Teaching handwriting in a digital world

Rachel Pincus:

If you’ve ever watched a young child learn how to write or try to guide him or her, the process can be both comical and mildly frustrating. By the time they are formally taught how to write, some children seem to internalize some very arbitrary notions of what letters should look like, and these habits can be hard to break. Furthermore, less and less time is being spent on handwriting education at all, leaving some students to their own devices – even dyslexic children, who don’t pick up on handwriting skills as naturally.
Though most schools are unable to do anything about the visual environment of handwriting learners, the Castledown Primary School in East Sussex, England took a more proactive approach. “I’ve been frustrated with the lack of clarity of letters in fonts since my beginnings as a teacher,” headmaster Neil Small told Wired. decided to permanently change the look of school mailings and signage, commissioning a font from the Colophon Foundry that both looks fun and creates healthy habits for life.