An ad like the one in the January 21, 1869 issue of the Malone Palladium which announced the opening of a new writing school in Malone, NY, was not uncommon during the post-Civil War era.
According to the ad, Professor T.M. Tobin, a former teacher at the Vermont Business College in Burlington, was offering to teach “ladies and gentlemen the Spencerian system of penmanship.”
Students were expected to provide their own foolscap paper, “good” ink, and pens. Tobin’s ad stated that specimens of his penmanship could be seen at the post office and that he would award a gold pen to the student who showed the most improvement. His fee for twelve lessons in today’s money was about $35.00, payable in advance.
The Spencerian method of handwriting had been developed and promoted by Platt Rogers Spencer. Born on a farm in East Fishkill, NY, in Dutchess County, in 1801, he and his family subsequently moved to Ohio where, as a 14-year-old pupil, he taught his first writing class in a one-room log schoolhouse. Spencer’s first penmanship instruction book was published in 1848 and was revised many times before and after he died in 1864.
Because his goal was to create a handwriting system that could be written quicker than competing systems, he named his process “chirythmography,” a word he created from Greek words meaning “timed hand writing.” Spencer recommended that a metronome be used to help students keep up the pace during writing practice. Although the letters in Spencer’s system were very ornate by today’s standards, they were simpler compared to those of earlier centuries. He said the shape of his letters was influenced by the elliptical curves he saw everywhere in nature.
Greatly aided by the endorsement by Victor M. Rice, then superintendent of schools in Buffalo, NY and later New York State superintendent of public instruction, Spencer’s method practically dominated the American world of penmanship instruction from 1850 to 1900.
Around the turn of the century, the march of technology brought an end to the dominance of the Spencerian method. Critics in the business world had been complaining for years that telegraphers were unable to translate Morse code into Spencerian handwriting fast enough. In response to such criticism, another man born in New York State, Austin N. Palmer, developed a new system of handwriting that he claimed generated “commercial speed”—a kind of handwriting that worked hand in glove with the new communications technology which had grown to include the typewriter, the multigraph, the mimeograph, the addressograph, and the telephone.
Born in Fort Jackson, NY, in St. Lawrence County, in 1859, Palmer studied the Spencerian system at Bryant and Stratton Business College in Manchester, NH before moving west. Eventually settling in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Palmer devised a method of handwriting which also became known as “muscular writing” because it brought the muscles of the entire arm into play, not just the muscles of the hand as Spencer’s system did. Critics of the Spencerian method complained that it turned out nicely shaded and formed letters but the writer “lacked the speed which is essential in the practical world.” According to Palmer, pupils learning Spencer’s method were advised that it was “not how much but how well” they wrote, speed was entirely overlooked. Palmer added that the “copybook method,” his way of referring to Spencerian handwriting, was “a system of drawing which crippled individuality, hampered freedom of movement, and has developed millions of scribblers.”
Palmer extensively promoted his textbooks and their sales got a huge boost when the associate superintendent of schools in New York City saw and liked samples of Palmer’s method in 1904. The Palmer system soon supplanted the Spencerian method and dominated penmanship instruction in America well into the 1950’s. Since then, Palmer’s method has been deposed by the Zaner-Bloser method and the D’Nealian method which are the main styles of handwriting taught to children today.
However, there are a growing number of people today who are questioning whether any method of cursive handwriting should be taught in schools. The Common Core State Standards do not require students to learn cursive. Those who argue that this skill should not be taught point out that cursive is dying out by itself. They say that Americans use keyboards and print handwriting to do most of their written communication today. Most of these critics agree that some kind of print handwriting should be taught but not cursive. According to these critics, cursive should meet the same fate as the spinning wheel, the goose quill pen, the abacus and the slide rule.
As this debate heats up and the possibility that cursive handwriting will disappear entirely from the public scene grows, the promise made by Professor Tobin in his 1869 ad that he would give a gold pen to the student who showed the most improvement is quaint and bittersweet.
Handwriting matters — but does cursive matter? The fastest, clearest handwriters join only some letters: making the easiest joins, skipping others, using print-like forms of letters whose cursive and printed forms disagree. (Sources below.)
Reading cursive matters (so that we can read things written that way). However even children can be taught to read handwriting that they are not taught to produce. Reading cursive can be taught in just 30 to 60 minutes — even to five- or six-year-olds, once they read ordinary print. (In fact, now there’s even an iPad app to teach how: named “Read Cursive,” of course — http://appstore.com/readcursive .) So why not simply teach children to read cursive — along with teaching other vital skills, including some handwriting style that’s actually typical of effective handwriters?
Educated adults increasingly quit cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority — 55 percent — wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When even most handwriting teachers do not themselves use cursive, why continue to exalt it?
What about signatures? In state and federal law, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind. (Hard to believe? Ask any attorney!)
Questioned document examiners (these are specialists in the identification of signatures, the verification of documents, etc.) inform me that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest, including the printed ones.
Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls: the rest, if they follow the rules of cursive at all, are fairly complicated: these make a forger’s life easy.
All writing, not just cursive, is individual — just as all writing involves fine motor skills. That is why, six months into the school year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from print-writing on unsigned work) which student produced it.
Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.
SOURCES:
Handwriting research on speed and legibility:
/1/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May – June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf
/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September – October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf
Zaner-Bloser handwriting survey: Results on-line at http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H2937N_post_event_stats.pdf
Background on our handwriting, past and present:
3 videos, by a colleague, show why cursive is NOT a sacrament:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CURSIVE —
http://youtu.be/3kmJc3BCu5g
TIPS TO FIX HANDWRITING —
http://youtu.be/s_F7FqCe6To
HANDWRITING AND MOTOR MEMORY
(shows how fine motor skills are developed in handwriting WITHOUT cursive) —
http://youtu.be/Od7PGzEHbu0
[AUTHOR BIO: Kate Gladstone is the founder of Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works and the director of the World Handwriting Contest]
Yours for better letters,
Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
and the World Handwriting Contest
http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
The style that used horizontal and vertical unconnected straight lines is the worst example of communication I have ever seen. I spent more time translating that one paragraph than I did a will from England dated 1823.
No matter what anyone thinks, “they” will stop teaching cursive. I suppose at some point some people will learn to read it just as we are learning to read the old, old script and/or the old foreign script. I’m glad I can read a lot of those old scripts. It takes practice.
The ability to write in elegant script will always be viewed as an attribute of the educated. It will be admired. It displays that the writer is well educated and sophisticated.
There are several societies, among them Chinese and Japanese, where there are different scripts and the educated classes can write and read in all of them. To this day, In many countries handwriting is an art form. There are competitions in Asian and European countries to this day.
Do not ignore script any more than you would your attire.
You will have pride in being able to use cursive.
Cursive handwriting is indeed a well-established artform, as well. It harkens back to Mycenean Greece, at least. It is an important part of tactile learning activity, which teaches children and adults alike the phonetic, semantic and emotional substance of words.
So European calligraphy has it’s primary roots in classical Greece and Rome, but it flourished in the mediaeval days and more so in the Renaissance. It’s an essential learning experience that deeply hones language and fine motor skills. People who think it is useless are wrong. Cursive handwriting should be taught statewide, despite the failures of Common Core. Whoever said to be less creative is more advantageous to human beings never created anything of note in the first place. To see my point, examine the poetry and pictures of William Blake, a first-rate poet, painter, and yes, calligrapher. Then you’ll get what I, and many others, are saying.
Google’s texting program stinks to high heaven…hence the typos.
Okay then, who needs to learn math when we have calculators? It’s the same argument.
Handwriting is a necessary skill of writing. Printing is slow and inefficient. It’s a part of being literate.
I can’t say for sure but those who can’t don’t want to put out the effort.or can’t write well themselves.
I know too many people who have scribble scratch for handwriting. It’s all how it’s taught. If you teach it right, people will take pride in their writing skills, but nowadays handwriting isn’t taught well. Other than the basic scripts. The argument of not teaching cursive to children doesn’t hold water. It’s just the dumbing down of America. We need to go back to a classical education system.. studies have shown that you learn more if you write it out by hand. Computer literacy shouldn’t replace real literacy. Having to actually read a reference book or encyclopedia journals and other sources not on the internet would be better for the development of young minds then typing out something they read online. Make them write out their homework by hand. They can type their homework when they get into high school. Telling them they don’t need to write cursive is like teaching them they don’t need to learn how to read a map. Or drive a standard. Until the need arises because some places still have a lot standard cars and GPS can go out on you. It did on me twice at sea while sailing. My ability to read maps got me back to port. Teach kid how to write. It wasn’t a problem back when I was growing up . But somehow it is now.