“Is Penmanship Worth Saving?”
In a world where most communication is electronic and the keyboard has replaced the pen, there are still times when a person has to write things down with a pen and paper. So…yes! Penmanship is worth saving. Writing is a necessary part of our adult lives, and schools are designed to get children ready for the adult world, penmanship is still an important subject for students to learn. I was recently talking to family members regarding penmanship. We are one of those families that often sit around the table for long hours chatting, having discussions or debates and have often times started comparing handwriting. I’m not sure when or where this began, but it almost always started because someone would make a comment about an older relative’s handwriting. My grandparents and parents have lovely and graceful penmanship. I was blessed to have inherited that trait. I say inherited because my brother and sister, while there penmanship is legible it is missing that graceful panache of the loops and curves of cursive. Our conversation was in regards to a letter I’d recently sent to my nieces and nephews. My sister told me she often had to read them because the kids could not read my cursive writing. She then went on to say that she noticed that there is really no focus on penmanship in the classroom these days, that while her children can write they lack the skill to write long hand and at times can’t read it either. I cannot accept this. Imagine leaving a note or writing a letter to someone only to find that it is as cryptic as if it were a secret code. Simply put, I’m not prepared to lose written language in a single generation. Are you? Do you care? Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. A 2012 study led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University done on children who had not yet learned to read and write...