HANDWRITING CHANGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 19 (Supplement)

HANDWRITING CHANGES.

SCRIPT IN DISFAVOUR IN

ENGLAND.

COPYBOOKS AND MORALITY.

Script or print writing, which his been largely taught for the past ten or twelve years, is now dying out in the senior schools of the London County Council, and three new types of headline copybooks are to be supplied, the Civil Service hand, round hand, and running script. It is- felt that at the age of ten or eleven children should be taught to develop single letters into running letters. Many at the age of fourteen have been going out into the world with a distinct i preference for script writing, which some employers regard with disfavour, for it is apt to degenerate into bad writing. At the san t time some very good specimens of script have been produced in many school;, and it has led to a revival of appreciation in the old manuscript form of writing. "The argument that has often been heard, that there is no character in suchwriting is lidiculous," an inspector remarked. "Print script," he said, "is often as individual in character as ordinary writing. The two real objections to it are that the public does not want it —it prefers an ordinary cursive hand — and undoubtedly bad script is very much worse than bad ordinary handwriting. When script is good it can be very /good; but when it is bad it can be very bad. Defects that may be passed over in a rapid cursive hand cannot be so lightly regarded in script." "Our ordinary cursive hand " this authority pointed out, "is really difficult for children to learn, and one should, therefore, teach it when they are young. The idea that script can be changed instantly into a good cursive hand is not well founded. "Whilst the new styles of writing that are now to be introduced Will, no doubt, be considered generally as desirable, schools will not be bound to use them, ■ for teachers have perfect freedom. The change which is advised is a concession to public opinion and to industrial requirements. "When the teaching of script writing became rather general the use of headline copybooks dropped out. Partly this was due to the war and the prevailing scarcity of paper, but even before the war there was a wave of objection to jwhat was regarded as mechanical. Still, everything that is mechanical is not necessarily bad. Qn the contrary, children found in their old copybooks, I believe, wise lessons in good morals, and on the whole the standard of morality amongst young people was probably better then than it is to-day."