Cursive Handwriting: Elementary Curriculum and Graphic Design A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graphic Design department in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design at Savannah College of Art and Design Mary Leiser eLearning © March 2015 Professor Zoran Belic, MFA, Committee Chair Professor Stanley Conrad, MFA, Committee Member Professor Sarah Adams, MFA, Committee Member To Matt – without whom this thesis and the degree it represents would not have been completed. Your love, support, and positivity enabled me to make it through. To Ruby – for your mighty red pen. You brought order and sense to my writing. Acknowledgments An academic journey is not complete without the challenges posed by individuals to push you beyond what you believe to be your own capabilities. Because of the guidance and encouragement of the following individuals I have learned my own capabilities. Thank you for your support and belief in the story I had to tell. Professor Trudy Abadie-Mendia Professor Sarah L. Adams Professor Zoran Belic Professor W. Stanley Conrad Table of Contents List of Figures 1 Abstract 2 Introduction 3 Part 1: Cursive’s History/Background 5 Part 2: An Inability to Read Cursive Handwriting 9 Part 3: Designers Lose a Tool for Expressing Personality 14 Part 4: Designers Lose a Tool for Expressing Historical Character 22 Part 5: Conclusion 28 Part 6: Additional Considerations and Recommendations 30 Appendix A: Visual Presentation 33 Bibliography 45 Leiser 1 List of Figures Figure 1.1 Spencerian Script 5 Figure 1.2 Manuscript Writing Worksheet 7 Figure 2.1 Brain Activation Patterns 10 Figure 3.1 Symbolism in Handwriting 15 Figure 3.2 Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone 16 Figure 3.3 Audios Script and Sugar Pie typefaces 20 Figure 3.4 Starbucks ads by letterer Jessica Hische 20 Figure 4.1 Bickham Script in use “Believe” 23 Leiser 2 Abstract Cursive Handwriting: Elementary Curriculum and Graphic Design Mary Leiser March 2015 Cursive handwriting instruction has been a part of American education for over one hundred years. That history and all that it represents is threatened by the new Common Core standards accepted by 43 states. Studies by leading psychologists have produced evidence that letterforms are difficult to recognize without prior practice through writing, and keyboarding is a poor substitute for the physical act of putting pencil to paper when it comes to learning letterforms. By eliminating cursive handwriting instruction from U.S. elementary education, the American public, over time, will lose the ability to read the beautiful script handwriting of America’s forefathers and typefaces based on such writing. Handwritten type and script typefaces are used in graphic design to express personality, individuality, and emotion as well as historical qualities. For companies like Coca-Cola or Johnson & Johnson, their originally handwritten logos are part of their personality as well as their history. Connections to the past enable script typefaces to convey more than the average sans-serif typeface; they carry values drawn from history and societal importance. Without the common ground established through the cursive handwriting education, generations to come may lose the ability to read these typefaces, and graphic designers will lose a valuable tool of expression. The field of graphic design may be facing its last revival of handwritten and script typefaces. Keywords: Cursive, Common Core, Script Typefaces, Handwriting Leiser 3 INTRODUCTION “Oh, I don’t do cursive.” This was how an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois responded when asked why she couldn’t read the clearly legible cursive handwriting of an art critic from the Victorian era (Hotchkiss). An elementary cursive writing education, normally taught in grades 2-4, presumably would have enabled this 18- to 22-year-old college student to read this style of handwriting. For whatever reason, she felt ill prepared to take on the task of reading this historic document. Since 1870, cursive handwriting education has been present within the U.S. public school system. Through drills and practice, a common style of writing was created that united individuals who were educated all over the country. For centuries this commonality connected generations. A little over thirty years ago, technological advances began to threaten this connectivity. The personal computer put America on track for a set of educational standards that include keyboarding and exclude cursive handwriting from the public school curriculum. By adopting the Common Core standards, 43 states have agreed to remove cursive handwriting instruction from elementary education. Students will no longer practice connecting letterforms in a string of legible letters, but instead be taught how to locate letters on a keyboard. With the exclusion of this subject from public education, newer generations in America will be unable to read or connect with the cursive style of writing. The undergrad from Illinois will no longer be an exception but the rule. The elimination of cursive writing in education will also affect the field of graphic design. Designers depend on typefaces that have been rendered from beautiful handwriting of the past to create emotional and historical connections with their audiences. By using a familiar hand- rendered script, designers can tell a story that is immediately personal to those who see it. For Leiser 4 example, the Coca-Cola logo used the traditional Spencerian script (Florey) to imbue the brand symbol with qualities such as “classic” and “American.” Persons could identify with the logo because it was designed in a handwriting style that one practiced; it immediately felt familiar and personal. And because this style of American handwriting has been practiced for centuries, the logo today connotes history, nobility, importance, and wealth. The use of script typefaces to convey this kind of personal and historical significance will be lost as society loses touch with cursive writing. A brief history of cursive handwriting, instructional practices, and the new core curriculum standards that threaten them both demonstrates how society depends on cursive handwriting education to maintain cursive literacy in America. Leading psychological experts Virginia Berninger, Alyssa Kersey, Miloš Kučera, and others have shown that the removal of this curriculum standard will render future generations unable to read cursive handwriting and the typefaces based upon these historical styles. Consequently, the development and use of script typefaces will fade in the United States. With future generations of Americans unable to share in cursive handwriting and typefaces, graphic designers may lose one of their most powerful tools for conveying emotional, personal, and historical values and connotations. Leiser 5 PART 1 – CURSIVE’S HISTORY/BACKGROUND Handwriting, in its most basic form, is a series of marks or graphemes that act as a code for spoken language (Kučera 13). Unlike spoken language, which children spontaneously learn by copying sounds from parents and older siblings and following verbal and nonverbal cues, visual encoding of graphemes and handwriting styles must be systematically taught and practiced in order to be learned. As such, handwriting styles may be lost if they are not intentionally passed to the next generation. Handwriting in America: A brief history Prior to the nineteenth century, reading and cursive handwriting were not taught together. Reading was seen as a necessity, while writing was a privilege available only to social classes with status and means to seek out this specialized skill. Persons learned through instructional masters or educational courses taught from handbooks such as George Bickham’s The Universal Penman or Benjamin Franklin’s The American Instructor (Florey 41-44). A well-formed letter gave individuals a status of being well educated and privileged. Individuals who possessed this skill were sought out to write certificates and important legal documents, and were also hired for jobs within business. Stylized writing offered individuals a means of economic support and socioeconomic status. One such individual was Platt Rogers Spencer, also known as “The Father of American Handwriting” (Florey 64). Spencer created what came to be known as Spencerian Script (figure 1.1), a writing style Figure 1.1 Di Piazza, Laura. Spencerian Script; Accessed famous for its whole-arm movement approach Jan. 25, 2015 from lauradipiazza.com. Leiser 6 described as the “use of the whole arm from the shoulder, the elbow being raised slightly from the desk, and the hand sliding on the nails of the third and fourth fingers” (Spencer 7). In business schools this style of writing was practiced for six to twelve hours a day. The Spencerian style soon became the standard for “most public and private schools across America” in the late 1800s (Florey 72). At the turn of the nineteenth century, education in America drastically shifted. The Education Act of 1870 created a nationwide network of elementary education. Educators also recognized the importance of teaching writing and reading together, and “henceforth any child who attended primary school could not only decipher a text but also hold a pen and write at least a few words” (240). Educators finally realized that by combining the visual and auditory education of reading symbols with the kinesthetic experience of creating graphemes, individuals would more efficiently learn how to both read and write. The achieved cognitive effect demonstrates the dependence of “identical or similar knowledge representations, cognitive processes, and context and contextual constraints (Fitzgerald and Shanahan 40). How one learns to read is similar to how one learns to write, and therefore the two skills should parallel each other so that knowledge of one complements the learning of the other. When educators changed the way these two skills were taught, they were, in effect, assisting students to learn in a more efficient and supportive way. What the Spencerian style lacked was the ability to compose quickly.