What Killed Penmanship?

[corniche]

2 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Well, part of the issue for my mom was that I already KNEW how to read.  I remember reading something to the rest of my kindergarten class (we all had our chairs in a circle, so it was a formal thing for the entire class).  

Good for you, Ruth.

 

You and me, both. My mom had taught me how to read before I started Kindergarten, too. I was reading Dr. Suess and other primers from cover to cover when I was four. When I was in the second grade, the school administration opted to send me to a shrink because of my vocabulary; e.g., I was using words like "physician" instead of "doc" and "diesel locomotive" instead of "choo-choo" and the like. They thought I was just parroting what I had overheard. 

 

It blew their minds when I could not only use the words properly in a conversation, but I could spell them correctly, too.  God bless my mom, she was responsible for that. 🥰

 

- Sean

[corniche]

Hi all,

 

I had to Google ITA, I've never heard of it,... or at least, I don't remember it. I'm grateful I was spared that, too. It's like reading a text from a millennial... no offense to our millennials here.

 

- Sean

[Mercian]

39 minutes ago, corniche said:

Hi all,

 

I had to Google ITA, I've never heard of it,... or at least, I don't remember it. I'm grateful I was spared that, too. It's like reading a text from a millennial... no offense to our millennials here.

 

- Sean

If one looks at its page on Wikipedia, one can see a picture that shows all of the letterforms that it used.

One can see that it uses more symbols (including two-letter ligatures) than the standard Latin alphabet.

 

The whole system has very clearly been designed by a person who has never attempted to teach children to write.

There are way too many glyphs, and some of them are far too-similar to each other.

 

In addition to that, some of ITA’s glyphs are actually redundant in some regional English accents, as they represent sounds that aren’t made by any speakers with those regional accents.

 

Two more things are worthy of note:
1- the symbols that it assigned to some of the vowel-sounds are actually used in ‘standard English’ to represent different vowel-sounds (in various English regional accents) to those that they represent in ITA.

 

2- I was at Primary School in England during the 1970s, so one of its shortcomings rapidly became very apparent indeed - it doesn’t have a ‘q’.

 

So what?

 

Well, when your country’s national anthem is ‘God Save the Queen’, and when said country (especially its Primary Schools) makes a big deal out of celebrating said monarch’s Silver Jubilee (1977), the absence of that ‘q’ becomes extremely apparent 😁

 

Those being subjected to ITA were taught to read (& to write) “god sæv the kwccn” - except that the ‘t’ in ‘the’ should also actually be a slightly differently-shaped glyph, with the curve at its bottom curling upwards to the left, not to the right.

 

god sæv the kwccn

God save the Queen

 

Totally identical sentences, yeah?

And, for the child who has had ITA drummed-into him, the one in ‘standard English’ is completely unintelligible.
Not only does it contain two symbols that he has never seen, if he pronounces the ones that he does recognise in the way that he has been taught to pronounce them, the words make completely different sounds, ones that make no sense at all.

 

 

Edited March 28, 2023 by Mercian
Edited for clarity

[51ISH]

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

If one looks at its page on Wikipedia, one can see a picture that shows all of the letterforms that it used.

One can see that it uses more symbols (including two-letter ligatures) than the standard Latin alphabet.

 

The whole system has very clearly been designed by a person who has never attempted to teach children to write.

There are way too many glyphs, and some of them are far too-similar to each other.

 

In addition to that, some of ITA’s glyphs are actually redundant in some regional English accents, as they represent sounds that aren’t made by any speakers with those regional accents.

 

Two more things are worthy of note:
1- the symbols that it assigned to some of the vowel-sounds are actually used in ‘standard English’ to represent different vowel-sounds (in various English regional accents) to those that they represent in ITA.

 

2- I was at Primary School in England during the 1970s, so one of its shortcomings rapidly became very apparent indeed - it doesn’t have a ‘q’.

 

So what?

 

Well, when your country’s national anthem is ‘God Save the Queen’, and when said country (especially its Primary Schools) makes a big deal out of celebrating said monarch’s Silver Jubilee (1977), the absence of that ‘q’ becomes extremely apparent 😁

 

Those being subjected to ITA were taught to read (& to write) “god sæv the kwccn” - except that the ‘t’ in ‘the’ should also actually be a slightly differently-shaped glyph, with the curve at its bottom curling upwards to the left, not to the right.

 

god sæv the kwccn

God save the Queen

 

Totally identical sentences, yeah?

And, for the child who has had ITA drummed-into him, the one in ‘standard English’ is completely unintelligible.
Not only does it contain two symbols that he has never seen, if he pronounces the ones that he does recognise in the way that he has been taught to pronounce them, the words make completely different sounds, ones that make no sense at all.

 

 

 

Apologies, are you saying this is what you went through, or what you have read and know? I started school in the UK, give or take around 1964 in a Primary School, then for a few years until it closed a Secondary Modern School, then, we 'Transitioned' Woo hoo!! to a 'Comprehensive'.    Add in  an odd twist of fate,  some 45 years later I ended up working with a lady I went to Primary School with when we were 5 years old....👻

[ridiculopathy]

Here’s a gift version of the article, if any of you are still interested. It’s nothing new, just follows the course of fountain pens: used to be great, then hit a low due to technology (in penmanship terms, became illegible), and now gaining in popularity thanks in part to a younger crowd who are into analog things.

[Mercian]

30 minutes ago, 51ISH said:

Apologies, are you saying this is what you went through, or what you have read and know?

I started Primary School in the mid-1970s. We had staggered-entry in to the ‘Reception’ class according to our DOB, so I probably started my school ‘career’ either in January, or after Easter

It was only a small village, so all the kids in the first three year-groups were taught in the same classroom.

The kids in the two oldest year-groups in the school were all taught together in the school’s other classroom.

 

I was not personally subjected-to ITA, but several of my classmates were.

 

Later on, in my teenaged years, I remember seeing ‘dual-language’ signposts in the main park in a nearby town that were still printed in ‘standard English’ and in ITA.

 

Edit to add:

My examples of reasons why ITA is actually detrimental to the teaching of children are culled from memories that were prompted by looking at the full chart of all the 45 sound-glyphs that ITA comprised. Because the chart includes the IPA symbols for their intended sounds, and examples of words in which those sounds are made, both shown underneath the glyphs.

 

Because I personally was never subjected to ITA I had not been fully aware of exactly how damaging it is to one’s ability to subsequently learn to read ‘standard English’ before this evening.

 

To fully understand why I am saying this, try the following:
look at the chart of the ITA glyphs on the Wikipedia page;

 

pay close attention to how it prescribes the pronunciation of the glyphs that are used in ‘standard English’ to write the sentence “God save the Queen”;

 

remember that it prescribes different glyphs to symbolise the sole vowel-sound in the word ‘save’ and the sole vowel-sound in the word ‘Queen’, so the child who has been taught to be fluent in ITA will pronounce every symbol separately, in the sequence in which they are written;

 

then pronounce (out-loud) the symbols in the ‘standard English’ sentence “God save the Queen” in the ways that are prescribed by ITA.
 

You should now understand why I regard its teaching as being counter-productive.

[51ISH]

7 minutes ago, Mercian said:

I started Primary School in the mid-1970s. We had staggered-entry in to the ‘Reception’ class according to our DOB, so I probably started my school ‘career’ in either January or after Easter

It was only a small village, so all the kids in the first three year-groups were taught in the same classroom.

The kids in the two oldest year-groups in the school were all taught together in the school’s other classroom.

 

I was not personally subjected-to ITA, but several of my classmates were.

 

Later on, in my teenage years, I remember seeing ‘dual-language’ signposts in the main park in a nearby town that were still printed in ‘standard English’ and in ITA.

 

Blimey.... I never knew ITA  even 'existed' in the UK.  When I saw some USA members discussing it, I thought 'Thank goodness we never had to go through that'  (Although I didn't particularly like my school years either)  Without being more specific than you would like, I wondered if you could say roughly where in Mercia (assuming🤔) that was.

[corniche]

3 hours ago, Mercian said:

If one looks at its page on Wikipedia, one can see a picture that shows all of the letterforms that it used.

One can see that it uses more symbols (including two-letter ligatures) than the standard Latin alphabet.

 

The whole system has very clearly been designed by a person who has never attempted to teach children to write.

There are way too many glyphs, and some of them are far too-similar to each other.

 

In addition to that, some of ITA’s glyphs are actually redundant in some regional English accents, as they represent sounds that aren’t made by any speakers with those regional accents.

 

Two more things are worthy of note:
1- the symbols that it assigned to some of the vowel-sounds are actually used in ‘standard English’ to represent different vowel-sounds (in various English regional accents) to those that they represent in ITA.

 

2- I was at Primary School in England during the 1970s, so one of its shortcomings rapidly became very apparent indeed - it doesn’t have a ‘q’.

 

So what?

 

Well, when your country’s national anthem is ‘God Save the Queen’, and when said country (especially its Primary Schools) makes a big deal out of celebrating said monarch’s Silver Jubilee (1977), the absence of that ‘q’ becomes extremely apparent 😁

 

Those being subjected to ITA were taught to read (& to write) “god sæv the kwccn” - except that the ‘t’ in ‘the’ should also actually be a slightly differently-shaped glyph, with the curve at its bottom curling upwards to the left, not to the right.

 

god sæv the kwccn

God save the Queen

 

Totally identical sentences, yeah?

And, for the child who has had ITA drummed-into him, the one in ‘standard English’ is completely unintelligible.
Not only does it contain two symbols that he has never seen, if he pronounces the ones that he does recognise in the way that he has been taught to pronounce them, the words make completely different sounds, ones that make no sense at all.

 

 

Good grief. Sometimes I wonder how we or our kids, (I haven't any), are able to function at all.

 

- Sean

[Mercian]

29 minutes ago, 51ISH said:

I wondered if you could say roughly where in Mercia (assuming🤔) that was

It was near Uttoxeter.
Right on the eastern edge of ‘English Mercia’, on the western border of ‘the Danelaw’.

Or, to put that in to terms that make sense in most of England, not far south of Alton Towers 😉

 

Btw, have you attempted the exercise that I have added-to my previous post? 😁

[51ISH]

14 minutes ago, Mercian said:

It was near Uttoxeter.
Right on the eastern edge of ‘English Mercia’, on the western border of ‘the Danelaw’.

 

Btw, have you attempted the exercise that I have added-to my previous post? 😁

 I'll take a look tomorrow...it's getting late...

 

I was an 'older brother' by 6 years to my sister 😲 So I was roped in to learn her how to read and other stuff..... I think they were called 'Flash Cards' or simllar...?  I said something 'inappropriate' trying to help ....but we all had a chuckle and carried on.....🤣  I was  'babysitting' my sister much younger than would be considered appropriate (or legal) these days...😇  I was always a 'responsible child' 🤣 

[ParramattaPaul]

4 hours ago, Mercian said:

If one looks at its page on Wikipedia, one can see a picture that shows all of the letterforms that it used.

Not to discount your husband's disability, but no wonder he is dyslexic.  One look at that alphabet and I can see how it could create a problem for anyone then having to use the standard English alphabet.  It would for me, like suddenly having to use a Cryllic alphabet whilst writing and reading English.

[kestrel]

Retired high school biology teacher, here.  The hardest thing to teach to a student is something that contradicts or undoes something he/she already knows.  Switching from ITA to regular English spelling would have been demoralizing and frustrating for the poor student.  It should have been entirely unnecessary. 

 

My aunt taught first through third grade in public schools from the late 1940s through the 1970s.  She was a master at teaching reading, writing, and grammar.  My sisters and I were all reading long before we started school and enjoyed it.  We were writing cogent paragraphs by age 5.  That was largely my aunt's doing.  She had a classroom library of several hundred books so her students (and her sister's children) could enjoy books of their choosing while they practiced reading.  We became skillful readers by reading and fluent writers by writing about lots of things including the books we read. 

Did ITA classrooms have ITA books?  If not, did students write about the non ITA books in ITA? 

 

In this teacher's opinion, penmanship began to die when it was decided that teaching proper handwriting was no longer worth the time, the effort, or the damage to (sarcasm alert) fragile egos.  It started long before technology became a convenient excuse.  Penmanship wasn't assessed on standardized tests nor was spelling so it became a waste of time to teach those skills, especially when teacher/administrator evaluations and compensation are heavily influenced by those tests.  The "self esteem" crowd advocated letting students express themselves without criticism.  That included how to hold a writing instrument and how to form legible letters and numbers.  Cursive went first.  Printing is following the same path in many areas.  When I started teaching in 1994 I had a few students every year whose handwriting looked like the tracks left by a horde of drunken hamsters with inky feet staggering across the paper.  I caught (bleep) from some parents when I kicked papers back for a rewrite because I couldn't decipher them.  The problem got progressively worse from year to year.  I saw students with legally binding Individual education plans restricting the amount of written work I could require them to do because they had chronic wrist/hand pain because of the way they held pens and pencils.  I wasn't allowed to help them correct that problem (Pilot Varsities and tripod grip) because I wasn't a licensed physical therapist.  I did it anyway until the lawyers got involved. 

 

I keep hoping the situation will get better in the schools.  My district is teaching cursive again but it still is not assessed on the state exams.  If time is short the nontested content gets dropped first.  Time is always short.

[ParramattaPaul]

2 hours ago, kestrel said:

It started long before technology became a convenient excuse.  Penmanship wasn't assessed on standardized tests nor was spelling so it became a waste of time to teach those skills, especially when teacher/administrator evaluations and compensation are heavily influenced by those tests.

If I may say so, that's rather myopic of those who focused solely upon standardized tests.  I would remind them that life is full of non-standardized tests, and that people often need to express thoughts, and on paper.  The world may 'begin' in the classroom, but it most certainly does not end there.

 

[txomsy]

On the subject of ITA. This is my totally subjective and questionable opinion.

 

May I remind you that many forum members grew up using languages whose literal transcription reproduces 1:1 the pronunciation? French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, to name a few, but also many others, are some examples. Maybe a written symbol has sometimes a different pronunciation when in a combination (like e.g. French E, A, O, U and ou or eau) or with a modifier (like an accent, bar, umlaut...), but that combination always translates phonetically to the same sound irrespective of context.

 

So, learning a system where written and phonetics match exactly is not necessarily bad.

 

About symbols, if one adds modifiers, how many symbols does French, Swedish or so many other languages have? Not to mention Chinese or Japanese and the like. That is not necessarily a problem either.

 

Then, as it turns out, many of these people participates in the FPN forum using English.

 

They learned a 1:1 match between symbols and sounds, and then had to learn a language where there is no defined association between symbols and sounds. Sometimes, one might dream that historical records might matter, so a word derived from, e.g. Latin, or even a Spanish word would retain its original pronunciation, but that is not the case oftentimes either (I remember the shock when I first heard some words like Orion, El Dorado, and many others).

 

And many members have learnt English alongside their own language since childhood and phonetic/symbol transcription/non-transcription at the same time. So switching from a phonetic to a non-phonetic system is not necessarily a problem either.

 

I wholly and strongly refuse to believe English-speakers have any impairment or disability inherent to their usual language and irrespective or race/condition/heritage/whatever else no matter what.

 

So the only sensible conclusion is that the problem is one of expectations.

 

My impression is that there is an attitude problem. It is not teaching something "seemingly contradictory" the problem. It is not switching systems, nor the number of symbols, or the process itself.

 

I think that what makes a difference is the expectations while/ attitude to learning: for a foreign language native, learning a new language carries the implicit assumption that it is new and therefore, by definition, will follow different rules, so you just discard all you have learned and open your mind to the new "way" of communicating. This helps bring down psychological barriers.

 

In my experience I have found similar opposition in all fields, not just reading/writing. People gets used to think of some knowledge as unmovable dogmas cast in stone, and then they refuse any modification without giving it any second thought.

 

Science, for instance, is plagued with dogmas. And in the last century we have broken practically all of them. Yet, whenever a new  concept is introduced many (not all) of  even the most "rational" scientists have problem adopting it no matter the evidence.

 

So, for me, the challenge is not in introducing new concepts or changing opinions, but in teaching kids from the beginning to keep an open and critic mind (being open without criticism would lead them to accept all sorts of scams, lies and superstitions). That is -IMMHO- the most difficult part of teaching.

 

I grew up with a phonetically-transcribed language. Then learnt several others -among them English- and that wasn't ever a problem.  I learned phonetic transcription in Grammar at the secondary school. Not a problem either, and it actually helped me learn English pronunciation when I saw it associated to words in dictionaries. But I knew to distinguish phonetics from writing.

 

My parents were "teachers". They insisted in making a distinction: a professor's main goal would be to teach knowledge, a teacher's main goal would be teaching how to live. Again, that is the most difficult part of teaching (transmitting good living hygiene).

 

I do not claim the education I got is any better than anyone else. For all I know, most of what I was taught was actually wrong. But my experience has shown me that the attitude to new knowledge really does make a difference.

[JulieParadise]

Yeah, I'd second @txomsy . Tell someone speaking a language like the Ethiopian languages with their Fidel script that there are too many glyphs! There are 26 consonants in most Ethiopic languages like Amharic or Ge'ez that, depending on what vowels you use them with, have a different shape, so you are dealing with around 200 glyphs. Not to mention Chinese and other alphabets. It's all just a matter of practice.

 

I'd still say penmanship wasn't killed, at least not everywhere. Wherever people care about writing something down, even if it is just grocery lists or the next doctor's appointment you get handed by the nurse, there will be the need to do so legibly.

 

I am often surprised how many people around me have gorgeous handwriting, the last time on Sunday: In Berlin there was a local election on February 12th and a plebiscite/referendum on March 26th. The woman who was assigned to fill out the protocol form as well as her replacement had a very nice handwriting, so I commented on that, others chimed in and we all talked about writing. 

 

I also notice this at my children's school where I often volunteer: Many students have neat handwriting, so not all is lost. (Probably depending on your location; here in Germany handwriting is still taught in schools and encouraged throughout.)

[ParramattaPaul]

55 minutes ago, JulieParadise said:

Tell someone speaking a language like the Ethiopian languages with their Fidel script that there are too many glyphs!

But alas, we are talking teaching people to read the English language. I do not believe (spoken, written, or read) English is as complex a language as, for example, the Ethiopian, Vietnamese or many others. 

[JulieParadise]

1 hour ago, ParramattaPaul said:

But alas, we are talking teaching people to read the English language. I do not believe (spoken, written, or read) English is as complex a language as, for example, the Ethiopian, Vietnamese or many others. 

 

Ethiopian language are not more or less complex than English in terms of grammar and all, but they (and most other Semitic languages also) do follow the principle of 1 sound = 1 sign (each phoneme is represented with its own grapheme), so ba is a different glyph than bu or bi or bo.

 

In the end this is pretty simple and straightforward, and, as I said, a matter of being used to reading and writing it.

[Mercian]

@txomsy @JulieParadise

I totally agree that ITA is a great auxiliary tool for teaching English to adults who grew up in non-Anglophone countries.

 

They are people who have already learned to control their writing implements to write their own languages, and who are already familiar with the idea that individual glyphs are used to represent individual sounds.

Adults who are learning English as a foreign language need to learn to recognise/write Latin glyphs, and to recognise the English sounds that are intended by the glyphs/sequences of glyphs that are used in ‘standard English’.

 

English is almost uniquely hard to learn fluently because it derives its grammar and vocabulary from at least five distinct ‘parent’ languages.

Its spelling conventions have developed (over centuries) to reflect its many parents - so, as you both no-doubt learned ‘the hard way’ (and, incidentally, have both managed superbly) English uses the same glyphs/glyph sequences to represent many sounds, and several glyphs/sequences of glyphs to represent the same sound.

 

If one is trying to teach English as a Foreign Language to adults, I think that teaching one’s students to recognise ITA’s sound-glyphs, and writing out any new words/sentences that one is introducing to one’s students with the same words/sentences also written in ITA underneath, is a very good idea.

I think that doing that will accelerate adult students’ ability to learn English.

 

But:

If one is trying to teach children, one must use a system that takes account of the following factors:

1- children have not yet learned to associate glyphs with distinct sounds.
One must introduce them to this idea using simple words and then simple sentences, and one must use glyphs that they can easily distinguish from each other.

 

A system that, like ITA, uses a large number of similar-looking/very-hard-to-‘draw’-correctly glyphs is harder to teach to children than one that uses a smaller set of glyphs;

 

2- children have not yet mastered the control of their writing-implements, and also not yet mastered the techniques of ‘drawing’ glyphs distinctively.
In the early stages of learning to write, children very often ‘draw’ the mirror-image of the glyph that they intend to write. This can cause potential confusion when words can be written with either one particular glyph or its mirror image - e.g.s ‘d’ instead of ‘b’; ‘q’ instead of ‘p’ (& vice versa).
I recognise that ITA is partly intended to reduce the likelihood of this occurring, but it also introduces more confusion for children by e.g. using the glyph ‘z’ and its mirror-image.
So the ITA system - inadvertently, but so what? - actually introduces more ‘elephant-traps’ for children who are trying to learn to write.

 

A system that, like ITA, uses even more pairs of glyphs and their mirror-images to convey sounds, and a large number of hard-to-‘draw’-correctly glyphs is even harder for children to learn to ‘draw’ correctly than is one that uses fewer glyphs;

 

3- a system that, like ITA, represents every sound with its own individual glyph does not teach children to recognise that English uses combinations/sequences of glyphs to represent sounds that are not encoded by individual glyphs.

 

The fact that ITA uses some of the glyphs used in ‘standard English’ to represent sounds that are different to the ones that ‘standard English’ assigns to those glyphs is just the ‘cherry on the cake’.

 

After a child has mastered the complex set of skills that is required to become a fluent writer of ITA, s/he must then perform the additional mental labour of un-learning its glyphs if s/he is ever to become a fluent reader/writer of ‘standard English’ using the Latin alphabet.

 

Which is, after all, the actual goal that the school/world is requiring the child to achieve.

 

[Mercian]

9 hours ago, JulieParadise said:

I am often surprised how many people around me have gorgeous handwriting, the last time on Sunday: In Berlin there was a local election on February 12th and a plebiscite/referendum on March 26th. The woman who was assigned to fill out the protocol form as well as her replacement had a very nice handwriting, so I commented on that, others chimed in and we all talked about writing. 

 

I also notice this at my children's school where I often volunteer: Many students have neat handwriting, so not all is lost. (Probably depending on your location; here in Germany handwriting is still taught in schools and encouraged throughout.)

In my experience, you are correct that this is a ‘local’ phenomenon.

 

In the UK, the teaching of ‘penmanship’ and/or ‘good handwriting’ has been abandoned.

 

I suspect that the reason for this is that almost every aspect of ‘public’ provision of anything has been infected by the meretricious concept of ‘funding by results’.

I.e. if there is no simple ‘metric’ by which to assess the ‘performance’ of any institution, the accursèd fools who have been seduced by the idiotic concept (and dogmatically imposed it upon everyone under their control) just cannot come up with any way to even understand any thing, let alone ‘assess’ the ‘delivery’ of it.

And of course, any ‘institution’ whose funding is determined by its ‘performance’ becomes focussed on ‘gaming the stats’ - or, in the case of educational establishments, focussed on training its students to pass the tests against which it is assessed (instead of actually educating them).

 

Teaching ‘good handwriting’/‘penmanship’ is a fantastic educational tool, because it requires students to develop fine-motor-skills. And because it is slower than typing, it also teaches students to think before they write.

This skill is invaluable for their future lives, because it teaches them to process ideas mentally while ‘taking notes’, and also to be able to express themselves concisely and cogently.

 

Anyone who is familiar with my posts here will know that the loss of this ability is to be lamented, as its absence causes one’s readers to subjected to rambling Jeremiads 😞

[TSherbs]

So, has anyone read this article in the NYT? What's it say? Just another reactionary piece?