Education Week - March 12, 2014 - 29

There's More to Cursive
Than Meets the Eye
"
section of stakeholders, including university and P-12 officials,
representatives of nontraditional programs, chief state school
officers, critics, union officials, and others who put aside their
differences to create new expectations for the field." There's really
no need for me to take the lead in developing a framework
that holds preparation programs accountable for their graduates'
performance. The field has already done that through the
development of the CAEP standards and accreditation procedures.

Teach Plus Indiana issued a challenge to me that I've tried to
address here. Now, I'd like to present Teach Plus Indiana with
my own challenge: Insist that any studies you endorse or accountability
measures you propose are based on valid data. At
a minimum, that means using an appropriate methodology for
the research question under investigation and, where warranted,
credible Institutional Review Board approval, peer-reviewed
publication of results, and replication. It does not suffice to call
for a tough conversation about teacher preparation if it is driven
by ideology and devoid of meaningful data to inform decisions.
The education and scientific community has a duty to provide
a critical review of the evaluation methods used and insist that
conclusions reached as a result of the "conversation" on teacher
education accountability are based on valid data. Otherwise, it's
just empty rhetoric. n
GERARDO M. GONZALEZ has been the dean of the school of
education at Indiana University Bloomington since 2000.
By Susan Vachon
I understand
that
meaningful
assessment of
teacher
preparation
requires a
multifaceted
approach based
on a robust
research
methodology
and focused on
program
outcomes."
At our independent K-12 school of about
1,000 students, the number of individualized
education programs with the diagnosis of dysgraphia,
a learning disability that affects writing,
has increased significantly in recent years.
While statistics on the overall prevalence of dysgraphia-also
sometimes referred to as written
output disorder or graphomotor weakness-are
hard to find, more and more middle school students
cannot legibly write by hand. In addition
to the students with officially
recognized writing disabilities,
many students who can print
cannot write in cursive, a previously
mandatory skill. These
are smart kids in an enriched
environment, many of whom
are now called "learning disabled"
based on written output,
and many of whom have
just simply never learned the
art of handwriting.
Being a proponent of 21stcentury
skills and an early
adopter of technology, my response
to these graphomotor
weaknesses has up until recently
been bypass strategies,
such as directing students
to word processing or voicerecognition
software. These
technologies enable children
with writing challenges to get
their ideas in print. I rationalized
the use of these strategies
with the belief that being able
to write legibly was not a necessary skill for success
in the 21st century.
A
A recent six-month sabbatical in France and a
further exploration of the research into the value
of good handwriting have shaken my beliefs. In
fact, these experiences have made me seriously
reconsider my previously blasé attitude toward
the importance of well-developed handwriting
skills.
While in France, my two children, ages 3 and
ment of community outreach for any school
district seeking to support high-quality
CTE programs in comprehensive high
schools. We must seek sponsorship from
these groups to provide funding for the latest
technology to equip the classroom and
to support the curriculum with advanced
training of faculty members and students.
We must promote the rigor that is inherent
in well-designed CTE programs by meeting
the 21st-century needs and industry
standards of our local employers. Articulation
agreements should be designed with
local community colleges and other postsecondary
institutions to enable students
to earn advance credit toward credentials
or certificates while still attending high
school. In partnerships forged with care,
career placement for students becomes the
logical result.
Above all, we must nurture within our
school communities the understanding that
the skilled trades are an honorable, fulfill-
ing, and lucrative postsecondary career option
for many of our students. Then we must
invest in revitalizing our CTE programs to
provide these students with a meaningful
exploration of the skills required to be
career-ready to meet the demands of their
chosen career pathways. n
JEAN M. EVANS DAVILA is the district
administrator for K-12 English/language arts
and reading in the Norwalk, Conn., public
schools. She has worked as a teacher and
curriculum administrator in Connecticut for
22 years, including having served as the
education consultant for English/language arts
and reading in the Connecticut Technical High
School System. She entered education after
having worked for more than a decade as a
licensed hairdresser, hairdressing school teacher,
general manager, and corporate trainer in the
hairdressing industry. She is a doctoral student in
the instructional leadership program at Western
Connecticut State University, in Danbury.
6, attended school in our small village, and I happily
volunteered weekly in both their classrooms.
One day, during routine photocopying of the 5th
grade student notebooks, I had an awakening
that shook the foundations of my "bypass those
weak writing skills" philosophy. The more than
100 notebooks were identical in their beautiful
penmanship. You could barely tell one notebook
from the next or differentiate the girls' work
from the boys'. One hundred notebooks of graceful,
fluid handwriting, or attaché, as the French
call it.
My photocopying revelation inspired me to
dig a little further into the French handwriting
phenomenon. I did not have to look much further
than my 3-year-old son's classroom. School in
France starts at 3, and the national curriculum
is followed very closely across the country. While
my son's days were largely play-based, at least
half an hour of every school day was set aside for
graphomotor or fine-motor-skill work.
The teachers made this work fun. Students
would complete tasks such as using a pencil to
trace valleys on a piece of corrugated cardboard,
practicing pincer grip by transferring seeds or
grains of rice, or painting giant spirals with
s a middle school
learning-resource
teacher, I cannot
help but notice the
increasing number of
students who cannot
print or write in cursive
legibly.
small brushes. Though the activities were based
in play, the approach was part of a three-year
plan to develop fine-motor and graphomotor
skills that culminates with the first exposure to
actual writing in 1st grade.
Students in France are never formally taught
to print, but instead at age 6 they learn to write
by hand. By the end of the 1st grade year, all students
are producing the beautiful writing that so
amazed me that day at the photocopier.
During my time in France, I volunteered at dif-
There is a
growing field of
research that
supports the
"
French belief that
handwriting is an
important skill-
not just for its
own sake."
ferent schools and spoke with dozens of teachers.
When I asked them if they had ever encountered
a student who was unable to learn to write, most
looked at me in puzzlement; one or two vaguely
remembered a student with coordination issues
that required some intervention, but none knew
of children with a dysgraphia diagnosis.
The French primary curriculum, though certainly
lacking in some areas,
recognizes handwriting as
an important skill. Therefore,
using a well-thought-out fouryear
approach, teachers spend
three years prepping students
to hold a pencil for handwriting
and then one year developing
the skill.
As an educator, despite being
wowed by the French student
notebooks, I was still not convinced
that the French focus on
handwriting skills was worth
the time teachers were putting
toward it. Yet I was intrigued.
Spurred on by the pile of writing
disabilities that were being
diagnosed at my middle school
back home, I began examining
the research about the value of
handwriting.
It turns out the French may
be on to something. There is a
growing field of research that
supports the French belief that
handwriting is an important skill-not just for
its own sake, but because it is correlates with
other important skills and brain functions, such
as language learning, reading development, and
working memory.
And so my thinking has evolved. The takehome
message for me has been that the very
thinking needed for the 21st-century skills of
literacy, creativity, and critical thinking may actually
be directly correlated to the acquisition of
the very 20th-century (or earlier) skill of handwriting.

I am not alone in my thinking. Many North
American educators are now realizing we have
thrown the baby out with the bath water in our
neglect of the development of fine-motor and
later graphomotor skills in our students.
A 2012 conference in Washington, "Handwrit-
ing in the 21st Century? An Educational Summit,"
acted as a symposium for handwriting advocates
from the fields of neuroscience, research,
and education. Several states have begun to
re-examine their relative abandonment of handwriting
as a skill. So while our North American
notebooks may never rival those of the French, I
believe we can-and should-take a metaphorical
page out of the French book and resurrect
handwriting as a relevant skill for the 21st century.n

SUSAN VACHON is a middle school English and
special education teacher at St. Michaels University
School, in Victoria, British Columbia. She founded
Optimally Learning, a business that provides support
to parents of students with learning disabilities and
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
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Education Week - March 12, 2014

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