Sending a handwritten letter is becoming such an anomaly. It's disappearing. My mom is the only one who still writes me letters. And there's something visceral about opening a letter - I see her on the page. I see her in her handwriting. [author unknown]
From the moment I was officially diagnosed with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, training my brain was to be the order of the day for the months and years that followed. If my body was to do what the bodies of everyone else did, the brain would have to be stimulated into negotiating new pathways to compensate for those lost to the damage caused by cerebral palsy, damage that would be permanent. My mother and others in my home took care of manipulating the legs, up and down with the left, from side to side with the right.
In school, teachers were charged with training the ‘smarts’ in me. Training the brain to learn facts and figures, part of which involved learning how to print, and then how to write. Reading was the next big thing! The exercise of cursive writing served a valuable purpose - teaching the brain to co-ordinate eye and hand to create letters, then words, then sentences. I am convinced that learning cursive writing also trained my neurologically insulted brain to master a range of fine motor tasks that would then progress to learning gross motor tasks, like stepping and walking with a greater degree of competence than would otherwise have been realised. Then there’s language fluency. Cursive writing and language proficiency go hand to mouth. Amazing!
Using a pencil to follow through the sequence of creating the letter A is vastly different than touching the letter on a keypad attached to a computer device and the A suddenly appears. The steps required to create the A from scratch is rather like baking a cake — a home made cake often has a far superior flavour to the commercially prepared (box) variety.
A Psychology Today article points out the benefits of cursive writing for cognitive development, with one study concluding that elementary students need at least "15 minutes of handwriting daily for cognitive, writing and motor skills and reading comprehension improvement. Students wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard. This study included second, fourth, and sixth graders. Cursive writing helps train the brain to integrate visual (and) tactile information, and fine motor dexterity.”
“Observers of Montessori schools are often astonished by the beautiful cursive hand of four-and five-year-old children. Montessori noted that the straight and oblique lines of printing were more difficult for children to form than cursive. The uninterrupted movements of the hand may make cursive letters easier for children to form, and for this reason, some Montessori primary classrooms introduce children to cursive sandpaper letters first. Other Montessori schools wait to teach cursive to lower elementary students.”
As a leftie, learning many eye-hand co-ordination activities was at first awkward but then acuity and aptitude for a range of tasks illustrated that I was well-suited to learning many skills, all of which serve me well today. Gone are the days of grubby shirt cuffs as my hand dragged across the page while I was learning the A B C’s of cursive writing. Oh, the joy of those early years of my formal education! Today, I routinely copy recipes by hand and have bits of paper tucked in a ‘catch all’ basket in the kitchen. A friend has been after me to organise them into some sort of order, but that’s too easy! What’s the problem? She’s able to read my south-paw scrawl! That’s scary, actually!
When was the last time you wrote a letter with a real pen and real paper, whether formal or informal? I’ve written a few in the past couple of days - short notes. I even hand-addressed the envelopes. OMG, am I regressing to a primitive state of being? Heck, no! I’m working the grey cells! Writing with ‘old-fashioned’ instruments. Decades ago, I knew I ‘arrived’ when my parents gave me a Cross™ pen with pocket clip for my 18th birthday; I still use it today. Several years later, an older brother gave me the ladies Cross™ pen. As a leftie with wonky vision, my writing tends to ‘wander’, so I prefer lined paper to ensure that the letters are evenly executed across the page. I keep a stack of recipe cards at my desk so when I read something interesting, I pen notes. There’s that brain training again! In another corner of my messy work space is a lined notepad - for the grocery list that goes with me me to the supermarket.
When I was learning to sit up, stand up, step, walk, print, write, and read, and type, who in my world back then would ever have imagined how all those things would come together over the course of my life experiences to bring me to this point - becoming a weekly presence in the the lives of those who read this paper.
I’m going to sit right down and write someone a letter!
Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with her aging Australian silky terrier and a rambunctious Maltese. She can be reached via email at carmacrockwell@xplornet.ca
