If You Keep Doing That, Your Hand Will Hurt

…comatose?

This is the product of over 30 minutes of reading and over 10 minutes dedicated to writing this log.

But a day-dreaming student I can take. What's really sad about this is that we produce a seventeen-year old who writes like a 3rd-grader. This is embarrassing, and yes, I'm talking about orthography (handwriting). How can anyone take this person seriously, no matter the clarity of thought or depth of insight?

We teach cursive handwriting in the 3rd grade, as a final step after teaching printing. But students consistently report to me that after they are taught the cursive alphabet, and using it the rest of that year, that they are seldom required to write in cursive in the 4th, 5th or 6th grades. By the time they get to secondary school, you have writing like this: cursive is abandonded, and the fine motor skills that used to be developed through physical activity have atrophied through computer and game console button-pushing so that whether printing or writing in cursive, this is the resultant appearance.

There is only one way to cure this: after children learn to write in cursive when they're eight, they are required to do most of their classwork in cursive afterwards. Or am I being too logical? If we don't, the result will often look like this.

Sometimes going backwards is the best way forward.