HANDWRITING CHANGES

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 September 1928, Page 2

HANDWRITING CHANGES

COPYBOOKS AND MORALITY.

Script or print writing, which has been largely taught for the past ten or twelve years, is now dying one in the senior schools of the London County Council, and three new types, of headline copybooks are to be supplied, the Civil Service hand,. round hand, aiid running script. It is felt that at the age of ten or eleven children should be taught to develop single letters into running letters. Many at the age of fourteen have been going out into the world with a distinct preference for script writing, which some employers regard with' disfavour, for it is apt to degenerate into bad writing. At the same time some very good specimens of script have been produced in many schools, and it has led to a revival of appreciation in the old manuscript form of writing.

“The argument that has often been heard, that there is no character in such writing is ridiculous,” an inspector remarked. “Priri't script,” he said, “is often ,as individual in character as ordinary writing. The two real objections to it are that the public does not want it —it prefers an ordinary cursive hand —and undoubtedly bad script is very much worse than bad ordinary handwriting. When script is good it can be very good; but when it is bad it can be very bad. Defects that may be passed over in a rapid cursive hand cannot be so lightly regarded in script.” “Our ordinary cursive hand,” this authority pointed out, “is really difficult for children to learn, and one should, therefore, teach it when they are young. The idea that script can be changed instantly into a good cursive hand'is not well founded. “Whilst the new styles of writing that are now to be introduced will, no doubt, he considered generally as desirable, schools will not be bound to use them, for teachers have perfect freedom. 'The change which is advised is a concession to public opinion and to industrial requirements. “When the teaching of script writing became rather general the use of headline copybooks dropped out. Partly this was due to the war and the prevailing scarcity of paper, but even before the war there was a wave of objection to what was regarded as mechanical. Still, everything that is mechanical is not necessarily bad. On the contrary, children found in their old copybooks, I believe, wise lessons in good morals, and on the whole the standard of morality amongst young people was probably better than it is to-day.”