Handwriting

Okay, I've found it: the most pointless educational advice ever, regarding handwriting:

Begin with lines and shapes, encouraging children to draw all vertical lines from the top to the bottom. All circular shapes should begin at the 2 o'clock position, moving up, left, and around-like the letter c. (Kids tend to start at the top and make egg shapes.) Shapes using straight lines -- triangles, rectangles, and squares -- should always use individual lines that meet, not a single stroke with an attempt to make "pointy" corners. Every line should be drawn left to right or top to bottom. Vertical lines are drawn first, left side, then right side, and then the connecting horizontal lines. The horizontal lines on top are first, and all horizontal lines should begin at the left. Kids have their own short cuts, so these basics do need to be taught.

Gosh. I make my v's using a single, pointy-cornered stroke, instead of two strokes-- and yet, I have the gall to consider myself educated.

As for "these basics do need to be taught," I don't think so. When I was in about the 6th or 7th grade, most of the girls decided to make their handwriting stylish and pretty. Sure, we'd had a good 5 or 6 years of handwriting drills by then, but after all that effort, we weren't too enthralled with standard, uniform writing. We developed individual styles, some round and balloonish, some slanty and narrow, whatever we thought looked "cool". I experimented with I's dotted with open circles, elongated lacy writing, fat horizontally stretched cursive, and so forth. My dearest friend writes to this day in a wild, loopy, vertically stretched font which not infrequently causes her letters to go amiss with the post office, eventually arriving with the address written in some postal employee's handwriting on the front of the letter for clarification. My own writing is a combination of print and cursive (although I much, much prefer typing). Nor is the handwriting of many of the men I know either a) completely legible nor b) uniform. Somehow we all survive, handwriting notwithstanding.

While I'm at it, I'll also say that it is not necessary to teach typing. I began typing as a kid, when my brother and I played text-based adventure games. My abilities went from hunt-and-peck to my own organic system, using primarily three fingers on each hand (although I hit the shift key with my right pinky). I can type faster than most people I know, I don't have to look at the keyboard, and I'll never get carpal tunnel because I am not holding my hands in one stiff, unnatural position over the keyboard-- rather, my hands move around as I'm typing and the positions they take on are the ones that came naturally.

So, personally, I'd put "handwriting" and "typing" into the sheer busywork category.