APPLICATION OF THE CORRECT HABITS TO DAILY REQUIREMENTS
The muscular movement writing habit should become automatic when pupils have developed enough skill through exercises to apply the movement consistently to all written work. The best skilled teachers might give a lesson daily in any grade, but unless the principles inculcated during that lesson are followed conscientiously during the remaining periods of the day the gain will be slight. If time is allotted for practice the result is surely worth applying to all written exercises. The Committee of Fifteen appointed to investigate the coordination of studies in primary and grammar grades propounded the question, “Has penmanship distinct pedagogical value?” The following is one of the best answers: “Penmanship as an art is but pen drawing, as a factor in education it should be taught more frequently in connection with other studies. Both penmanship and drawing suffer much from their isolated position in the school course. We therefore need to teach writing while teaching other subjects and the reverse.”
In grounding the movement application habit we may well follow these maxims:
First, focalize the attention of the pupils on the habit to be acquired. Teach definitely relaxation, posture, movement, and visualization.
Maxim number two tells us to suffer no exception to occur until the new habit is firmly rooted in our lives.
Number three calls for frequent repetition. We must therefore give daily drill on the points that go to make up the correct writing habit.
Fourthly, “Don’t preach too much.” Lie in wait for the practical opportunities, and get the pupils at once both to think and to act. Such opportunities are never lacking, since so many lessons are conducted through the medium of the pen.
Lastly, keep the faculty of personal effort alive by a little gratuitous exercise every day. After a high degree of perfection has been reached it is maintained only by the follow-up system of daily effort directed toward the retention of the habit.
The habit of movement application demands vigorous and continued effort; the exertion may possibly be so great that the pupil is temporarily more discommoded than by his former habit. If the wise course is pursued the old disability will vanish, a new path will be made in the brain, and application of movement will be established.
The main problem with every teacher is how to assist pupils in linking up the principles that have been mastered, namely, correct posture, and movement applied to drills and short words with the practical writing. The drill on short words will prove as valuable as any other part of this theory work. By the laws of association, pupils will connect the muscular sensation of the short, rapidly written word, with what is required when a variety of longer words or sentences is dictated.
At the beginning of every lesson in which writing is used as a vehicle for thought, attention to the correct habit will be the means of setting many pupils right, and of increasing from week to week the number of those who do all writing with muscular movement. Finally, all incorrect movement will be eliminated, and we may then return to visualization. A proper balance must be preserved in regard to seeing and doing, or our results will be one sided. When a pupil “finds” himself with reference to the application of movement problem, attention may be almost equally divided between retention of that movement and form building. By the time form is established movement will be second nature, and with a little continuous practice will never be lost.
It is time to require all written work to be done with muscular movement when pupils can make good two-space ovals, four hundred across an eight inch page, and straight strokes in the same manner; have visualized one capital letter and can make it at the right speed per minute, for example, sixty to eighty O’s per minute; and can write short words such as “men” and “mine” with correct movement, in correct posture, and within the correct space limit. An easy way to begin is to require application to the subjects where the mind is least concerned as to the content, for example, the spelling lesson.
If pupils have been taught to turn the searchlight of investigation on their own habits they will be entirely conscious of the feeling of mastery that takes possession when muscular movement becomes automatic.
Those who have not thus succeeded should look well into the basic principles of relaxation, correct posture, and movement, especially as applied to letters and short words. Study the hand and arm in its preparatory motion while working at the correct speed. Care should be exercised that there be no movements of the joints of the wrist, thumb or fingers. Alternate the preparatory motion with writing until the sensation of mastery prevails.