the lost tradtion of beautiful Catholic Handwriting.

[mommy_k]

Growing up we had handwriting class. The good sisters taught us how to put a heading on paper, make it neat, have well formed letters and so on… Sometimes I would get an assignment handed back to me because of “sloppiness”, and have to re-do it.
Sadly the sloppy papers I did back then are equal to the best work I see coming home from my kid’s school these days–and it’s Catholic!

This served me well- and handwriting lessons were sometimes combined with religion-writing prayers, writing beautitudes, so it was a two-fold lesson.

The art of having a beautiful Catholic school handwriting is fading and it makes me sad. Did you grow up with handwriting class in your school? How did the sisters help you? Do your children attend a school that values this tradition today?

I want my kids to have this wonderful gift, yet I am swimming against the current here.

Thank you!

 

[Sarcelle]

I remember having handwriting courses in elementary school. This was a secular school.

I am left-handed and it was quite difficult for me to write in ink without smudging. I did well, quite well with pencils.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

I am eternally grateful to my (secular) “real writing” teacher - aged 72 then, she told me confidentially - and the biros which that junior school issued.

Now my style has evolved but I always “inscribe” even for a personal jotting. (It’s quite fast incidentally.) When “accused” my sole excuse is that that is the only way I can read it myself (true by the way).

 

[TimothyH]

Handwriting lessons… Rifle team… Typing class… Land lines… Horse and buggy… Flat earth… All gone. Whadaya gonna do?

None of these have anything to do with Catholicism, let alone the traditionalist movement.

We can teach our kids handwriting and meanwhile China and India are teaching their children material science and how to code in java.

I do wish that kids would be taught basic machanical skills tho. Kids grow up and don’t know the difference between a nut and a bolt or how to change a spark plug in a lawn mower.

-Tim-

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

Ah yes, the beloved Palmer Method. Endless exercises. I attended a Catholic grammar school 1952-1960. It was an old school originally opened in 1905. Believe it or not, as late as 1960, we were using dip pens in inkwells for our Palmer handwriting exercises. We’d buy a metal nib from Sister for a nickel and a wooden nib holder for a dime. Each desk had an individual inkwell with a little sliding cover on it. My handwriting has deteriorated over time, but I’m still stunned by the number of people who can’t write cursive. And of course the Internet is destroying handwriting anyway.

The legacy of the good sisters lives on with me, though: I developed a love of fountain pens and still use them whenever possible. Once in a while when cleaning out a desk drawer I’ll run across an old nib. You’d think I went to school with Abraham Lincoln.

 

[TomFromMD]

My girls are both in Catholic school, and they are still taught to write in cursive. Their public school friends aren’t.

 

[7_Sorrows]

My grandson is in public school and he is learning cursive this year-in 3rd grade. I think that is the age I was at when I learned cursive. When I write now I have developed a style that is a combination of printing and cursive.

 

[BartholomewB]

Only the other day there was a poll – possibly here at CAF, though I think it was on some other website – in which people were asked whether they habitually wrote things by hand or used a keyboard. A large proportion of respondents, though I don’t remember the percentage, said they never write anything by hand at all, or at least go for days at a time without writing a single word.

Like the OP, in the kiddies school where we had handwriting classes at the age of five or six, I certainly had my efforts returned to me from time to time as “sloppy.” It wasn’t until years later that I finally mastered the difficult art of neatly forming the kind of lower-case r consisting of a loop at the top left and a squiggle on the right, instead of this kind, r, formed with a vertical stroke and a hook.

One last point: as TimothyH has pointed out, handwriting has nothing to do with Catholicism. There wasn’t a single Catholic, as far as I’m aware, among either the teachers or the children at the school I’m talking about.

 

[midori]

My Mom has awesome Catholic school handwriting. Me, not so much-- my handwriting is a combination of printing, cursive, and slurred lines-- although I’ve dabbled in calligraphy and such enough to know to be mindful of shape, proportion, and stroke order.

I went to my husband’s office one time to meet him for lunch. There was a letter on his desk that looked like it had been scrawled in crayon by a 3rd grader. I thought it was a thank-you letter from a kid or something (“Awww, that’s so cute! What did they write to you about?”) so I picked it up and started reading it… and then I realized it was some woman’s documentation regarding her physically abusive husband. Ouch.

I sub at the local public school. They’re just happy if the kids make a shape that looks like an “A” or a “B”, but don’t tell them how to go about it. I kept the kids home for kindergarten and picked up Delightful Handwriting from Charlotte Mason to help put my kids on the right path for when they would be in public school for elementary. I read this, and it had an impact on me:

‘Throw perfection into all you do’ is a counsel upon which a family may be brought up with great advantage. We English, as a nation, think too much of persons, and too little of things, work, execution. Our children are allowed to make their figures or their letters, their stitches, their dolls’ clothes, their small carpentry, anyhow, with the notion that they will do better by-and-by. Other nations––the Germans and the French, for instance––look at the question philosophically, and know that if children get the habit of turning out imperfect work, the men and women will undoubtedly keep that habit up. I remember being delighted with the work of a class of about forty children, of six and seven, in an elementary school at Heidelberg. They were doing a writing lesson, accompanied by a good deal of oral teaching from a master, who wrote each word on the blackboard. By-and-by the slates were shown, and I did not observe one faulty or irregular letter on the whole forty slates. The same principle of ‘perfection’ was to be discerned in a recent exhibition of school-

vol 1 pg 160

work held throughout France. No faulty work was shown, to be excused on the plea that it was the work of children.

A Child should Execute Perfectly. No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly, and then perfection should be required from him as a matter of course. For instance, he is set to do a copy of strokes, and is allowed to show a slateful at all sorts of slopes and all sorts of intervals; his moral sense is vitiated, his eye is injured. Set him six strokes to copy; let him, not bring a slateful, but six perfect strokes, at regular distances and at regular slopes. If he produces a faulty pair, get him to point out the fault, and persevere until he has produced his task; if he does not do it to-day, let him go on to-morrow and the next day, and when the six perfect strokes appear, let it be an occasion of triumph. So with the little tasks of painting, drawing, or construction he sets himself––let everything he does be well done. An unsteady house of cards is a thing to be ashamed of. Closely connected with this habit of ‘perfect work’ is that of finishing whatever is taken in hand. The child should rarely be allowed to set his hand to a new undertaking until the last is finished.

 

[BartholomewB]

… or how to change a spark plug in a lawn mower.
-Tim-

That’s something I’ve never learned to do. I’ve never owned a lawn mower of that kind.

 

[mommy_k]

My girls are both in Catholic school, and they are still taught to write in cursive. Their public school friends aren’t.

Yes, my kids too-but there is cursive–and there was Catholic school cursive-- beautiful and most importantly–legible. You actually got a grade in penmanship!

 

[mommy_k]

Ah yes, the beloved Palmer Method. Endless exercises. I attended a Catholic grammar school 1952-1960. It was an old school originally opened in 1905. Believe it or not, as late as 1960, we were using dip pens in inkwells for our Palmer handwriting exercises. We’d buy a metal nib from Sister for a nickel and a wooden nib holder for a dime. Each desk had an individual inkwell with a little sliding cover on it. My handwriting has deteriorated over time, but I’m still stunned by the number of people who can’t write cursive. And of course the Internet is destroying handwriting anyway.

The legacy of the good sisters lives on with me, though: I developed a love of fountain pens and still use them whenever possible. Once in a while when cleaning out a desk drawer I’ll run across an old nib. You’d think I went to school with Abraham Lincoln.

Thank you for sharing this-brings back memories, although I was a few years after the inkwells-but the desks still had the holes for them.

 

[CB_Catholic]

The Palmer method isn’ specifically Catholic. When I went to a state university this was the method those majoring in elementary education had to prove their proficiency in or else take the course. I had to take the proficiency test for some reason (I was and English major at that time) and thankfully passed.

Most of the public schools probably taught this method. Beautiful cursive handwriting is almost a lost art, sadly.

I used to joke that my son was destined to be a doctor because his handwriting was so bad. It was a joke at the time, but after I became a nurse it was no joke. Not all have bad handwriting, but most of them do. Usually a conference of 3 or 4 nurses or unit secretaries would gather to decipher difficult orders, and we often had to call the doctor to ask him what he wrote, and they would sometimes be insulted. But this could be a serious matter. Now with electronic medical records becoming so common, this problem will largely disappear, as it did at my hospital after they instituted it.

 

[mommy_k]

My Mom has awesome Catholic school handwriting. Me, not so much-- my handwriting is a combination of printing, cursive, and slurred lines-- although I’ve dabbled in calligraphy and such enough to know to be mindful of shape, proportion, and stroke order.

I went to my husband’s office one time to meet him for lunch. There was a letter on his desk that looked like it had been scrawled in crayon by a 3rd grader. I thought it was a thank-you letter from a kid or something (“Awww, that’s so cute! What did they write to you about?”) so I picked it up and started reading it… and then I realized it was some woman’s documentation regarding her physically abusive husband. Ouch.

I sub at the local public school. They’re just happy if the kids make a shape that looks like an “A” or a “B”, but don’t tell them how to go about it. I kept the kids home for kindergarten and picked up Delightful Handwriting from Charlotte Mason to help put my kids on the right path for when they would be in public school for elementary. I read this, and it had an impact on me:

This is exactly what I mean…thank you for the links too.

 

[UpUpAndAway]

Like midori, my mom has fabulous handwriting. The sisters taught her well.

I have been told I have beautiful handwriting, though I don’t think mine holds a candle to Mom’s. The sisters used the Zaner Bloser method on us, but over the years I’ve personalized it so that today my cursive hand is quite distinctive. Anyone who looks at something I’ve written knows immediately that I’m the one who wrote it.

A couple of years ago I had to hand write a letter to my bank (long story), and my account manager actually called me upon receipt to tell me how wonderful my writing is. “You can make out every single letter!” Well…isn’t that the point? Why write something no one can read?

Catholic school ≠ nice handwriting, however. My priest, who’s about the same age as my mom, is the product of a 100% Catholic education…and his penmanship is atrocious.

That’s something I’ve never learned to do. I’ve never owned a lawn mower of that kind.

Me neither, but I could change a spark plug in the last car I owned so I might be capable of taking on a lawn mower engine.

 

[maryjk]

Handwriting lessons… Rifle team… Typing class… Land lines… Horse and buggy… Flat earth… All gone. Whadaya gonna do?

None of these have anything to do with Catholicism, let alone the traditionalist movement.

We can teach our kids handwriting and meanwhile China and India are teaching their children material science and how to code in java.

I do wish that kids would be taught basic machanical skills tho. Kids grow up and don’t know the difference between a nut and a bolt or how to change a spark plug in a lawn mower.

-Tim-

Thank you.

I can’t tell you the last time I wrote something. Everything is either on the computer, phone or tablet.

It is sad that I spent hours at school, hunched over, writing sentences over and over again.

 

[Exiled_Child]

Are American school children at least taught how to print letters and words? It strikes me as insane that even high school and college-aged Americans can’t write a simple sentence on a piece of paper using handwriting. Americans are being deliberately dumbed down at an incredibly fast rate. It would be wonderful if parochial schools unilaterally bucked this trend.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

My elementary school education was not at a religious school but, all those decades ago, penmanship was part of the curriculum.

I vividly remember my teacher who spent a year, when I was in 4th grade, teaching us penmanship…how to form each of the letters. We practiced every day. We had specially lined paper and exercises drawing various figures on the specially lined paper to train the muscles of our hand. I am so grateful for that training as it gave me a beautiful script that I preserve to this day.

The compliments I receive for my handwriting are a tribute to my excellent teacher, long gone to God. It always makes me sad, however, when I would see the exams of my own students…at times their handwriting was almost indecipherable.

 

[maryjk]

Are American school children at least taught how to print letters and words? It strikes me as insane that even high school and college-aged Americans can’t write a simple sentence on a piece of paper using handwriting. Americans are being deliberately dumbed down at an incredibly fast rate. It would be wonderful if parochial schools unilaterally bucked this trend.

Yes they are taught to print, and many are taught to write. They just don’t spend hours on penmanship.

 

[DaveBj]

Ah yes, the beloved Palmer Method. Endless exercises. I attended a Catholic grammar school 1952-1960. It was an old school originally opened in 1905. Believe it or not, as late as 1960, we were using dip pens in inkwells for our Palmer handwriting exercises. We’d buy a metal nib from Sister for a nickel and a wooden nib holder for a dime. Each desk had an individual inkwell with a little sliding cover on it. My handwriting has deteriorated over time, but I’m still stunned by the number of people who can’t write cursive. And of course the Internet is destroying handwriting anyway.

The legacy of the good sisters lives on with me, though: I developed a love of fountain pens and still use them whenever possible. Once in a while when cleaning out a desk drawer I’ll run across an old nib. You’d think I went to school with Abraham Lincoln.

My elementary education was in the early and mid '50s. Pens were verboten, but we practiced our cursive. I have owned at least one fountain pen since the mid-'70s, started collecting them seriously a year and a half ago, and now have over 30, plus a nibbed dip pen and a glass-nibbed dip pen. I used them regularly, and my handwriting is “nice,” if not “elegant.”