The Palmer method

 

When I was in grade school, we were all taught cursive handwriting, using the Palmer method.

The Palmer Method of penmanship instruction was developed and promoted by Austin Palmer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was intended to simplify the earlier "Spencerian method", which had been the main handwriting learning method since the 1840s. The Palmer Method soon became the most popular handwriting system in the United States.

Under the method, students were taught to adopt a uniform system of cursive writing with rhythmic motions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method

The method developed around 1888 and was introduced in the book Palmer's Guide to Business Writing (1894). Palmer's method involved "muscle motion" in which the more proximal muscles of the arm were used for movement, rather than allowing the fingers to move in writing. In spite of opposition from the major publishers, this textbook enjoyed great success: in 1912, one million copies were sold throughout the United States. The method won awards, including the Gold Medal at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, in 1915, and the Gold Medal at the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1926.

Proponents of the Palmer Method emphasized its plainness and speed, that it was much faster than the laborious Spencerian Method, and that it allowed the writer to compete effectively with the typewriter. To educators, the method's advocates emphasized regimentation, and that the method would thus be useful in schools to increase discipline and character, and could even reform delinquents.^[

The Palmer Method began to fall out of popularity in the 1950s and was eventually supplanted by the Zaner-Bloser Method, which sought to teach children print writing (also called "manuscript printing") before teaching them cursive, in order to provide them with a means of written expression as soon as possible, and thus develop writing skills. The D'Nealian Method, introduced in 1978, sought to address problems raised by the Zaner-Bloser Method, returning to a more cursive style of print writing. The Palmer company stopped publishing in the 1980s.

I had thought that cursive was a lost art until I met a student a few days ago who had learned cursive in elementary school.

I was never very good at cursive, and largely relied on printing to take notes in college. While in high school, I took a typewriting class, and those skills have become increasingly important once we all graduated to using computers for most of what we do. Very few of us use typewriters anymore, which would have disappointed my father-in-law, who was a typewriter repairman for decades. You CAN still buy typewriters, and there ARE a few typewriter repairmen, but they are rare. 

(Tom Hanks, incidentally, is a huge fan, and he owns about  250 of them)

https://abcnews.go.com/US/knew-tom-hanks-mystery-packages-arrive-typewriter-shops/story?id=99202863

Surprisingly, there are now 21 states that REQUIRE the teaching of cursive. The complete list can be found in the link below.

https://mycursive.com/the-14-states-that-require-cursive-writing-state-by-state/

Part of the group includes 5 states that recently added the requirement:

• Arizona
• Indiana
• Illinois
• Massachusetts
• Ohio

The days of handwriting are largely a thing of the past, but a few people (including my sister) still send a few, and I marvel at how neat it is.

Most of us use handwriting only to sign checks, and (for a variety of reasons) most of us don't write checks anymore, since it is easier (and safer) to do your financial transactions online.

Occasionally, you'll find signatures that are works of art, even though they are technically illegible, and Jack Lew's signature is a prime example.

He was recently promoted to be the ambassador to Israel, but he has held a variety of positions in his lifetime, including Treasury Secretary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Lew

I'm not going to resort to using cursive again anytime soon, but the fact that it still exists brings back some memories from long ago.