I have relatively good penmanship. I mean, it’s easily readable, even though it’s not perfect Palmer Method. Like most people my age, I started learning cursive in second grade, perfected it in third, and then proceeded to create my own style by the time I was in high school.
The nuns at St. Anthony’s would probably disown me if they saw my handwriting now.
We were taught the Palmer Method, which required hours of practice drawing loops and getting the slant just right. Remember the cardboard demonstration cards above the blackboard? It was great for us right-handers, but I remember my left-handed buddy Rick O’Neill doing some awful contortions to avoid dragging his hand through his work and getting it smeared with the “permanent” blue-black Sanford’s ink that we had to use.
Remember inkwells? Each desk had a little glass bottle in the upper right-hand corner that one of the “monitors” had to fill each day from a big, liter-sized bottle of Sanford’s Ink.We could either dip a pen in the inkwell or fill up the bladder on a fountain pen to be used for our penmanship practices. Most of us had ink stains pretty much all the time in third and fourth grade.
But getting back to penmanship and cursive writing. I wonder how much longer cursive will be around. How relevant is it in a culture of keyboards and computers? Obviously it used to be very relevant; before the advent of typewriters in the late 19th century, handwritten communication was the only way for people to express themselves on paper. So it stood to reason that good handwriting, and especially the personalized, more intricate cursive format, was very important.
If you had poor handwriting, it could make you look stupid, lazy or ignorant, just like poor speaking habits did.
When the Common Core Standards Initiative was offered for voluntary state adoption in 2010, the curriculum was set up to standardize math and language arts requirements across the United States. Whoever was in charge of establishing the program decided to omit any mention of cursive writing in the guidelines. By 2013, 45 states had implemented the Common Core standards, so cursive writing seems headed for oblivion.
I wonder if we should be concerned or upset about the demise of something that used to be important enough for us to spend 45 minutes a day practicing it. How many times did I have to re-do an assignment because Sister David John didn’t approve of my using a “Q” that looked like an “O” with a tail instead of the silly-looking “Q” that looked like a “2”?
For years, my late best friend Bob and my lovely wife carried on mock-serious debates about the relative merits of Zaner-Bloser (Bob’s preference) and the Palmer Method (Marilyn’s choice). Now, if cursive writing bites the dust, no such fun debates will be carried on. Too bad!
I just wonder if after we no longer teach cursive, will anyone be able to read some of the important documents that were written in long-hand? The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Shakespeare’s sonnets.
When I first began writing my column, back in the middle 1960s, I submitted it in long hand. Now I submit it by email. I wonder what would happen if I tried doing it the old-fashioned way!
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