[originaltext] As you prepare to become elementary school teachers, you’ll b

As you prepare to become elementary school teachers, you’ll be hearing a lot of discussions about the relevance of teaching penmanship.  Now years ago when I was studying education in college, reading, writing and arithmetic were the basics of elementary school education. It went without saying that writing meant first and foremost penmanship. That is, the neatness of a child’s handwriting. It was considered so important that sometimes prizes were even awarded for the best handwriting. But when we move ahead a few decades into the 1980s, we see teachers and administrators and even parents telling us that teaching penmanship is a waste of time. With computers, they said, children can successfully manipulate the keyboard or mouse of their home computers before they can even hold a pencil.
    This change in attitude had an impact on the classroom. In your homework for this week you’ll be looking at what statewide curricular standards in the US say about penmanship. You’ll see that in many states penmanship has been deemphasized in a required curriculum, especially in the later years of elementary school. In California, for example, the curriculum calls for fourth-grade students to... and I quote, "write fluently and legibly in cursive or grades." But after this, the curriculum makes no further mention of penmanship in Grades Five, Six or beyond. Any higher level of quality or neatness is simply not among the curricular objectives. Your assignment is to look at what the curricular standards for all fifty states say about penmanship.