.
But she redeemed herself in the end, and we all should be permitted to "think aloud" before the completed work is presented.
You owe me, Martha.
QUOTE(sonia_simone @ Dec 30 2006, 05:33 PM) [snapback]202382[/snapback]
Ai, Kate, you are making my heart hurt.
What *do* you recommend for kids in a rigid school system whose parents don't have the resources to private or home school? Is there any way to work with such a school and not come out with a kid whose attitude about school and writing is severely damaged?
Dillon, .
Edit, I saw Bill's post relating to this in the other topic, which seems like a good start anyway. It's all got me pondering forming a homeschool group so we don't have to deal with the insane Alice in Wonderland logic. Not just on handwriting, of course.
Also, I had to remark on how much I love "we weren't going to change it that much, just rearrange some of the words." There goes Alice again.
What *do* you recommend for kids in a rigid school system whose parents don't have the resources to private or home school? Is there any way to work with such a school and not come out with a kid whose attitude about school and writing is severely damaged?
Dillon,
.Edit, I saw Bill's post relating to this in the other topic, which seems like a good start anyway. It's all got me pondering forming a homeschool group so we don't have to deal with the insane Alice in Wonderland logic. Not just on handwriting, of course.
Also, I had to remark on how much I love "we weren't going to change it that much, just rearrange some of the words." There goes Alice again.
Sonia,
Having worked with and around government school teachers and administrators for the better part of the 25 years we have homeschooled our own 7 children, I must tell you with sadness of heart, that if you child(ren) is/are in a rigid school system (as most school systems are, mandated by either the state or the local school district), and do not have the ability in any way to an alternative to that school system, your child(ren) will likely suffer the same indiginities and problems as the poor young man who moved from UK, and was "re-educated" until he conformed to the pervasive mediocrity or worse.
Average tuition at a parochial school is relatively low, and if you have only one to enroll, is doable for most families above a subsistence level. We put our oldest in a private school in San Diego on the single income of an enlisted Navy man (me) with 3 children. Beans, rice, and oatmeal figured prominently in our menu, but I could not, and would not, subject my son to the school system that was available in that location "for free".
Donnie
You may find this interesting. I clipped out the original article in 1998 and still have it in a reference folder. After a lifetime of printing the article inspired me to switch to cursive writing which has since turned into an enjoyable hobby.
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