The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [115]
This response has surprised me. Handwriting has virtually been discarded as a school subject, at least beyond the third or fourth grade. Out of curiosity, I scoured my home library of books on the topics of education, school art programs, drawing, painting, art history, the brain and brain-hemisphere functions for index entries on handwriting. I found nothing, not a word on the subject.
Forgers copy signatures upside down. This trick probably works for the same reason that upside-down drawing works. As an exercise, try copying the signatures above upside down.
The Palmer method drill.
Next, I searched the university library: indexes of books on art education, drawing, and brain function—again, nothing. Early education books, of course, had entries on teaching the alphabet letters and words, and I found a few books specifically on handwriting—most of them published in England, where handwriting skills apparently still receive considerable attention. When I opened these books and skimmed through them, however, I was struck by my immediate reaction of sinking dismay at the tedium of the exercises. All of the worst aspects of public education came flooding back to me as memories of boring tasks, boringly taught, with no possibility of escape.
And yet I know that handwriting is important, and the group response I described above indicates that others feel that way too. In fact, of all the ways we express ourselves nonverbally, none is quite so personal as our handwriting—so personal and important that our signatures are legally protected as a mark of identity. Unlike other ways we use to express our individuality, we have sole ownership of our handwriting. It is a personal possession that no other person is allowed to use or imitate.
In past centuries, handwriting was considered an art. Every school had its master or mistress of penmanship, and in the nineteenth century much time and attention was consumed in perfecting the extravagant loops and swirls of Copperplate script. In America in the early decades of this century, our schoolchildren assiduously studied the venerable Palmer method, derived from a beautiful Spencerian script. By the late 1930s, however, the Palmer method had given way to an unlovely manuscript printing called “ball-and-stick” lettering for very young children, with a shift from lettering to cursive, or “real,” writing by around fourth grade. This shift was mainly a matter of making joining marks between the “ball-and-stick” letters.
Responding to educational theories in the 1940s and 1950s about encouraging individuality and avoiding rote learning, teachers encouraged each child to use the style of writing that felt comfortable, within limits of legibility and correctness of letter forms. Children had a choice of size and slant of letters, sometimes even the choice of staying with printing, and teachers expected that each child’s handwriting would more or less settle down to a legible form. Beauty was not an issue. Legibility was sufficient.
But writing is an art form. Using line, one of the most basic elements of art, handwriting can function as a means of artistic self-expression. Like drawing, handwriting employs certain conventional forms that have agreed-upon meanings. Over centuries, the letters of the alphabet have evolved into shapes of great beauty that communicate verbally, yet at the same time can convey subtle nonverbal intentions and reflections of the mind of the writer/artist. This is what we have lost. In my opinion, legibility is not enough. Educational theorists have sold handwriting short.
Can we regain this lost art? I think we can, by linking writing once again to the esthetic purposes of drawing. There is little difference between making a drawing in line and “draw ing” a signature, sentence, or paragraph. The purpose is the same: to convey information about the subject and to express the personality of the writer/artist. This nonverbal