Do they even do this any more in elementary school? I've heard that cursive writing has gone the way of the dinosaur. Modern children learn to print, but rarely do schools teach the fundamentals of writing in script. I'm sure that's a relief to a lot of children with poor handwriting skills, but it's a shame from a cultural standpoint. No longer will people have strongly identifiable handwriting. (I love reading my parents and grandparents' writing: letters, postcards and the like. My sisters both have lovely handwriting, distinctive and individual. Lynne's is formal and beautiful, Leslie's is casual and artistic) Can one even tell one printing style from the next? I'm sure there are good reasons to eliminate handwriting (or 'penmanship') from the school curriculum, but I can't think of any. I know computers and spell check have taken the place of handwriting and spelling, but somehow, it's a sad day when the art of the pen is on the verge of being lost forever. And how, pray tell, will the young people who today are
not learning handwriting, going to read handwriting in the future? The researchers of tomorrow might have problems reading Abraham Lincoln's writing, George Washington's letters, Great Aunt Wilma's shopping list)
But I digress. These fun little exercise books are memorable for those of us who remember daily penmanship drills.... getting that angle of the paper perfect (and feeling sorry for the left-handers who had to write in a convoluted, backhand kind of way). It looks like the poor little boy who owned this book below struggled to mimic the book's perfect script. I'm sure many of you suffered likewise.
