Education: Get Into Step

In any other U.S. community, Tannenbaum’s Handwriting of the Renaissance would hardly be popular reading. But in suburban Brookline, Mass. (pop. 57,589), a good number of parents are thumbing it through—and all are doing so with a purpose. Last week they were collecting ammunition for the hottest school battle of the year. Their target: the exclusive teaching of manuscript printing in Brookline’s public grade schools.

The battle began when a series of incidents made parents realize that something was radically wrong. One little boy confessed that he could not read the postcards his mother had sent him from Honolulu. A teen-age grocery clerk had to admit that he could not read handwritten orders. Another boy told his mother that he could not decipher his pen pal’s letters. A little girl said she could not sign her name “because I can’t do capitals.” Last May six mothers and fathers finally formed a Parents’ Research Committee to look into the matter further. Was there any valid reason, they wanted to know, why Brookline’s schools should teach printing only?

To Superintendent Ernest Caverly, there was: “It’s better for left-handed children. It’s an aid to better, quicker reading. It’s simpler. It’s faster.” The Parents’ Research Committee disagreed. They not only read Tannenbaum for background material, they also queried other communities throughout Massachusetts. Their conclusions: “If they were free to speak, 90% of the teachers would be on our side.” Nonsense, said Superintendent Caverly. “Speaking conservatively, I would say that 90% of all teachers—up to and including those in the high schools—would favor manuscript printing.”

By last week, as Brookline got ready to decide the issue at the next school board meeting, the controversy had caught the ears of Boston editorial writers. The Boston American was up in arms about the little boy and his postcards, the grocery clerk and his orders, the little girl who could not “do” capitals. “The Brookline handwriting controversy,” said the American, “would be amusing to the point of being utterly ridiculous if the welfare of boys and girls were not involved. That can never be funny.

“Long before the printing press was invented, literate men and women were putting their thoughts on paper in the cursive or script penmanship that has continued to be used to this day…It remained for Brookline with its still-to-be-justined passion for progressive education to reject the writing method preferred by the civilized world and to substitute a system that bears a striking similarity to the crude hieroglyphics of the ancient Phoenicians. The world isn’t apt to move back for Brookline’s benefit; so it would be more sensible for Brookline to get into step with the world.”