TEACH HANDWRITING A Teacher's Manual BY FRANK N. FREEMAN. Professor of Educational Psychology, The University of Chicago THE authors acknowledge the courtesy of the following pub- Houghton Mifflin Company, for permission to include selec- Charles Scribner's Sons, for selections from Mary Mapes Harper and Brothers, and The Christian Herald, for poems The Macmillan Company, for poems by Christina G. Ros- The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. PREFACE Two mistakes of an opposite nature have been made in teaching writing. The first mistake is to expect writing to grow up incidentally without giving the child any specific training in the writing act. The child can learn after a fashion to write with little or no special training, but the quality of his writing is much better when he has had suitable training. Writ The second mistake is to suppose that teaching writing is some strange mysterious process which can be mastered only by special teachers who have had a large amount of technical training. ing is no more difficult to teach than the other subjects in the school. Writing is badly taught by the grade teacher, when she attempts to teach it, simply because she has had no training at all in preparation for teaching it. Writing can be taught by the grade teacher and there are strong reasons why it should so be taught. Writing is an activity which the child performs in much of his school work besides his writing lesson. It is necessary that all the writing be done properly, and it is the grade teacher who must see that it is properly done. When the grade teacher teaches writing, she will feel responsible for the quality of all the child's written work- otherwise not. If the grade teacher teaches writing, she must have the necessary equipment. This equipment is of two sorts, pedagogical and technical. The teacher must know the principles which govern the process of learning to write and must have a grasp of the methods which grow out of these principles. This is the pedagogical equipment. In addition to this the teacher must have a certain amount of skill in writing in order to be able to teach it. This is her technical equipment. The importance of the teacher's pedagogical equipment has been grossly underestimated and it has been almost totally neglected. The importance of technical equipment has been commonly overestimated, but nevertheless it has commonly been neglected also. In the small number of cases in which teachers have been trained, the emphasis has been almost wholly on the development of skill in writing. The aim of this manual is to enable the teacher to get the pedagogical equipment she needs and to furnish the detailed exercises for her use together with such explanation as will enable her to use them intelligently. 573805 The teacher will need to spend time in the preparation of each lesson, particularly in the beginning. This preparation should include a study of the directions, and practice in writing the exercises. It is necessary that the teacher should show the class how to write the exercises by writing them on the board. To do this properly the teacher must have a reasonable amount of technical skill and a thorough knowledge of the timing, and all other details, of each exercise. In the first part of the manual the chief pedagogical and psychological principles which govern the learning process in writing are presented in concise and simple form. This discussion is based in part upon experimental studies of writing, particularly the studies made in the laboratory of the University of Chicago by motionpicture photography and allied methods, and described in the monograph entitled The Handwriting Movement, by F. N. Freeman, Supplementary Educational Monograph, Department of Education. In this study, the writing movement of a large number of good and poor writers was photographed and analyzed. From this study of actual cases the characteristics of good writing were determined as described in the first part of this manual. As the result of this study certain broad principles have emerged as being the most important, and these are made the foundation of the present method of teaching. Among the most important of these is correct position, a fluent and easy sideward movement of the hand across the page, and the proper organization of the movement with reference to time, which we may call the rhythm of the writing. The principle which was found not to deserve the emphasis which has been given it in recent years in American penmanship is the arm movement in forming the letters. This is distinctly subordinate in importance to the other principles which have been mentioned. In addition to these principles, which are derived directly from the experiments on writing, certain principles of effective practice in the development of skill of movement are applied. Among these is the need of sufficient repetition of a specific act, with the attention concentrated upon its improvement. Another principle is the distribution of these repetitions throughout several periods. A third is consistency, which is accomplished in writing by the correlation of penmanship with other subjects of study. This is emphasized throughout the course. The manual also makes use of the results of widespread surveys of writing in the public schools, and discusses in a systematic but concise way the pedagogical principles which govern the teaching of the subject. In the second part of the manual the general principles which are laid down in the first part are applied in a full series of exercises for the first six grades. These exercises are described and illustrated in sufficient detail to be taught from the manual. The exercises are arranged in the form of daily lessons. A prominent feature of the exercises is their organization into a definite sequence, based on certain clearly defined principles. The principles govern the order in which the letters are practiced, the choice of words, the speed at which the writing is done, the characteristics on which attention is focused, etc. In general, only those letters and words are used in the exercises which have been previously practiced. A distinctive characteristic of the course is the emphasis which is laid on the adoption of a special set of aims for each grade. This is necessary in order to adapt the work to the capacity of the pupils at different stages of maturity, and in order to build progressively on what has gone before. It is also necessary to provide fresh stimulus and interest to the pupils in a subject which otherwise merely repeats monotonously the same exercises year after year. The course assumes that the mass of pupils can learn to write in the six years of the coming elementary school. This is done, can be done, and must be done if the teachers of writing are to escape the imputation of gross inefficiency. |