Primary Education (1959)

(page numbers in brackets)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages (i-xiii)
Foreword, Preface, Contents

Part 1 Historical
Chapter I (1-11)
Recent History of Primary Education

Part 2 The Primary Schools
Chapter II (15-26)
Introduction
Chapter III (27-36)
Nursery Schools and Classes
Chapter IV (37-55)
Infant schools
Chapter V (56-77)
Junior Schools
Chapter VI (78-105)
The Working of the School
Chapter VII (106-110)
Special Educational Treatment

Part 3 The Fields of Learning
Chapter VIII (113-116)
The Curriculum
Chapter IX (117-129)
Religion
Chapter X (130-134)
Physical Education
Chapter XI (135-178)
Language
Chapter XII (179-212)
Mathematics
Chapter XIII (213-246)
Art and Craft and Needlework
Chapter XIV (247-259)
Handwriting
Chapter XV (260-274)
Music
Chapter XVI (275-288)
History
Chapter XVII (289-313)
Geography and Natural History

Part 4 The Special Problems of Wales
Chapter XVIII (317-329)
Wales

Index (331-334)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1959
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

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The experience of the post-war years has shown that, where children are helped to master the craft of handwriting so that they are able to use it for their records with enjoyment and skill, their interest and their sense of proper pride are quickened; and many teachers would claim that the substance of what they write is greatly strengthened. However that may be, handwriting, like reading, is something that has special significance for the primary school, and it is therefore considered here in some detail.

The two or three year old who is so consumed with interest in watching his parent write a letter that he begs to be allowed to write one too, scribbles across the page lines that are not greatly unlike the calligraphic rhythms of mature handwriting. From the start, in fact, a young child seems to be aware that to write is to make flowing rhythmic bands of pattern; and it happens to be true that that is what our everyday handwriting has always been, at any rate since the Renaissance, when there was a conscious effort to reform it.

The great writing masters of that time taught a cursive hand that was the natural outcome of writing the ancient Roman letter forms swiftly with a pen. These monumental shapes, when interpreted by a stiff quill sharpened to an edge like a chisel's, inevitably took on a character that depended on the nature of this tool. As it was held at a constant angle while directed across the page it produced lines ranging in thickness from a hair's breadth to the pen's full width; moreover, as the letters came to be written more freely and coupled or linked according to their shape, and as the writing was seen as a forward-moving line of pattern, the character of the letters tended to become compressed. In contrast to the formal book hand of the professional scribe, where each letter usually stood upright and separate as

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in printed type, the informal running hand that has evolved from it for everyday use was one in which the individual letters were no longer seen in isolation but ran on from one to the next as a continuous pattern. It was the natural outcome of the swift informal rendering of the alphabet chosen as a model and the nature of the tool that was most often used for writing it.

Some young children of Tudor, Elizabethan and Stuart times, who were privileged to come under the influence of such scholars as Roger Ascham, were certainly taught to write such a hand as this. It was clean and economical in form, and swift, legible and graceful; and it showed unmistakably its honourable pedigree. The copybooks devised by some of the great masters of the craft showed models that were beautifully reproduced by printing from woodblocks. Later, as the work was turned over to the copper-plate engravers, whose method of reproduction had become the cheap and popular one, the writing tended to lose some of its essential character in the florid excesses of engraving; the flexible, fine-pointed steel pen replaced the stiff, square-ended quill, and thin or thick strokes were now produced by muscular pressure upon the pen. The maxim of the copybooks was 'Lightly on the up-strokes, heavy on the down'.

So there came into almost general use in our nineteenth century schools that offshoot from traditional handwriting aptly known as Copperplate, and the style persists in a number of schools today. At its best this hand is both legible and beautiful but, as those who were taught it as children and have continued to use it will know, it all too rapidly degenerates into illegible scribble when written with speed. Few adults still use the sharp, pliable pen nibs of their schooldays; they have long since resorted to the broader and more rigid ones now commonly manufactured.

It must not be supposed, however, that the chisel-edged pen was the exclusive tool before the invention of the steel copper-plate pen. The stiff blunt style too was sometimes employed for informal work, much of which showed a swift, personal and essentially cursive quality. While the dangers inherent in the use of its modern equivalent are obvious, even so it cannot be ruled out as a writing tool.

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From the turn of the nineteenth century onwards there have been various attempts to bring back the craft of handwriting to the main stream of tradition. The introduction of print script into infant schools was a sincere effort to teach young children the bold, wholesome Roman letter forms rather than the somewhat emasculated version of nineteenth century pot-hooks. That this was not handwriting but print - not a cursive hand but a formal book hand - soon became evident. On leaving the infant school the child was either required to put away childish things and start proper 'grown-up' writing from scratch, or helped to turn his script into cursive handwriting; after the primary stage he might be left to catch whatever feature attracted him from whatever styles came his way, so that by adulthood he possessed a mongrel hand that gave no satisfaction to him to write or to others to read. In this matter alone in the curriculum there has been tolerated not only a lack of progression but even a positive setback.

It was left to a teacher, Marion Richardson, and to various exponents of Renaissance hands who were not teachers but scribes, to bring the schools back to the simple truth that handwriting is essentially a rhythmical pattern of lines across a page. Marion Richardson laid emphasis on children's inherent sense of movement and pattern and showed how the craft of handwriting grew out of it; and the scribes drew attention once more to the sources of traditional handwriting and to the essential nature of the pen, making available again superb historic examples for schools to see and use as models. For no new letter shapes have been invented; we can but use those that have come down through history. Just as there is a recognised and accepted pronunciation of sounds, with latitude for dialectal variation, so there is a universally established way of making letters, and the sensitive ear or eye rebels against liberties that are taken with either. The unchangeable, significant letter forms which continue to serve our purpose best today are so established within our civilisation that we cannot tamper with them; it is not possible to devise a new basic form: we can only accept what history gives us.

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So we come to our own time; and it is a heartening thought that, in an age when so little of craftsmanship is expected of anyone and when it is easy to say that few people care about quality and standards of work done by hand, very many - both in schools and outside - are deeply concerned to give handwriting once more its proper dignity as the most universal of all crafts. Thousands of adults today are enjoying a new found pleasure in learning to write a traditional hand well.

(a) The beginning

Some of this number are teachers in infant schools, and they realise that, as in other aspects of learning, young children appear to learn most easily and surely from the example that they themselves set. If the first writing that children see is the simplest possible version of the traditional running hand then they straightway begin to copy it. Provided the teacher has herself mastered the craft she should not find it difficult to present to them a 'standard' form of it, that is to say, one without her own idiosyncrasies or deviations from the norm. Knowing that children tend to exaggerate such differences she is therefore careful to let them see only the clear, elemental letter shapes, each showing its essential features that distinguish it from every other. The words and simple sentences she may write for a child beneath the pictures he draws - and which he may copy - will be written in such a hand. She and her children will write with chalk, charcoal, crayon, brush or soft thick pencil according to the need, though the last will probably be used more often.

(b) Handwriting as rhythmical movement

When she writes for her children to see she will usually write a fully cursive hand, where many of the letters are naturally linked. When copying what she writes not all children will at first use these ligatures; some may draw the letters separately, packing them closely into words. It has surprised many teachers to find that young children are quicker to come to a completely running hand than was formerly thought; they soon see that some letters are joined by a horizontal stroke and some by a

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diagonal one, while others do not lend themselves to being linked. What is important is to encourage children to recognise that a word is a complete piece of pattern, and that a lot of words moving together rhythmically across the page make a larger pattern. In the course of the school day children will make patterns with other forms than letters and with other materials than crayons and pencils, and all this variety will reinforce and strengthen their sense of rhythm. If from the start they are helped to see that handwriting is a form of movement, then they will enjoy it in the same spirit that they enjoy moving their own bodies. While the shapes made with the pencil may be small in scale yet they need never be mean or restricted in kind; and each is related to the other; no letter exists alone but each is a part of a larger pattern.

(c) Teaching technique

As the business of recording in writing becomes more necessary and absorbing to a child he may need more technical help from his teacher. For example, if he grips his writing tool or holds it awkwardly he may be prevented from achieving an easy flow in what he tries to write. Nothing is more frustrating than this, and the teacher may need to show him how lightly she holds her pencil as she takes it on its way across the page. Then the child may find difficulty in drawing the essential portrait of a particular letter so that it can be immediately recognised; possibly the child has not fully seen or recognised its shape hitherto, and it is only when his teacher makes it clear to him that he becomes aware of it, Always a child must be allowed the time he needs to practise at his own pace until he himself sees that he is making good progress.

On occasion the teacher may find it convenient to demonstrate a point to a group, and she can only do this if she has mastered the art of writing well upon a wall-board. This requires no mean skill and a great deal of practice. For this purpose the teacher may like to sharpen her chalk like a chisel-edged pen, though, if she holds it as she does her pen so that the angle it makes with the surface of the board is constant, it will wear itself down to such an edge after a little use. Alternatively the teacher may prefer to write with 'lettering chalk' designed for the purpose, or she may choose to break a stick of chalk into lengths of

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about half an inch, using each as though it were a pen of that width; obviously a new piece is needed very frequently, though this is no inconvenience. It is interesting to see how six and seven year olds who have by now had a good deal of daily writing practice will sometimes deliberately rub down the points of their own crayons and coloured and black pencils to a chisel edge, on sandpaper or some other rough surface, and will delightedly show their teacher that their writing is made up of thick and thin strokes like hers. While obviously it would be unwise to consider the calligraphic nature of the tool to such an extent at this stage it is nevertheless revealing that some children do in fact appreciate calligraphic quality even at this early age. The pencils and crayons they use approximate more nearly to the comparatively blunt stylus mentioned earlier, and not until they come to handle pens in the junior school will they be concerned with the character of writing with a chisel-edge. There is every reason for ensuring that whatever notices, labels, titles or other pieces of handwriting children see in the infant school should be as good of their kind as the teacher can make them and that they should be done in a fully mature hand. The more children see of these universal letter shapes the better they come to know them: they are their source and they set their standard.

(d) Writing and reading

It is perhaps strange that children should find no difficulty at all when in their story and picture books they encounter both the round, upright letter forms and their narrower, slightly sloping counterpart: there is no confusion for them here but they regard them as variations of the same alphabet. If their teacher writes a traditional hand her writing will be not unlike the slightly sloping variation, and so will their own. They may sometimes be heard to call this 'writing' and to call the upright form 'printing', and no one would say that they are very far wrong in doing so. Be that as it may, experience shows that any fears the teacher may have that the children's ability to read the printed word might be hindered, because they do not 'print' but 'write', are groundless. It would certainly seem that children's power to recognise, within the range of accepted variations, the essential shapes of the Roman alphabet is far greater than was once recognised.

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(e) How children use handwriting. Its arrangement upon the page

Unless young children are given ruled paper on which to write very few of them find any need of lines to guide them: they launch out fearlessly upon a plain sheet, often showing surprising, if unconscious, control. Moreover, since their writing may sometimes be in coloured crayons upon a large sheet of sugar paper, at other times be painted with a brush beneath a picture, or consist of pages in a diary closely written in black pencil, the lined sheet of writing paper is not often likely to meet their need. Further, children are quick to appreciate the arrangement of printing or of handwriting upon a page; they are used to the nice balance between the mass of type and the margins in the printed books they handle, and in what they themselves do they very naturally emulate a somewhat similar layout. Everyone knows that a piece of handwriting is clear and satisfying to read and look at to the extent that the disposition of the lines of writing upon the page, the spaces between them, and the proportions of the margins are harmonious. The experience of those teachers who have given consideration to such matters with children in infant schools undoubtedly shows that boys and girls readily accept and make their own the customary page arrangement that has come down to us through history. The formation of early habits of orderly planning of the page, varied to suit the work in hand and without the cramping restriction of arbitrary lines, is the best possible foundation for a child's written work.

(f) Achievement at the end of the infant school

As he grows confident in his skill a child takes pleasure in practising and using it. The remarkable development which we are seeing today in the scope, the quality, and the quantity of written work among six and seven year olds has been considered elsewhere. Many teachers find that 'print script' is not providing an adequate vehicle for this output and they are consequently turning again to traditional cursive handwriting. In some infant schools it is a common sight to see the oldest children absorbed in filling page after page with what they want to say, matching their thoughts with a swift flowing handwriting that helps rather than hinders them, that can be easily read, and that is good to look at, And in any schools where from the start a

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reasonable hand has been consistently taught and encouraged even the least able children will write it satisfactorily and will take pride in using it; and the more so if it is made clear to them that they are being taught something which is not merely of temporary use ultimately to be abandoned, but a hand that will continue to serve them always.

(a) A widening view of handwriting as a craft

If such a start has been made, the handwriting of most children during their first two years in the junior school need undergo little change. All by now will write a fully cursive hand that with regular use and practice can be expected steadily to mature. If the craft is regarded seriously they will want to practise it for its own sake, quite apart from using it for their day to day needs.

It is particularly on these occasions that children should see and perhaps even deliberately model their own handwriting upon first-rate examples. The teacher's own work, whether on the wall-board or in the books of individual boys and girls, will continue to be the greatest influence, but the more the teacher is able to broaden the children's own view by surrounding them with sound historical and contemporary hands the more likely are they to grow in sensitivity.

In many of our churches there are fine inscriptions on brass, slate and stone - particularly of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - that might (with permission) be rubbed and the impressions enjoyed in school. In this connection it should be noted that if a rubbing is taken with a white wax crayon or a candle, instead of the customary black heel-ball, and is afterwards washed over with ink or paint the result is a crisp 'positive' instead of the usual 'negative', and so the character of the original is more nearly preserved. Besides making rubbings it is possible for any school to collect good photographic reproductions of historical examples of fine handwriting; among advertisements there is pleasant contemporary work to be found; and a school may find it stimulating, too, to see an occasional display of the handwriting of another school, or of older pupils, or sometimes of the everyday hands of adults who respect the craft.

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(b) Teaching technique

As in the infant school, the teacher must continue to check such deviations from what might be regarded as standard handwriting as rob a child's work of clarity and flow. By eight or nine a child may be expected to have established his handwriting fairly firmly, though some letter forms or the writing of certain combinations of letters may still present difficulty and call for specific help and practice. A greater problem at this stage is to keep children's handwriting free from mannerisms; one child may borrow a spurious letter form or unconsciously copy some distortion or ugly mode of linking letters from another, or there may be a tendency to excessive angularity or the reverse; the fashion can spread with such alarming speed that the teacher may need to suppress it at once by deliberately teaching a satisfactory alternative and affording special practice in using it. On the whole, however, children show such good sense in these matters that apart from passing phases there is nothing to hinder a steady strengthening of their hold upon the craft.

It cannot be too strongly stressed that now as in the infant school children's handwriting needs to be seen as part of their whole experience of movement, rhythm and pattern. Certainly the deeper and more varied their experience the more readily do they seem to acquire skill and grace in writing a running hand: their sense of movement is not restricted to one field but enters all others. It is the practice in some schools during this stage to encourage children to paint patterns and letter shapes on a large scale with stiff, flat brushes on sheets of newspaper; they write such patterns as occur to them, employing the elliptical or pointed rhythms inherent in traditional calligraphy rather than the fat, open shapes of print. Primarily these patterns are enjoyed for their own sake, but at the same time their loosening effect and consequently their direct bearing upon children's approach to handwriting have significance.

Sometimes, instead of a brush, a wedge of stiff felt or matchbox wood may be used; this is cut like a broad lettering pen to give an edge measuring as much as half, three quarters, or even one inch, and is fitted into a holder. Such a tool inevitably creates shapes closely allied to those made with a quill or pen, producing lines in a great range of thicknesses. A reed or piece of cane, cut in the same way and dipped in ink or paint, gives pleasure to

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write and draw with too and, like the 'felt pen', surprises the child who wields it by the variety in the width and character of the lines it makes. There is also the satisfying process - with an element of magic in it for children - of making bold writing movements across a white page with a thick crayon of colourless wax, and then of flooding the area with colour and seeing the white, crisp, calligraphic pattern emerge. At this stage, too, a minority of children enjoy writing and pattern-making with a pencil of the kind expressly designed for lettering, the lead of which is flat and thus lends itself to being cut like a chisel. It produces writing of a scale so large that the essential elements in its construction cannot be overlooked; it flatters by its pen-like gradations from thin to thick but at the same time it reveals every weakness.

(c) The pen

Of all the new tools that a child in the junior school encounters probably none is quite as important to him as the pen. No two children are likely to be ready to write with it at the same time, and although for most this time is during their ninth year there are some who feel at home with it long before and others who are not able to use it competently until much later. Possibly the less said about the pen to children the better. If they have learnt to write fluently in pencil and have grown used to seeing their elders write with stiff, broad-edged pens they usually show an eagerness to learn the discipline of the tool themselves, and they take to the pen with an easy confidence that often confounds adults.

The chief need is that the pen offered to the child should be a workmanlike tool - one, in fact, that the teacher would wish to use. It must be one that resists pressure, since the marks it will make will never be the result of muscular pressure but will depend on the width of the end of the pen itself. This end will be cut like a chisel, and it may be cut square or oblique. Many right-handed children like one that is cut 'right oblique'; many left-handers are much happier with one that is cut in 'oblique reverse' fashion, that is to say, with the cut sloping away from right to left; and all are able to use one that is cut square. A number of good pens are now available, cut in these three different ways, and made in fine, medium and broad widths. Many schools find that the simple slip-on reservoirs that are

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provided are a great convenience, especially in the early stages of penmanship. The pen holder must be one that a child can take comfortably into his hand; a mere fluted stick is unsatisfactory. Thick, well-shaped holders can now be obtained.

The teacher usually prefers the convenience of a fountain pen and, apart from expense, it would be hard to find adequate reasons for not allowing a junior child to use one; and now that there are cheap and well designed fountain pens on the market many boys and girls do, in fact, procure and cherish their own. In any case it should be possible in every school for each child to have his own dip pen, for which he must be taught and expected to care.

To provide good writing ink is a much more difficult problem. Most teachers agree that the weak fluid that so often serves as ink in our schools has in part been responsible for much of the poor quality and lack of interest in handwriting. A child cannot be expected to respect a material that is inadequate for its purpose. Where schools are able to buy good ink they undoubtedly see an ample return for the expenditure.

Given a good pen and as good ink as can be afforded a child needs only to be watched to see that he holds his pen at a constant angle to the horizontal writing line; trouble does not arise unless he turns his pen from time to time. As long as he does not vary his pen-hold and his writing position the widths of the strokes that the pen makes can look after themselves. The pen is normally held so that its edge meets the writing line at an angle of about forty-five degrees; it is that angle which will produce a zigzag line where the up-strokes are fine and the down-strokes are as broad as the full width of the pen. Any writing position that ensures that a child produces such a line with ease is probably the best for him. Normally he will sit square to his desk, and he must be comfortable, so that he is never taut and rigid; he will hold his right elbow away from the side of his body, the shaft of his pen pointing towards his right fore-arm. If the teacher encounters difficulty in helping a left-handed child to find his best position for writing the best plan is to encourage the child to experiment for himself with his pen until he is able to write, without any muscular pressure, a pointed rhythm like that described. It is probable that in order to do so he will keep his left elbow close to his side, pointing his penholder somewhat towards the right of his body, and perhaps tending to turn his

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hand to the left from the wrist so as to sharpen the angle at which the pen meets the paper. It is important for the teacher to recognise that the child who naturally writes with his left hand is in no sense at a disadvantage and that no problem need arise. There will be many variations among children both in their writing position and in the way in which they hold the pen; what matters is that they should sit easily and hold it so that to use it gives them pleasure and that peculiar satisfaction that comes from the right use of any tool.

(d) Achievement at the end of the junior school

The use of a pen should never mean the abandonment of pencils and other writing materials. A full life during the final two years in the primary school will involve a child in a great bulk of handwriting for all manner of purposes. There will be the formal occasion - the programme, rhyme sheet, notice, or letter of invitation - that will call for some studied effort in both planning and execution, whether with brush, pencil, crayon or pen; there will be the child's personal notes and jottings in pencil, which none but he may see but which nevertheless need never degenerate into scribble; and there will be that greater body of work with the pen, in notebooks and on charts, the lists he makes, the anthologies he compiles, and all the personal expression of what he has himself seen and felt and remembered. A child's handwriting practice need never consist of scrappy, isolated exercises but can always have some real purpose.

The craft of handwriting, if it serves him well, should make this mass of writing a satisfying thing for him to do. The way he handles the pen, shapes the letters and words, and moves the pen rhythmically across the page should by now be almost second nature to him. The more experience he has of making his own books and folders, of planning the layout of their pages and filling them with his own writing and drawing, the more properly fastidious is he likely to become; he likes the look of a well designed page and he learns to discriminate in what he sees about him. Ten and eleven year olds who have had these opportunities, who have been brought up to regard handwriting as a part of our history and culture, are not easily taken in by the shoddy and meretricious; they bring to the books they handle, to the lettering and typography of the journals and advertisements they meet with daily, and no less to the everyday handwriting of

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which they see so much, a critical awareness and a growing care for good standards that are sometimes surprisingly mature for their years. They like to see a job well done and, in a peculiar way, handwriting exactly satisfies this desire.