The first few centuries after the Fall of the Roman Empire are sometimes referred to as the Middle Ages. There was prevailing ignorance and barbarism at that time. Fortunately, there were forces for Culture and enlightenment throughout the period. A group of Irish monks took it upon themselves to copy, by hand, all of the classics, the gospels, and other things so that a true account of the culture that had preceded the Fall of the Roman Empire could be preserved. These accounts are called the Book of Kells and are housed in Ireland in the library of Trinity College in Dublin. I have never been as impressed as I was when I got to see these Books when I visited Ireland. They had been laboreously hand written in the script that was used at that time. It apparently took a few centuries to copy from the Ancient Greek, Latin, Germanic and even more primitive script so that we could have an account of civilization.

We are now in the era of technology and letting our children fall by the wayside when it comes to comunicating by the traditional form. Keyboarding is taking precedence over penmanship. The children are not being taught penmanship in many schools. Shockingly, some of their teachers cannot write in cursive nor can they read cursive writing. Some educators insist that we now communicate by computers and there is no need for the students or anyone else to be literate enough to communicate by hand written means.

There are many methods of cursive writing. Enough to accomodate the students with underveloped motor skills or the difficulty, at first, that the left handed person encounters. The common Palmer method, or the Zanner-Blozer method can be a little more challenging for those students but the DeNealing Method which helps the student that is less dexterous is quite satisfactory. Legible hand writing is the ultimate aim.

There is so much talk about the quality of education in this country at this time that it seems counter productive to ignore the teaching of cursive writing and to encourage the child to depend on 'Spell-check' to spell. Spelling has pretty much fallen by the wayside and now cursive writing too. We will soon become a Nation of illiterate people.

Civilized people have been hand writing letters and other documents since the monks copied manuscripts in the Middle Ages. Shakespeare and Dickens and Poe and the signers of the Constitution found a pen good enough for their achievements. We cannot afford to let our society become deteriorated because 'it takes too much time' to teach penmanship and keyboarding too.

You must be profient in cursive writing to be able to sign your own signature to your important papers, your voter registration, your driver's licence and many, many other documents. Can you imagine getting a thank you note computer generated from your grandchild,a com.gen. love letter, a computer generated...well, you get the point. Fight to bring back the penmanship and spelling lessons in schools to prevent the New Era Dark Ages! Ciao

Note:
When children cannot write cursive writing they cannot read it either!