More Handwriting

Is there really so much to learn in grammar school that children cannot be taught to write legibly, in cursive?

Literacy can be defined in several ways, but one of them has to do with reaching a certain level of artistic expression. Clear handwriting is part of that. A good fraction of these kids has never been taught how to hold the pen in their hands, or how to hold their hands, or how to guide the pen across the paper, or which muscles to use: they try to move the pen by leaving the side of their hand on the paper and moving their fingers to manipulate the pen. They write half a page, and the small muscles of their fingers become fatigued, and the appearance of their writing starts to deteriorate, to the point that the writing at the top of the page and that at the bottom could not be easily attributed to the same person.

Straighten out those fingers, cradle the pen between three points: the pads of the index, middle finger, and thumb, spaced equidistant around the instrument. Keep the full weight of your hand off the paper: use the pad of your forearm as the contact point with the desk instead. Nothing from the elbow to the fingertips moves, bends or contracts.

Now drive your forearm, hand, fingers and pen with upper-arm movement that originates in the shoulder. Yes, the movement carries all the way back (or rather, originates from) the shoulder. Those big muscles can generate pages of writing.

Fight the temptation to bend your fingers at all, and correct yourself when you do.

Yes, your writing will look sloppy as hell to begin with: you have not trained the larger muscles of the upper arm and shoulder. But after some consistent effort, and guarding against bad habits slipping back in, you will start to build muscle control and muscle memory, and your cursive handwriting will begin to be fuller and more fluid, with regularly-shaped characters. And you will be able to sustain that for over a page without hand/finger fatigue.

That beautiful handwriting that your mother had, that you can still see on the backs of those old photos: that's how she did it.