At M’s parent-teacher interview yesterday we asked about how they teach kids to form letters, because M does some very odd things when she prints.
“Oh, we don’t teach that anymore,” said her (absolutely wonderful) teacher, “Any which way they get the letters on the page legibly is fine.” And we all made a few cracks about “back in the day” and “…with my feather dipped in ink” and that sort of thing.
But now I’m wondering: is forming letters properly really one of those things one can learn informally?
Kids these days, etc.
Well, certainly no one will learn a standard from which they can then develop their own style. Given the considerable differences even in cultural depictions of the standard alphabet (compare a German or Swiss person’s letter and number styles to a Canadian’s, for example), one wonders just what kids will end up with. Though I guess that’s how linguistic “evolution” occurs…
That’s horrifying. For one thing, you may learn how to make letters that kind of look like what you see written, but teach yourself to do it in an extremely awkward and inefficient way, which may discourage you from doing much of it. Note to self: fun printing workbook for six-year-old cousin for Christmas.
Jamie’s kindergarten teacher is much more old school on this issue in particular — there is a right way to form each letter, and many, many wrong ways. One of her first communications to the parents, I think even before the beginning of the year, was an imprecation against all the parents and preschools that let kids write letters any which way, so she has to spend much of the year undoing bad habits. Guilty as charged.
On the other hand, perhaps soon they’ll just be typing everything. AJ, at 3, is just starting to get the fine motor skills to write letters — his big thing now is what he calls “A’s in a cage” – he draws big A’s with a circle around them so they can’t get away. But he’s been sitting at the keyboard happily typing his letters away for some time — obviously much easier to do.