The School's or The Parent's Job To Stress Handwriting?
In the news today, Expert: Homework fails to make the grade, reports what Professor Harris Cooper of Duke University has to say on the matter:
"Elementary school students get no academic benefit from homework -- except reading and some basic skills practice -- and yet schools require more than ever."
Ok, that's fine. But when I was home this weekend to vote, I saw my fifth grade sister's homework. I won't tell you she needs more homework, but I will tell you she needs to practice handwriting (and she needs to take it seriously). I watched her rush through her spelling words and saw the handwriting in her agenda. I made her re-write her spelling words slower and better. I made her write a few other things like HER NAME legibily as well. I can understand if she writes a new word poorly, but things she writes every day like her name and the same homework assignment every day in her agenda - should be up to par.
Should her teacher send her home with more writing? Should her grade suffer if her handwriting is messy? Or Should her parents and family just enforce our own writing practice?
"Elementary school students get no academic benefit from homework -- except reading and some basic skills practice -- and yet schools require more than ever."
Ok, that's fine. But when I was home this weekend to vote, I saw my fifth grade sister's homework. I won't tell you she needs more homework, but I will tell you she needs to practice handwriting (and she needs to take it seriously). I watched her rush through her spelling words and saw the handwriting in her agenda. I made her re-write her spelling words slower and better. I made her write a few other things like HER NAME legibily as well. I can understand if she writes a new word poorly, but things she writes every day like her name and the same homework assignment every day in her agenda - should be up to par.
Should her teacher send her home with more writing? Should her grade suffer if her handwriting is messy? Or Should her parents and family just enforce our own writing practice?
posted by Margaret Paynich @ 8:39 AM
1 Comments:
At 9:14 PM,
Anonymous said…
In graphology, the scientific study of handwriting (only humans do it), we call handwriting "brain writing." What you "hand write" (people can write with toes, nose, teeth, even ears and foreheads and the script comes out about the same) is a direct indication of the development and current state of your brain and nervous system.
we can guage about 300 traits of personality and get dozens of signals about pathology when we examine handwriting. These indications include stress level, communications traits, achievement traits, mood and emotional bent, goal levels, and much more.
Because graphology is so accurate and non-discriminatory, graphology is used by major business corporations, intelligence and police agencies, lawyers, doctors and private individuals to screen for bad traits (lack of integrity, laziness, shallow thinking, to name a few) and help to diagnose physical and mental ailments. We also use it to select the best minds from groups of people to fit job descriptions.
Our founding fathers were, by and large, highly skilled at penmanship (Ben Franklin copied the handwriting of the greats of his era in order to perfect his own penmanship; see his Autobiography.)
What about a fifth grader in today's world? Here is what we can say:
Despite the advance of computers, handwriting is a tool of humankind that will not likely be lost any time soon. Until one reaches the age of about 12 years, one's handwriting is a forgery (a copying) of one's teachers. After about 12,one's handwriting takes on the personality forms of an adult.
If the handwriting stays messy, juvenile, scrawly, without details (like i dots and t bars), sloppy and/or unreadable, that will quite clearly reflect the state of the writer's brain.
If you have a good brain, the teen years are the time to practice and improve one's handwriting to train the brain, and vice versa, in useful traits. To ignore the matter or make excuses for sloppiness is, without much doubt, stupid.
So take the teenage years to discover how truly smart, imaginative, inventive and creative people write and shamelessly copy their hand until yours finds its own "voice" and appearance.
Handwriting is a two-way action: If you work to write well and with clarity, you will tend to think with style and clarity. Other deep characteristics that are quite difficult to control (like thinking patterns, stress level, normal mood, etc)will show up on their own.
Look at the handwriting of Thomas Edison, Jacqueline Kennedy, Ben Franklin, and other living people of achievement and distinction and copy them. If you find you cannot write well in cursive,, learn to print clearly and quickly enough to keep up with note-taking and such.
If your handwriting becomes exceptional, people will soon understand that the brain that did the writing is also exceptional. That's a good thing, believe me.
If you need more information, you may write me at: sheilakurtz@yahoo.com and you can catch www.graphologyconsulting.com for some additional information.
i hope this helps,
Sheila Kurtz
President
Graphology Consulting Group
P.S. A signature is a practiced "gesture" that shows the world how you wish to be seen or NOT seen by others. An unreadable signature is a sign that the writer wishes to remain hidden behind a scrawl. People who know and like who they are are most likely to make their signature easily readable so that people will know them. Many teenagers DON'T know who they are, so they make a chicken scratch or a "chop" that means little to anyone.
When a person finds out and is comfortable with who they are their signature often improves. It is not uncommon for people to change their signature many times before they finally settle on one. Don't fret about that. As you feel cooler, more sure of yourself, more open to the world and able to be looked at, your signature will get more and more legible. sk
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