Reply #15: My problem with cursive handwriting [View All]

[markpkessinger]

My mind has not been made up as yet as to the relative importance of continuing to teach cursive handwriting. But I will share a bit of my own experience and struggle with the art.

Like most folks of a certain age, I learned cursive writing fairly early on in grammar school. From that point on, at least until I was in high school, virtually all written assignments were expected to be in cursive (in high school, at least for longer essays, term papers, etc., we were permitted to submit typewritten papers). Cursive writing never came easy to me, but eventually, provided I wasn't hurried and could take my time, I learned to produce a readable, decent-looking result. But the second I was under the slightest bit of time pressure (such as, say, in an essay exam), my hand would cramp up and the result was a notch or two above chicken scratch. The problem was not a lack of fine motor skill development (I had studied piano since I was three years old), nor was it an inability to compose my thoughts and present them in written form (indeed, as a college freshmen, I was exempted from the English comp. requirement). It was simply that the physical process of handwriting was grueling for me (non-cursive hand printing was slightly less so, probably owing to the tiny breaks the muscles of the hand can take between writing each individual letter). There were occasions when my slow, painful handwriting resulted in my inability to complete exams within the allotted time, which, in turn, resulted in some lower grades.

I remember once in college, taking an in-class semi-final in Medieval and Renaissance Music History that had only a few questions, but questions that merited a rather lengthy essay response. By that point, I had learned a strategy to cope with the physical difficulty of presenting a handwritten essay response while under time pressure: I had developed a couple of alternative handwriting styles that were hybrid styles of printing and cursive, and which had differing slants (sometimes the standard rightward slant, sometimes no slant, sometimes a slightly leftward slant). On this particular exam, even within a single essay responses, I made use of all of my alternatives (although I would usually stick with one or another style at least for the duration of a paragraph). I got an "A" on the exam, but when the professor returned it to me, there was a note from him: "Just curious...what accounts for the change in penmanship style?" I responded with a note saying simply, "Neurosis." He got a kick out of that response; later on I gave the reason as outlined above. But had this been one of those "take home" exams and I had submitted it with all my various handwriting styles, I might well have been accused of cheating.