Show LEARN TO WRITE WHITE the contest now going goin 0 on among 0 educators as to the kind of handwriting they shall teach the children is of larger public consequence than may at first appear its outcome will determine an important result of education says the new york world the Spence riaD system which is at present taught in most of the schools has the beauty of symmetry when perfectly executed but symmetry in handwriting is as much a vice vice as a virtue it robs the writing of character it deprives written words of that physia physiognomy nomy which facilitates rapid reading every person who has bas much manuscript reading to do knows that there is no greater weariness than the prolonged perusal of a manuscript that resembles copperplate copper plate and the hand is very rarely written perfectly it is an art so BO difficult that the schools fail in most cases to teach it to the children they teach them instead to make a poor characterless and often contemptible imitation of an unattainable model on the other hand the round nearly perpendicular which is now being taught in our local schools is easily and quickly acquired when acquired it is as le legible able as print and as rapidly written as it is ia possible for any hand band to be all the telegraph operators write it because their sole concern ji to write rapidly in a hand band that anybody can re read ad who can read at all these ought to be the dominant considerations in all writing and in all teaching of penmanship the object in writing is to set down words quickly and easily in a form in which they can be read concern for anything other than ease and rapidity of writing and absolute legibility is ia simply irrational anybody who has the use of his eyes and his bis hands can learn leara to write legibly it is therefore a distinct immorality to write illegibly it subjects others to needless annoyance and loss of time which in the case of printers proof jre readers aders editors and the like means also a loss of earnings it is clearly the duty of the schools to teach the next generation to write legibly now that the telegraphers 1 and others who must write much manuscript to be read by all kinds of people have shown the way it is clearly time for the schools to cast out the old mistaken models and adopt the new and more rational system the men and women who are urging the change of system are reformers with a good cause |