Tuesday, July 30, 2002

By ABIGAIL K. LEICHMAN

If you suspect your child’s handwriting looks like hieroglyphics because schools are stressing keyboarding more than penmanship, you’re partly right. Pupils spend less time today practicing penmanship, and the results down the road can be disastrous: businesses spend an estimated $200 million every year because of illegible checks, scribbled invoices, and unidentifiable documents. The U.S. Postal Service spends about $4 million a year on experts who decipher mangled addresses. Hundreds of thousands of tax returns are delayed every year because figures, notes, and signatures are illegible.

But computers aren’t fully to blame.

Individual expression

While most schoolwork is still done by hand and tests usually include essay questions, educators since the 1960s have been de-emphasizing the mechanics of writing in favor of encouraging individual expression of ideas.

In Clifton public schools, where penmanship is still listed as a K-5 curriculum topic in the student handbook, one principal blames the decline of penmanship on a general societal laziness.

“There is less of a stress on penmanship than there used to be, and it started before the advent of computers,” said Margarita Pennisi, principal of School of 7. “It’s indicative of a more casual attitude in dress and style as well. Teachers became more accepting of children's individuality and it just got escalated with computers.”

Back to basics

Pennisi decided to do something about this decline about five years ago, when she started noticing that student essays displayed in the hallways were getting messier. With the support of her staff, she introduced a handwriting program developed by Highlights for Children company Zaner-Bloser. Since then, penmanship has been part of every day’s language arts lesson and is taught formally two days a week.

Zaner-Bloser, the nation’s largest producer of handwriting materials -- it even offers a handwriting correspondence course for adults -- advocates a simpler writing style than the Palmer method most of us learned in third grade back in the Sixties and Seventies and that is still in use in many schools. Palmer itself was a less flowery alternative to the Spencerian method our grandparents learned.

At the Huber Street School in Secaucus, Principal Pat Cocucci introduced Zaner-Bloser in Grades K-4 as part of a more ambitious agenda.

“We make a conscientious effort for students to take pride in their work,” said Cocucci. “We talk about neatness -- it’s all part of self-esteem, making the best possible impression. When I went to parochial school, penmanship was a big deal but it got lost in the shuffle with new mandated courses and educational ideas; educators get hit with so many things at the same time. Now we’re going back to the basics.”

Penmanship champs

The effort has paid off. Michelle Tang, a Huber Street School fifth-grader, was the national winner for Grade 5 in Zaner-Bloser’s handwriting contest this year. The school also boasted state-level winners Angelo Abdellatif for fourth grade, Susan Kim for first grade, and Eugene Song for third grade.

Company spokeswoman Georgann Harvey said the judges looked for “keys to legibility -- letters shaped properly, consistent slant in cursive, proper spacing between letters and words and words and sentences, and proportional size of letters. These are things we promote in our handwriting program.”

Linda Chervenak, a second-grade teacher who coordinates the penmanship program at the school, was proud to say she taught the winner how to make the transition from manuscript to cursive writing, which is done at Huber in second grade rather than third as in most schools.

“All the teachers stress the importance of penmanship, because we don’t want it to become a dying art in the age of technology,” said Chervenak. “We do handwriting drills every week. The Zaner-Bloser method simplified all the letters with no curlicues so it’s easier for the children, and they feel motivated to write in script like their parents.”

Alternative methods

Jason Porod, a third-grade teacher at Willard School in Ridgewood, said the village schools use the D’Nealian method. Developed in the Sixties, this handwriting style is a move away from Palmer’s “circles and sticks” toward continuous-motion vertical strokes. A “Q” in Palmer looks like a “2”; in D’Nealian, it looks like a “Q.”

“I spend more time on handwriting than on keyboarding,” said Porod. “We’ll spend October to December, two days a week, 20 minutes at a time, doing cursive. Penmanship is also studied through their assignments, and the children do worksheets on individual letters.” Children are not penalized for poor penmanship on assignments, he added, unless they use printed letters instead of cursive.

National attention

Handwriting is starting to get more attention in other parts of the country as well. In Omaha, school officials this year introduced a daily penmanship drill booklet after finding that newer teachers were not learning how to teach penmanship anymore. In Orange County, Calif., legislators alarmed at the decline of penmanship introduced a bill mandating a statewide cursive writing contest for all public school students.

“We’re finding more emphasis is being placed on penmanship lately because with more testing, legibility is essential in writing assessments particularly,” said Harvey. “In order to be graded, [tests] have to be legible, and teachers are starting to complain they can’t read the assignments to evaluate them.”

Learning aids

New research indicates that handwriting skills can be taught to children as young as 5, if it’s made fun enough. A Rutgers University study done with Old Bridge kindergartners found that by using an “e-toy” called Alphy Pad, the little ones were better able to form letters than were their counterparts who hadn’t used the toy.

Judith Martin, otherwise known as Miss Manners, suggests helping your children strengthen their writing skills by requiring them to hand-write thank-you notes for birthday or special-occasion gifts. If you let them choose funky pens or colorful gel pens, as well as stationary to match their style, they may actually enjoy this task.

With enough attention to detail, your child may even be ready to celebrate National Handwriting Day on Jan. 23. Why this day? It’s the birthday of the nation's best- known penman, John Hancock.

Abigail Leichman of Teaneck is a writer and mother of three.

Resources

Zaner-Bloser Educational Publishers
2200 West Fifth Ave.; P.O. Box 16764;
Columbus, OH 43216-6764; 1/800/421-3018;
Fax: 1/800/992-6087;
Hours: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.;
www.zaner-bloser.com

Alphy Pad is available at toy stores and www.generalcreation.com.

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