how does your country/region/local school teach handwriting?

[Tuxedomoon]

Wishful thinking? Kurrent or Sütterlin aren't taught for nearly 70 years (it was abandoned in 1941 - see Wikipedia on Kurrent for details). But you're right about FPs - they are still widely in use here and I'm not afraid to lend my FPs to someone (even the limited edition VP I use to carry around all the time now).

 

As of "Blockletters" (I think you mean "print" letters) - this is taught as first script in some parts of Germany, but only in the first year at school, later on kids learn to develop their own handwriting by connecting the letters (see "Ausgangsschrift" in Wikipedia).

 

 

I don't know, I'm surely no expert but I can assure you I've been learning Kurrent (please have a look on the edict of 1954) in school. After the explanation of Kurrent as shown on german wikipedia. I'm now 27 years old.

Maybe we've had an old fashioned teacher?

We also learned the latin script in the version of 1953, not the newer ones. Maybe it's because I grew up on a country-side?

Edited March 31, 2009 by Tuxedomoon

[Achim]

I don't know, I'm surely no expert but I can assure you I've been learning Kurrent (please have a look on the edict of 1954) in school. After the explanation of Kurrent as shown on german wikipedia. I'm now 27 years old.

Maybe we've had an old fashioned teacher?

We also learned the latin script in the version of 1953, not the newer ones. Maybe it's because I grew up on a country-side?

 

Sorry, but I never heard that Kurrent was taught after the war. So, you really learned to write like in my example - that would be fascinating. Or you really had a teacher who preferred it and tried to save it from extinction (but unfortunately today hardly anybody is able to read it).

http://www.achims.de/Penmanship/Rotring_PRSherwood.png

 

[slqqqq]

Hi, Achim,

I learned this by myself, but it seems there is something wrong with the one I write.....

Could you please give me some advise? Thank you.

slqqqq

http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq260/slqqqq/200904021473.jpg

[willisoften]

Living in Northern Ireland I have to say things are just as confused as they were almost 40 years ago.

The UK National Curriculum is enforced but it's not actually very clear - "objectives : legibility, consistent size and spacing of letters, flow and movement, and a confident personal style" .

 

There are a number of education boards controlling different regions, they each seem to have their own ideas.

 

My niece and youngest nephew seem to have picked up a fast and clear Italic semi-joined style.

 

The eldest nephew takes notes at university which don't even seem to consist of whole words - at his job he prints everything precisely - he views any form of running hand with derision. He believes "It's not good business practice" and "no matter how well it's done foreign workers will misinterpret it". I've no idea how he was taught but he went to the same schools as the others.

 

A lot of kids here also seem to be taught a fairly round style were only those strokes below the base-line have loops and tall letters aren't joined.

 

No real nation-wide consistency as far as I can tell.

[Passion]

When I was in Elementry school, I was taught 2 fonts. Print and cursive. Cursive was only taught in 3rd grade for about two months, maybe a half hour lesson a day. Print was taught in kindergarden and first grade, but once students mastered it enough to write readable sentences, the teaching stopped. There was no "penmanship" class, and as a result, some of the people my age have trouble reading their own notes.

I can still write in cursive, although I have to stop and think about quite a few letters, and I know zero capitals. I wish they had drilled us more on cursive and penmanship, because trying to reteach myself now is much harder.

Oh well.

[Arts11]

If my pen grip is any indication, then not very well lol. I grew up in small town, USA so I was never actually taught how to hold a pen (I had to figure it out on my own) and as a result, handwriting wasn't really all that emphasized by my teachers. They didn't even teach cursive until like 5th grade, and then they never enforced the use of it afterward b/c too many students' handwriting was too illegible for them to read efficiently. If it wasn't for fountain pens, I would've probably forgotten how to write in cursive by now (and in fact, I had to re-learn some of it when I did start using fountain pens).

[Renzhe]

slqqqq, I think your example looks a bit round. 太多彎，太少角.

 

Anyway, I don't remember any instruction in school about pen grip. Although if they taught anything it would most likely be wrong according to me.

[RLTodd]

AIR.

 

1950 through 1959, Fresno County public schools system.

 

Started with block printing and then changed to cursive along the line. Do not remember the year.

 

Looks like Z-B. I have heard it referred to as California School Script but I can't recall it being called anything other than cursive when I was in school.

 

We were given pencils. Later, some of our parents gave us ballpoints.

 

Though the older desk had ink well cutouts I do not recall seeing a fountain pen in eight years of grammer school.

 

Have no idea what they are doing now. California Education is a great mystery to us all and seems to have its own parallel existance apart from the rest of society..............

[solitaire]

Dear Kate

I was chilled by your most interesting article in the Summer Pennant.

 

It should be compulsory reading Washington DC if the folks I'm thinking of could read.

 

Keep up the hard work

 

Solitaire

[Psi]

I was never taught cursive in school, only print. I grew up in southern California and currently reside in Salt Lake, Utah. To this day I cannot write in cursive

[Marina]

I grew up in northern California (bay area) and we learned cursive in 3rd grade. It looked like THIS which I think is pretty basic. I remember spending a good amount of time in class learning it. (We watched videos and copied lots of worksheets). For the most part everyone thought it was "cool" (lol) cause it was like the older group of kids who knew how to read and write cursive. But it was only required for use in the 4th grade on 'special' assignments and reports other than that we used print. I'm about to start my freshman year at college so this is really recent o_o

 

[frostdoll]

I'm 32 and in Italy I was taught Cursive at school, it looks roughly like the sample on Wikipedia, the only big differences I think are in G and I.

In elementary school we had different styles of lined notebooks, the lines spaced to help children learn the right height of letters, and I was taught to use fountain pens (I think fp were suggested because at the time it was the only kind of erasable/washable ink).

 

 

[OtterNZ]

New Zealand, rural school, 1990's

 

We were taught to print only. I remember one of my teachers getting us to try "linked writing" which was her word for what I remember as a sloppy form of cursive. We tried that for a week or so and we all hated it, leading me to vote for options 4 and 5 on the last question above. "First style learnt effects learning of others" and "children rebelling over having to learn to write all over again".

[frostdoll]

I found my old notebooks and here is a sample of the cursive I was taught, bear with me the drawing but I couldn't resist posting it (1984, first grade)

 

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2622/3894206864_9c17f715cb_o.jpg

[texellence]

i went to school in ny and california

i learned palmer method so many years ago

the schools in texas do not seem to emphasize handwriting, a very sad thing and most handwriting i see from children this age is atrocious.

it is speculated that handwriting may become a lost art and generations from now less able to read historical documents

 

[texellence]

I found my old notebooks and here is a sample of the cursive I was taught, bear with me the drawing but I couldn't resist posting it (1984, first grade)

 

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2622/3894206864_9c17f715cb_o.jpg

awesome post!

[OtterNZ]

I was talking to a friend of mine from South Africa who has lived here for the last 7 years or so. He is 21, and said that he learnt cursive in SA, but when he got here, his teacher told him to "lose" that handwriting and to only print.

[TheRustySuper]

I'm still in the school system (11th grade now)...and they didn't teach handwriting at all. They teach the alphabet in Kindergarden and 1st grade, and a bit of cursive in 2nd and 3rd grade. But cursive was a sort of side note, and we were never required to use it. We were told things like "In fourth grade, they'll MAKE you write in cursive, so you'd better get the hang of it now". They never did. As a result, most kids I know have appaling handwriting. And though teachers always tell people to improve their handwriting, no one does anything about it. As long as they can kinda make out what you've written, you're good. I've only met two kids in my entire school career who can write cursive. I wish we had been required to write in cursive, though my printing is very neat I love the flow of cursive. Fortunately I can at least read cursive, unlike many of my peers.

[thomasdav]

In South Australia (may differ between states), all students are now not required to learn any cursive, however back in my day (about a decade ago) all students had to learn 'modern cursive', which in my eyes was printing with a curve between the letters to join them . All my 4th year teacher made us do was write twenty legible sentences in the script, and I was given a sticker and then never asked to do it again - and as a result I never did, nor did anyone else after they had finished. As a result I know absolutely nobody my age who had a decent cursive script, and most hate handwriting altogether, claiming that it is 'slow and messy'. One of my friends, who is now nearly 20 years old, writes by holding the pen with the tips of all five fingers, and his handwriting is appalling. So bad in fact, that he does his university exams seperately and on a computer - just goes to show what we've come to.

 

Almost everyone my age (that I have asked) wishes they could write in a nice cursive script, and many even admit that it would have been worth spending hours each day in Primary School to improve it. I long for the day that some sort of decent cursive bocomes a part of the curriculum again, simply because I believe that it is a basic skill that NEEDS to be learned. Unfortunately with the abundance of computers these days, I doubt it will happen at all.

 

 

I should note that students are still required to learn basic letter-forms so as to make their handwriting readable - they work kids so hard these days! (and yes, I know I had it easy). I made the assumption that the question was about the real stuff.

[Paddler]

I recently visited our local school to attend an alumni banquet. One of the hallways was bedecked with essays that the children wrote. The paper was unpunched and came from a ruled writing tablet. The writing was in pencil. Most of the essays were in block print, using both upper and lower case, as appropriate. A few were written in standard school cursive style. I asked a teacher the reason for this and she said the students were allowed to write in the style most comfortable to them. It was not as I suspected that the few were transferees from other schools. Both styles of writing are taught at that school.

 

Paddler