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Show RE API N' AND WRIT IN' Penmanship Isn't Such a Lost Art, Survey of Teachers Shows Apparently the quality of American Amer-ican school children's handwriting has not fallen victim to the "rush of our times" and outside interests and distractions, after all. A survey among 5,000 grade and high school principals across the nation turned up a vote of nearly two to one that today's youngsters write as well as or better than those of a generation ago. The Sheaffer pen company, that made the survey, sur-vey, said the actual balloting was 64.4 per cent to 35.6. Most of the principals credited Improved teaching teach-ing methods and more widespread t if wl . i It looks like printing, but It is really a new style "manuscript "manu-script writing". A recent survey of the country's school principals prin-cipals found that 95.5 of the nation's na-tion's schools now teach this method in at least first three trades. use of good writing equipment for the fact that penmanship has "survived" "sur-vived" as well as it has despite crowded curriculums and less time for instruction. The widely held notion that basic arts like reading, writing and spelling spell-ing have been shamefully neglected in this mechanized age is well refuted re-futed so far as penmanship is concerned by results of the poll. However, the minority of principals who feel handwriting has declined is so sizable and in many cases so emphatic as to leave no doubt that there's still lots of room for improvement. BEARING OUT this observation was the high school principals' verdict ver-dict that only about two-thirds of their students have a "satisfactory" "satisfac-tory" handwriting by the time they graduate. Grade school principals voted about two to one that children "learn to write more easily" nowadays. now-adays. Use of the "manuscript" form of writing taught in about 95 per cent of the schools In the first two or three grades was given much of the credit for this, along with more general use of good equipment. The survey showed that quality of handwriting has an influence upon the marks children get in school. Among grade school principals, prin-cipals, 89.9 per cent said "good handwriting helps produce good marks," and among high school heads the count was almost the same, 89.6 per cent. The most commonly indicated reasons among those who think to-, day's handwriting is better were: improvement of teaching methods, more widespread use of good writing writ-ing equipment, and the repsondents' own disinclination to glorify "the good old days." However, there is a sizeable minority min-ority of principals 35.6 per cent who feel that the handwriting of their present pupils is worse than that of their forebears. The manuscript form of writing (like lower-casa printing) is now taught almost universally in the early grades. A change is usually made to cursive (conventional writing) writ-ing) at the third or fourth grade. |