Maybe a bigger question is … Does anyone care?
In grade school, students are taught to print each letter and number. Little first graders strive to make perfectly round O’s and straight line I’s and 1’s. By third grade. students are practicing endless diagonal lines /////// and rows of spiral circles. Rows usually alternated between the two. They reminded me of clouds and rain. In Catholic school, the nuns expected perfection. An almost impossible task for this little 8 year old left hander.
But now, I realize I hardly ever write in cursive, except to sign my name. And that can hardly be called the Palmer Method. Years ago, I learned to print as fast as others write. At least I could read it, well most of the time, anyway.
In an age of computers, who writes anymore? Not me. Maybe an occasional thank you note, but mostly a note to myself. Is penmanship dying? It’s still taught in school, but even young children use a computer.
So, does anyone care?
I certainly care about handwriting — I had your problems, or worse, without even the excuse of left-handedness! (In my adulthood, MDs finally found I have some inborn and invisible neurological problems that seriously affect handwriting.By that time, though, I’d taught myself to write very legibly and fast if somewhat unconventionally — a semi-joined print-like style, that probably resembles what you use. (Even later, I learned that research shows that the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive anyway. Highest-speed, highest-legibility handwriters join some letters, not all of them — making only the easiest joins, skipping the rest — and employ print-like formations of those letters that “disagree” between printing and cursive. Speaking of scribal mythbusting, it turns out that handwriting’s mythology also includes the weird legend that “legal signatures require cursive”: ask any attorney! Yes — our schoolteachers misrepresented the law of the land.)
Handwriting matters enough in the Cyber Age that iPhone/iPodTouch users are actually buying a “personal handwriting trainer” iPhone application called Better Letters ($2.99 in the iPhone App Store). From what I can find out, the users include children, teens … and doctors: in fact, the program comes from a medical-software firm owned by an MD concerned about his colleagues’ oft-dangerous scribbling. Download link for Better Letters: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/better-letters/id335485938?mt=8
Thanks, Kate. Everyone has challenges. Yours sound serious – And yet you were able to overcome them. I saw some of your student’s before and after handwriting samples. The transformation is remarkable. Thanks for caring.