Columbus schooled nation on script

City long a center of elegant handwriting

We used to call it penmanship. From the earliest days of elementary school, generations of Americans learned cursive handwriting by practicing, over and over, rounding and slanting the letters of the alphabet.

The letters soon became words, later arranged into sentences. In classroom writing assignments, legibility was graded along with content. No one was spared.

Typing was far off, a highschool elective, if that, taken by some but not most.

Fast forward to today. Youngsters’ fingers fly over keys of every style of digital device. Spelling ain’t what it used to be, but — hey — there’s an app for that.

The Common Core educational standards adopted by 42 states including Ohio, says nothing about handwriting. Neglected for nearly a decade, cursive instruction seemed headed for oblivion. But wait. A growing number of states, now up to 14, are having second thoughts and are requiring instruction in cursive. Two state legislators, Reps. Andrew Brenner of Powell and Marilyn Slaby of Akron, hope to add Ohio to the list.

Their proposal, House Bill 58, would restore cursive handwriting to Ohio’s learning standards. It would require “handwriting instruction in kindergarten through fifth grade to ensure that students develop the ability to print letters and words legibly by third grade and create readable documents using legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade.”

Brenner, chairman of the House Education Committee, is persuaded by recent research suggesting that cursive promotes cognitive thinking, better spelling, improved sentence construction and the development of fine motor skills.

Slaby says students who fail to learn cursive won’t be able to read historical handwritten documents.

Former state Rep. Cheryl Grossman of Grove City cosponsored similar legislation last session. She had watched high-school students involved in musical competitions, unable to read the judges’ scores and comments on their performances because they were written in cursive.

“The children had to take pictures of the comments and send them to their parents, so they could tell them what they said,” Grossman recalled.

“An unfortunate byproduct of ‘teaching to the test’ is that foundational skills such as cursive handwriting have been slowly removed from our schools’ curriculum,” Brenner said.

The State Board of Education, in 2014, approved a resolution encouraging the teaching of cursive and included it in Ohio’s “model curriculum.” Short of a mandate, however, handwriting tends to be shoved aside.

If the Brenner-Slaby bill gains momentum, a robust Statehouse debate is likely, judging by the skirmishing in other states and within education circles.

“Paper as a medium is dying,” says a critic in Education World magazine. “There certainly are artistic arguments to be made for pretty handwriting, but it just isn’t practical any more.”

Writing by hand is a lifetime skill, comes the response. Forming letters activates a youngster’s brain in ways that tapping a keyboard never will.

The proposal deserves a thorough round of hearings in Columbus, which it failed to get last session. However the debate plays out this session, the educational value is obvious.

As for historical context, few cities can match Columbus’ contribution to cursive. In 1888, Charles Paxton Zaner founded the Zanerian College of Penmanship, which became Zaner-Bloser in 1891. The company supplied handwriting materials to schools nationwide, including the iconic classroom strips showing letters of the alphabet in print and script.

Highlights for Children, the magazine founded in Columbus in 1946, purchased Zaner-Bloser in 1972. And, incidentally, supports House Bill 58.