HANDWRITING DEFECTS

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 146, 23 June 1936, Page 4

HANDWRITING DEFECTS

Prizes for handwriting to the value of £9O have been given by Mrs John Galsworthy for competition among pup ils and students at London County Council schools. The Education Committee havo ex eluded art schools from the compeli tion, which is to be restricted to child ren between the ages of 13 and IK years. They will be required to write n passage from Galsworthy, two scripts may be submitted by each school, an' 1 selected candidates will then undergo itest in examination conditions.

Mrs Galsworthy has indicated thy she does not wish to encourage ‘‘cop porplato” writing, but rather a natural style of “beauty, legibility and char actor.” Of three examples that she sub mitted, a passage of about 250 word.from “Tho Inn of Tranquility" ha-j been chosen for tho preliminary test There has boon a good deal of con troversy about the defects of modern handwriting, and while there is no wisn to return to tho florid thick-aud-thm stylo of 20 yoars or more ago, experts are agreed that tho present general standard of writing is definitely worse Mr E. E. T. Rideout, examiner in hand writing to tho London. Chamber of

Commerce, sees 10,000 scripts a year from all types of schools, and finds most of them “undeniably bad,” “Bad handwriting,” said Mr Ridout, “is an insult to one’s intelligence,” and ho went on to talk of tho serious loss to commerce which it Causes, of large stores who keep special staffs to decipher the poor writing of rheir own employees. Among adult candidates who sit for the Chamber of Commerce handwriting certificate, easily 50 per cent, fail; the standard is higher among schoolchildren, of whom HO to 70 per cent, pass In secondary schools, with their obsession for matriculation. said Mr Ridout, writing is often mere scribbling. “Teachers seem to bo doing nothing about it. and it is high time they did:”

The headmaster of a London Central .School spoke of tho crowded '.urriculum of modern times, ‘which pn>vents the 6ame attention from being given to handwriting as in the days when nothing but the three R’s was taught. Tho vogue-for script writing is dead, and ho thought- children are getting back to - a decent cursive hand, with tho general, standard probably highest in elementary school' • l