Mind Your P's And Q's

Englishman Philip Dormer Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, said, "A man's penmanship is an unfailing index of his character, moral and mental, and a criterion by which to judge his peculiarities of taste and sentiments." Stanhope died in 1773, three years before the birth of the United States , but more than two centuries later, modern America seems to disagree with the Earl's assessment of the importance of good handwriting skills.

Recently ABC News reported that 41 states have adopted the Common Core State Standards for English which omits cursive handwriting from required curriculum. Since penmanship skills are no longer required by state standards, many schools opting not to teach them at all.

Proponents argue that few people send hand-written letters anymore and even fewer learn to use cursive handwriting early in their education, as used to be the practice. To many people good handwriting skills are merely a quaint practice from days of old, now relegated to the odd thank you note or condolence card.

However, a 2007 study led by Vanderbilt University Professor Steve Graham revealed that the some teachers disagree. Graham's study showed that the majority of primary school teachers believe that students with good handwriting had greater achievement and produced better written assignments.

The College Board is the non-profit membership association responsible for the development of the Scholastic Aptitude (Assessment) Test, or SAT, had recognized this two years earlier. Understanding the importance of penmanship and its relationship to academic achievement, the organization added a handwritten essay to the pre-college test in 2005. The idea of removing cursive handwriting instruction from public school curriculum could be traced back to a major flaw in the educational process.

Graham noted at the time that only 12 percent of elementary school teachers had ever had a course on how to instruct students in handwriting. Therefore, the level of competence by some educators to actually be able to teach cursive writing may be severely lacking and also may account for the overwhelming support by so many teachers to eliminate it entirely.

Educators are also reporting a significant decline in the quality of their students' handwriting while problems such as letter reversal are becoming more frequent. Perhaps more resources should go into pedagogy and the phrase, "Mind our p's and q's." The expression comes from the common mistake of interchanging the two letters in cursive writing.

Since it may not be included on various aptitude tests throughout their education, students may not be required to take handwriting courses and these problems will most likely increase. If schools were better funded by the state and federal governments, the idea of trimming the daily schedule of such an important lesson may never have seen the light of day.

Public schools should be palaces with the best trained and highest-paid teachers in the world with free and easy access to every conceivable resource to educate their students. Education in the United States should be insanely expensive for the government and totally free to the citizens, just like the military. American schools should be churning out future Nobel Prize winners from its schools every year, but as long as the fundamentals are continually cut, that is an unlikely possibility.

Handwriting is one of the hallmarks of a civilized society and should never be sacrificed because of funding or laziness. No matter how advanced, electronic communications will never be able to convey the emotion behind a hand-written letter to a friend or loved one.

First the printing press, then the typewriter came along, and then the word processor and all are fast, efficient methods of getting the written word down on paper. But without the fundamental art of writing upon which to base their use, they are extraneous. After all, schools did not stop teaching math just because someone invented a calculator.

Gery L. Deer is a freelance columnist and business writer from Jamestown, Ohio . Read more at www.deerinheadlines.com