HANDWRITING IN SCHOOLS

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 133, 28 July 1911, Page 5

HANDWRITING IN SCHOOLS

SOME CRITICISM ,BY BOARD MEMBERS. Ask the average business man about ihe handwriting.of the average youth who joins his clerical staff, and he’ll tell you the boy can’t write worth a co'lit., says the New Plymouth “News.” He’ll probably talk about the scrawling, sprawling nature of the Istd’s efforts in the first rudiments of a commercial training, and, unless he’s a very even-tempered individual moaning that ho hasn’t had so many raw office-boys in his employ after all, he’ll go off into a series of expletives about the school methods of to-day and the instruction given in handwriting in' particular. The subject is for eyer cropping up at meetings of education boards, and it made its appearance at the Taranaki Board’s meeting on Wednesday. As usual, it provoked some smart criticism of the writing in schools, and, as usual, theije was an official defence of the wotk of the Taranaki boy and girl in this particular branch of our compulsory free secular education. The matter was introduced by the Taranaki branch of the New Zealand Educational institute in a letter recommending the Board to favourably consider the adoption of MacDougall’s new series of copy-books. It was urged that the style of writing was much better than that of the series at present in use in Taranaki. Hie Chief Inspector was asked what he thought about it, and he said that the principal reason for advocating a change was the difficulty of procuring supplies of Collins’ Graphic copybooks, which were now in use in the Board’s schools. But, apart altogether from this, the inspectors were of tfee&pinion that the style in MacDougall’s books was an improvement on the Graphic, in that the writing was continuous, there were fuller instructions as to the joining of the letters, the .'capitals wore better, and the figures wore a very great improveMembers compared books in tho two styibs, and all seemed to be of opinion th&t. there was undue space between the letters, this applying to both systems. ■

The discussion then, proceeded, Mr Keiihcdy saying that the new style wAk not continuous, it was not graceful}, it conveyed a sort of hesitancy, afld looked stiff 1 . i The Chief Inspector defined “contixiuous” writing as being writing in which it was possible to complete the wdtjd without lifting the pen. Mt Morton complained that by following either of the systems under notice the children were taught to “Spread their letters out till the writirigf;;Was absolutely hideous.” This rOtiihrk could be applied to several sc|h(sß} but to' none more than Fitzroi|. evaggerated spacing never failed to draw comment whenever and whatever it wa,s exhibited. This had befiil brought about by the system in fish* and allowing such exaggerations of jit to, take place. The Collins’ systeifi was bad enough, but if thej adopted the MacDougall book, and allowed that to be exaggerated in the same proportion as the Collins’ style, goodness knows where they would get to. Very soon there would be room fdr only one word of five letters in a lind! He would sooner have the schools put up with the inconvenience caiteed by short supplies of the present books than adopt this new style, which in a few years would become a Spider scrawl. Mr Cargill said the difficulty of obtaining supplies would possibly bo got over by approaching Collins’ Dominion agflhts. As to writing, he must confess first of all that he was an atrocious writer himself. But that was his misfbrtune. He had had a number of boys in his employ at various times in recent years, and he had not found a dfecent writer in the lot. He had found that boys trained in this semivertical Graphic writing had had to discard that style when they entered commercial life, principally because a greater slope enabled them to write more rapidly, and because there was no room for this widely spaced writing when keeping books. Mr Ballantync said he couldn’t understand the remarks concerning the excessive room occupied by the handwriting taught to-day, for the Vere Foster style, although more sloping, took up more room. The more vertical the writing the less space required. It was the Vere Fester system which had tended to scrawling. He contended that the writing in Taranaki had improved under the Graphic system.

Mr Cargill: It must have been awful before! Mr Morton referred to the fact that prize-winning writing at recent shows, judged by their own inspectors, was a great modification of the copy-book sfyle, the inspectors aiming at the more compact writing. The inspectors said the exaggerated writing complained of was due, not to the style in the book, but to the instructions issued to teachers by the previous inspector. Mr Trimble caused some laughter by drawing attention to some handwriting on one of the documents before the meeting, signed “W .A. Ballantyne.” He considered this writing a disgrace, and the writer was probably on the Vero Poster system, and the present system could hardly worse than that. V- It was decided to communicate with the chief agent in the Dominion for the Graphic books pointing out the difficulty of obtaining supplies.