When I was a little girl, I hated sixth grade because I had a horrible teacher that called me socially retarded. She was also the biggest nag when it came to handwriting and was a huge proponent of the Palmer Method. Yes, we were forced to practice our handwriting and, yes, we were graded on it. I was always kind of pissy about the whole thing, especially since that long line of A’s on my report card was – without fail – marred by a C in handwriting. I was never very good at mastering the uniform method because, quite frankly, I liked printing and I liked writing big. I’m sure this is probably a relic of my horrible eyesight. {LOL} In the end, it didn’t really matter much because the lovely world of computing came to be and now I don’t write anything by hand if I can help it.
Honestly, I thought teaching handwriting was a waste of time. After grading 1,141 essays in five days I can admit that I was wrong. Someone needs to teach these students how to put pen to paper because the majority of these tests were illegible. At one point, one of the students had written that African Americans were required to take a “legibility test” before they could vote in the 1960s. That struck me as all sorts of funny because this anonymous student had the world’s worst handwriting.
I mentioned this to a couple of the people sitting at my table and was informed that the schools no longer teach handwriting. I guess it’s become a lost art. Instead they teach word processing to the little rugrats. Who knew?
In other news … still more exams to grade, but hopefully we’ll get out early tomorrow. I wish I could post a list of all of the funny mistakes that I have found while grading, but I’m sure that I’d get in trouble with the folks who are administering the test. Let’s just say that some of the students thought that slaves were able to vote, but that their votes only counted for 3/5ths of a vote and leave it at that.
Sometimes I think that k-6 education spends too much time trying to keep up and not enough time spent on the basics like the 3Rs. Typing skills are, no doubt, important, but maybe they can wait until the kids are slightly older. I learned to print first, then write in cursive in third grade. Maybe I learned to type (at my mother’s insistence) in fifth or sixth grade.
Hillarious! My handwriting is virtually illegible. I had the hots for my third-grade teacher, though, so handwriting lessons were a bit more palatable.
I especially loved when she guided my hand with hers.