River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1883-08-02
WAITING.
BY 7. j. MCANDREw.

This common school branch should
be made speciality during the sum-
mer term. Reasons, there is more
time to devote to writing at this sea-
son than in winter, because there are
fewer pupils and fewer advanced
classes; again, as the majority of the
pupils are young, this is the time that
their muscles are most susceptible to
training.
Having thus introduced my hobby,
| shall now proceed to give few
crude thoughts on the subject; hoping
that it may benefit some of the young
teachers, (yOung in the profession,
mean who are launching out OH their
pedagogical careers for the first time.
Before any one can hope to become
good penman he must acquire a
good, easy position of the body. and
to keep the proper position is indis-
penSable. This, then, must be the
work of the teacher to make it imper-
ative, that the pupil take the correct
position, and keep that position while
he is practicing. The position that
seems to me the best, is the s'front
position at the desk, the paper being
parallel with the right forearm. AS
to the manner of holding the pen
will say but little: the hand should
glide upon the nails of the third and
fourth fingers from one letter, or
word, to another.
Considerable time should be devoted
to movement exercises, especially the
muscular movement should be cult
waited, as this is the movement that
we should use more than either of the
others; and, besides, we will acquire
enough of the finger movement with.
out great deal of practice; indeed,
| this is the movement that we Use too
much.
The time devoted to writing, in most
country schools is not enough to Sc
cure good results. One-half hour is
not any too much time to take for this
branch. The teacher who can write
a good hand has one of the chief re-
| quisites for successfully teaching the
art. What | mean is this,-that the
| copy should be written by the teacher
instead of using "copy-plate" copies.
| shall try to give an outline of the
method used in his writing class, of a
| very superior teacher of writing, Prof.
Ii. G.. Carver. penman i'll La Crosse
| Business College. The time for wri-
ting is one hour, the first hour in the
morning; he gives some movement
exercise, to be practiced, such rs, di-
| rect oval, reverse oval, or some other
movement, to get freedom of move
ment; he then passes around copy
slips, prepared the day previous, and
consisting of one or more words, one
or two capital letters, and sometimes
a number. After the pupils have
written about one-half hour the copy
is written upon the board and all ana
| lyze the letters in it, in concert. This
| work acts as rest for the muscles
! The Prof. often writes the word or
the board to show the faults of some
of the pupils; then the pupils tell What
is wrong; thus their power of criticism
is cultivated which is a very important
factor in learning to write.
OF course it is not customary to tall
about writing without bringing into
use the word PRACTICE. Now
shall not object to the word if you viii
allow me to modify it by the adjective
intelligent, - intelligent practice i:
what is needed.
In writing we should keep in mine
the idea represented by the following
six words beginning with s:-size
shape, shade, slant, space. and speed.