Cursive
The Source
Who can forget them? Those white-letters-on-green posters that ringed our first-grade classroom, produced by Zaner-Bloser Handwriting publishing house? On your very first day of American education you were given an ideal of perfection that you could never achieve…perfect cursive handwriting. Did anyone in the history of the world actually make a cursive capital “Z” like that? It was more than handwriting….it was the Mona Lisa of lettering. I’m perhaps the worst single choice of columnist to write about handwriting. When I turned in my first theme in fifth grade, Mrs. Smith handed it back and said, “Kenny, you’re a nice boy, but whatever you do, pick a career where you don’t have to write.” That’s the truth. That’s what she told me. I thought she was commenting on what I’d written and only years later did I figure out she was talking about how I’d written it…or more specifically the fact that she couldn’t read it at all. Sadly, my handwriting hasn’t improved much over the years. When I taught speech at Triopia I’d provide written comments for each speaker after his or her presentation. As the students left class I’d see them pass their critique sheet to their friends, asking them to decipher what I’d written. I’m often called upon to judge speech contests around the Midwest. You sit like God Almighty behind the judge’s desk and write while you listen to the contestant. In a ten or fifteen minute space of time you must listen to a student, adjudicate his or her presentation, then provide both oral and written critiques. I listen well, I judge fairly (okay, leniently), and I talk nicely to each contestant. But it sometimes takes forever to get on the road after the contest as I’m faced with a hallway full of little Johnny’s and Jane’s politely holding my written comments in their hands and asking, “Mr. Bradbury, can you tell me what this says?” My mother had that perfect Zaner-Bloser handwriting. My 90-year-old father still has it. My brother and I were somehow pushed away from the trough of the penmanship feast. When the SAT exams introduced handwritten essays in 2006, just 15 percent of the 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest printed in block letters. And this was four years ago, the first wave of non-cursive writers. In today’s elementary schools, the average instruction time is less than ten minutes a day. The No Child Left Behind tests and the cornucopia of state exams don’t include handwriting so the schools don’t have time to teach it. It’s interesting to note that kids who write in printed block letters tend to write shorter essays. Even the venerated gods of penmanship at Zaner-Bloser have designed a new 15-minute daily plan. Second-graders now type. Cursive writing, say the experts, is headed the way of the butter churn and the hula-hoop. It’s sad. Just because I’ve never been able to do it well, that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. One of my most cherished possessions is a handwritten letter from my grandmother to my mom. I was two years old and staying with grandma while brother Keith was being born. Grandma wrote mom a letter saying that Kenny was being a good boy and having fun, and she hoped that mom would be home soon with the new baby. It’s a single sheet of lined stationery, much-folded, and written in pencil. But it tells so much about Grandma. I’ve yet to see a computer-written letter that reveals much about the author. Grandma was hurried that day…the ends of her Y’s and G’s sort of slipped off the page. She wrote all the way to the end of each line to preserve her precious supply of paper. She was a busy, loving woman and her penmanship showed all of this. Had she typed the letter or printed her hospital-bound message I don’t know that I would still have the precious document. Printing…typing..are just words. Cursive is alive with memory and personality. But….it’s about gone and there’s no bringing it back. And besides, if the Source asked me to submit this column in cursive you’d be staring at a blank space in the paper.