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By Holly Britton
HOH Rating: 5/5
I first “met” Kitty Burns Florey when I discovered her book, Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. I was drawn immediately to her wit and charm and fascinated by the way she presented this much-forgotten skill. Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting elicited a similar reaction. It reads as if you are sitting with Kitty over an afternoon tea listening to a friend talk about a mutually loved topic. She takes us back in time then walks us up through the eras, stages, tools, and culture around handwriting right up to the present, confronting the question handwriting’s usefulness in the digital age.
The standout sentence related to handwriting is found in chapter 5, Is Handwriting Important? (p. 155).
It says:
“For young students, the primary goal is to learn to read fluently…as they write their letters, they’re matching symbols to sounds. They not only see the letters and hear the way they sound, they actually create them, on paper, with care…When young children learn handwriting at the same time that they’re learning to express their thoughts on paper, the two kinds of writing—one a mechanical skill, one a creative intellectual process—become naturally and inextricably connected in the child’s mind.” Yep!
This wonderfully detailed, personal history highlights the deep connection to language that was trained and nurtured throughout the author’s education.
The chapter left me pensive wondering what disservice we are doing to upcoming humans and society by neglecting handwriting instruction.
This intriguing walk through handwriting history as experienced in the U.S. had me considering the importance that earlier societies placed on being able to write well.
Fascinating to see how handwriting marched resolutely right alongside the technological advances of society.
Regardless of their access to keyboards, many professional writers today- famous authors like Toni Morrison and Stephen King- write by hand to help process their thoughts before entering it into a computer.
At the time of publication (2009), Kitty says that kids are learning to print in the first grade, age 6 or 7…I wonder if she knows that schools today are actually asking 3- & 4-year-olds to write their names, alphabet, and numbers.
Writing is not just about the writer writing; it’s about the writer communicating with a reader. Done poorly, communication is broken and ineffective.
My Brief Conclusions: Kitty’s recounting of handwriting past and present reinforces my opinion that handwriting has and—as far as I can see— will always be a part of the human experience. It, understandably, will morph to fit the changing ways of society, but it will not disappear. We do future generations and society a disservice by neglecting the teaching of this skill. Handwriting is not only useful for developing thoughts and communicating ideas, it unlocks and opens a deeper part of us otherwise unreached…and then reaches out and touches others in a uniquely personal way.
