Canada: Cursive writing is going the way of the dodo bird

[Harold Schiffman]

 Saturday » November 10 » 2007

So how's your longhand?
Cursive writing is going the way of the dodo bird

Cheryl Cornacchia
The Gazette

The handwriting may be on the wall. Penmanship survived the advent of
the typewriter. But in the computer age, with children learning
keyboard skills at an earlier and earlier age, penmanship appears to
be going the way of, well, the handwritten letter. While some
academics view proficiency in cursive script - or longhand - as a
relic of the past, the education system is not without its penmanship
promoters.

Unlike with printing, in which letters are formed separately, in
cursive writing all the letters of a word are connected. Cursive
letters are the cornerstone of the once-revered art of handwriting, a
form of self-expression as unique as a fingerprint.
But with computers and print technology on the rise, cursive writing
is fading. By the time students reach university in Quebec and
elsewhere, just as many are likely to print as they are to write when
putting thoughts on paper.

Last year, all but 15 per cent of the more than 1.5 million students
who wrote SATs - standardized assessment testing for universities and
private schools, including many in Montreal - printed in the essay
section of the test. The handwriting that is done today is fast
becoming a bastardized combination of printed and cursive letters,
according to Jan Olsen, a leading U.S. handwriting specialist.

Olsen, an occupational therapist who has created a cursive-writing
method widely used in U.S. schools and a growing number in Canada,
maintains that handwriting is a learned discipline that fuels a
child's cognitive thinking and intellectual development. To try to
stem the decline of handwriting, the staff at Clearpoint Elementary
School in Pointe Claire are focusing on the cursive skills of its 450
students. This year, there's an all-out effort by teachers of grades 1
through 4 to improve students' handwriting. Next year, teachers will
start requiring students in Grades 5 and 6 to use cursive writing,
instead of printing or computer printouts, when they hand in projects
they have done at home.

It's a comprehensive plan aimed at saving the art of handwriting
before it's lost, Clearpoint Elementary principal Sam Bruzzese said.
"We are going to put a real push on," Bruzzese said. "We'll
re-evaluate it in a year." As Grade 4 Clearpoint Elementary student
Shyla Fielding has discovered, cursive writing is "sometimes easy" and
"sometimes hard" - it depends on which letter of the alphabet she is
trying to write.

Shyla considers "v" and "w" to be easy letters because she can shape
them nicely with her HB No. 3 pencil. But she finds "h" and "k" tough
because of their loops, hoops and buckles. Difficulty aside, though,
all cursive letters have one thing in common - they are disappearing.
"If I had a special letter to write," Shyla said in class one morning
recently, "I would print; it would be more neat."

She's not alone.

Most Quebec schools - and Clearpoint is no exception - are trying to
find their way in regard to cursive writing.

Generally, students in the English-language system begin instruction
in cursive writing in Grade 3; in the French-language system, it
begins in Grade 2.

But handwriting is not addressed in the Education Department's major
document outlining school curriculum.

Marie-France Boulay, a spokesperson for Education Minister Jean-Marc
Fournier, confirmed that the ministry has taken no position on cursive
writing.

She conceded that with so many forces working against cursive writing,
no policy is in effect a policy, albeit one that fails to nurture the
discipline.

The Education Department has decided to leave the matter up to
individual school boards, schools and teachers - "the pedagogical
specialists," she said.

It's a situation that critics say is speeding the demise of
handwriting. Without provincial direction, there's no standardization
from board to board, school to school and teacher to teacher.

As Clearpoint Elementary's Bruzzese pointed out: "If a school hasn't
committed itself to (cursive writing), how can you ask individual
teachers to commit themselves?"

In the past, teachers had guidelines for teaching handwriting, said
Jim Brown, a retired elementary school teacher who now tutors at
Elizabeth Ballantyne School in Montreal West.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Brown recalled, he and other Quebec elementary
teachers followed a structured program to instill handwriting skills,
and school-board inspectors visited classrooms regularly to make sure
it was being followed.

That kind of attention to cursive writing no longer exists in Quebec.
But it is being brought back in other jurisdictions.

In Britain, for instance, handwriting is part of the daily literacy
hour and a parents' guide from the government says: "Encourage your
child to be inspired by examples of beautiful handwriting in museums,
galleries and books."

Lise Charlebois, principal of Dorval Elementary, another school
pondering the issue, wonders how relevant cursive writing is today.
"It's not as if children are becoming dumber; it's just that their
skills are shifting."

She noted how students can text message this, Google that and cut and
print reports like nobody's business. "The message is what counts,"
she said.

Teachers at Charlebois's school recently met to review how they are
instructing students in cursive writing and try to figure out how to
proceed.

Charlebois, a former language- arts pedagogical consultant with the
Lester B. Pearson School Board, said she would like to see a public
debate on the issue.

Ruth Rosenfield, president of the Montreal Teachers Association, said
that over the years debate about the future of cursive writing has
repeatedly popped up and then disappeared.

Nowadays, she said, for many teachers, "cursive writing is almost seen
as the dodo bird."

Barbara White, a former elementary school teacher and now principal of
Perspectives I & II high schools in the English Montreal School Board,
said she appreciates beautiful handwriting in a letter, card or note,
but wonders how realistic it is to expect such penmanship in today's
hurried world. Most of her students print or take their notes on
laptops, she said.

But at Clearpoint Elementary, teachers are not ready to throw in the pen.

Teacher Suzanne Ujvari said she is doing everything she can to
encourage her Grade 3 and 4 students to master the skill.

The French-language teacher - she learned cursive writing in Grade 1 -
has put up posters of perfectly formed letters on her classroom walls.
She writes on the blackboard as much as possible so her students can
follow her handwriting and "get the flow."

At least once a week, she gives a 20- to 30-minute class in
handwriting - while classical music plays - and the rest of the week
she encourages students to use their budding penmanship.

Recently, many used their cursive skills when they penned letters to
an imaginary king of France in social-studies class.

Much like a teacher of yesteryear, Ujvari goes from desk to desk,
checking her students for good posture and correcting their letter
formulation.

"Let's face it - in my day you handed in cursive writing and that was
that," she said. "Today, we have to work at it.

"But it's worth it; it's an extension of ourselves."

ccornacchia at thegazette.canwest.com




-- http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=63e96f6d-2614-409c-96ae-fea2baaa7ce5
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************