Handwriting is losing its presence in classrooms
By Robert A. Frahm, The Hartford Courant
September 29, 2005
WEST HARTFORD CT --As Daria Caruso's high school seniors watched the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film "North by Northwest" in an advanced English class, one scene, in particular, puzzled them. On the screen was a paper note, a message handwritten in cursive script.
Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts The message was pivotal to the plot, but, for many of the students, it might as well have been written in a foreign language.
"They couldn't read the message," said Caruso, a teacher at West Hartford's Conard High School. "I had to back up the (film) and read it to them."
Relying more and more on e-mail, blogs, Web sites, instant messaging and other electronic forms of communication, students at all levels are forgetting the fine art of handwriting, educators say. Cursive script, the graceful looping style that connects one letter to another, might be going the way of the inkwell and the fountain pen.
When students do write by hand, many resort to printing, educators say.
"It's true. Unfortunately, a lot of schools are not spending enough time on handwriting," said Priscilla Mullins of Zaner-Bloser Educational Publishers, an Ohio-based firm that produces classroom materials for handwriting, spelling, grammar and related subjects.
Mullins, a former teacher, said handwriting lessons are being squeezed out of the curriculum as teachers focus on mathematics, reading and other subjects that are emphasized on standardized tests.
"It's pretty alarming," she said. "Those (penmanship) skills have just gotten lost."
Connecticut has no specific penmanship requirement, but some schools still teach cursive writing in elementary grades.
"Once you get good at this, it's a lot faster than printing," veteran teacher Patricia Bartomeli told her class of third-graders at Wapping School in South Windsor during a recent lesson introducing the cursive forms of the letters "r" and "s."
Bartomeli believes cursive handwriting is valuable and teaches it all year but is not certain whether students will continue to practice it as they get older. "What they choose to do will be an individual thing," she said.
If samples of student writing from the annual statewide Connecticut Mastery Test are any indication, many students are choosing to abandon it.
Among sample handwritten test papers on a State Department of Education Web site, nearly all are done in print instead of cursive script.
Kyla Walgren is a junior in Caruso's class at Conard. She said she doesn't know how to write in cursive style. "It would take me so much longer to figure out each letter because I don't know them," said the 16-year-old.
Some of her classmates said they have difficulty reading cursive script.
Walgren, who does most of her work on computers, remembers her elementary teachers giving lessons in cursive writing. "They said we'd use it all the time, but we didn't."
Technology might be squeezing out good handwriting even among adults.
Among the 48 billion letters handled annually by the U.S. Postal Service, a diminishing proportion -- just 19 percent -- are addressed by hand, said Alfred Lawson, a postal official who manages the computers that scan and read addresses.
One place where students still must write by hand is the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the college entrance exam, which now requires a written essay. Caren Scoropanos, a spokeswoman for The College Board, which administers the SAT, said the 1.4 million students who have taken the new writing test all produced legible papers. Nevertheless, the board plans to issue a report next summer comparing the performance of students who used the cursive form with those who printed their essays, she said.
The trend away from cursive writing is discouraging, some educators say.
"When you turn in work that's in a messy, illegible form, you're not showing self-respect," said Tina Blue, a faculty member in the English department at the University of Kansas who has called for more emphasis on penmanship in elementary school.
She said that one-third to one-half of her college students produce handwriting that she cannot read easily. "I can't even read their names."
But with the advent of computers, instant messages and e-mail, how important is penmanship?
"The contexts where (handwriting) is an important form of communication ... are diminishing," said Donald J. Leu, a University of Connecticut education professor who studies the use of classroom technology.
"Thoughtful notes are greatly appreciated," he said. "Cursive is good for that, but writing a report? No."
By Robert A. Frahm, The Hartford Courant
September 29, 2005
WEST HARTFORD CT --As Daria Caruso's high school seniors watched the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film "North by Northwest" in an advanced English class, one scene, in particular, puzzled them. On the screen was a paper note, a message handwritten in cursive script.
Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts The message was pivotal to the plot, but, for many of the students, it might as well have been written in a foreign language.
"They couldn't read the message," said Caruso, a teacher at West Hartford's Conard High School. "I had to back up the (film) and read it to them."
Relying more and more on e-mail, blogs, Web sites, instant messaging and other electronic forms of communication, students at all levels are forgetting the fine art of handwriting, educators say. Cursive script, the graceful looping style that connects one letter to another, might be going the way of the inkwell and the fountain pen.
When students do write by hand, many resort to printing, educators say.
"It's true. Unfortunately, a lot of schools are not spending enough time on handwriting," said Priscilla Mullins of Zaner-Bloser Educational Publishers, an Ohio-based firm that produces classroom materials for handwriting, spelling, grammar and related subjects.
Mullins, a former teacher, said handwriting lessons are being squeezed out of the curriculum as teachers focus on mathematics, reading and other subjects that are emphasized on standardized tests.
"It's pretty alarming," she said. "Those (penmanship) skills have just gotten lost."
Connecticut has no specific penmanship requirement, but some schools still teach cursive writing in elementary grades.
"Once you get good at this, it's a lot faster than printing," veteran teacher Patricia Bartomeli told her class of third-graders at Wapping School in South Windsor during a recent lesson introducing the cursive forms of the letters "r" and "s."
Bartomeli believes cursive handwriting is valuable and teaches it all year but is not certain whether students will continue to practice it as they get older. "What they choose to do will be an individual thing," she said.
If samples of student writing from the annual statewide Connecticut Mastery Test are any indication, many students are choosing to abandon it.
Among sample handwritten test papers on a State Department of Education Web site, nearly all are done in print instead of cursive script.
Kyla Walgren is a junior in Caruso's class at Conard. She said she doesn't know how to write in cursive style. "It would take me so much longer to figure out each letter because I don't know them," said the 16-year-old.
Some of her classmates said they have difficulty reading cursive script.
Walgren, who does most of her work on computers, remembers her elementary teachers giving lessons in cursive writing. "They said we'd use it all the time, but we didn't."
Technology might be squeezing out good handwriting even among adults.
Among the 48 billion letters handled annually by the U.S. Postal Service, a diminishing proportion -- just 19 percent -- are addressed by hand, said Alfred Lawson, a postal official who manages the computers that scan and read addresses.
One place where students still must write by hand is the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the college entrance exam, which now requires a written essay. Caren Scoropanos, a spokeswoman for The College Board, which administers the SAT, said the 1.4 million students who have taken the new writing test all produced legible papers. Nevertheless, the board plans to issue a report next summer comparing the performance of students who used the cursive form with those who printed their essays, she said.
The trend away from cursive writing is discouraging, some educators say.
"When you turn in work that's in a messy, illegible form, you're not showing self-respect," said Tina Blue, a faculty member in the English department at the University of Kansas who has called for more emphasis on penmanship in elementary school.
She said that one-third to one-half of her college students produce handwriting that she cannot read easily. "I can't even read their names."
But with the advent of computers, instant messages and e-mail, how important is penmanship?
"The contexts where (handwriting) is an important form of communication ... are diminishing," said Donald J. Leu, a University of Connecticut education professor who studies the use of classroom technology.
"Thoughtful notes are greatly appreciated," he said. "Cursive is good for that, but writing a report? No."
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