Cursive writing. No longer relevant?

In a tech-savvy, texting-obsessive world, are thumbs and poking fingers at keyboards all we need to create a visual representation of our thoughts? I spend as much time as anyone on keyboards and on smart phones. But, allowing cursive writing to disappear is a shortsighted mistake.

As fallout of the No Child Left Behind law of 2001, and similar legislative standards, penmanship and cursive writing were not being tested. “Increasingly schools gear curricula to excel” at tests that grade the schools, ABC News summarized in an interview with Kathleen Wright of Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of education writing materials.

Since we teach to the test, it became easy to erase cursive out of the classroom with a big “PinkPearl” eraser. (Note the irony that the logo on the eraser is in cursive).

The iconic “PinkPearl” eraser. Identified with its cursive title and distinctive shape.

I taught English at the college level and have volunteered in elementary classrooms, and I “get” the struggle to fit everything into the academic day with all the (outrageous) administrative expectations we put on classroom teachers.

But, a comment to me while I was in the state archives of the Ohio Historical Society got me thinking about the entire topic. The comment was, “With kids not learning cursive, they have no idea what these historic documents say.” Cursive documents can appear like a pattern of undecipherable curls and loops, rather than representing words and thoughts.

My First Argument:

I remember how challenging it was for my younger son to learn the Roman alphabet. As a first-grader he brought me a sheet of his own hieroglyphics and told me he wanted to use his symbols for words and reading. He understood that characters stood for words, but he had a hard time with Roman characters. Eventually the fact that he thought differently paid off for him. Now as a filmmaker, he is able to process and solve problems either globally in a right-brained process, or with more literal linear left-brain thinking.

But his hieroglyphics posed questions for me. There was more to the significance of him bringing me his hieroglyphics than I could completely comprehend then or now.

I believe that in that example somewhere is one of the reasons why it is important to teach cursive. Maybe it is a “black swan” sort of concept. Understanding or being exposed to more sets of hieroglyphics introduces us to the notion that there are others alphabets out there: Roman is not the only alphabet. It introduces the possibility of protocols and systems that exist beyond your native 26-letter plan. To get the drift of the magnitude of this notion, Google “how many letters in the alphabet?”

But in the context of this discussion, what else is learned from reading, writing and specifically cursive writing? Having taught art to elementary kids for a dozen years, I know how fine motor skills for some youngsters is excruciating.

Some cursive text from a journal my grandfather carried in Italy as he traveled through Europe in 1900. He is discussing Renaissance art and the same paintings, sculpture and churches I visited more than 100 years later. Seeing the text in his own hand is very powerful. Can I absorb more of my grandfather’s personality by the energy and grace he conveys through his cursive handwriting?

Yet, the act of connecting the brain to the hand to physically create words taps into different parts of the brain than typing. Anyone with minimal typing skills can talk while typing. Yet, anyone who has spent time writing on a chalkboard while talking knows that it is more difficult. The process of connecting our hand with a tool and moving it physically to shape the letters is overruling our ability to simultaneously talk and think about different words than we are writing. Interestingly science concurs: Brain scans of students who were a “hands-on group” showed greater stimulation in the area of the brain associated with “language comprehension, motor-related processes and speech associated gestures,” than the group that had used a keyboard.

Anne Mangen associate professor at the University of Stavanger’s Reading Centre was quoted in the ABC story to say, “Handwriting seems, based on empirical evidence from neuroscience, to play a larger role in the visual recognition and learning of letters.”

I know, as an artist, I cannot be involved in serious painting and talking at the same time. Tapping into your right brain, which I theorize is done by using a tool in your hand and physically, muscularly creating a shape, (and not by typing) is an important physical connection to allow creative thinking to be nurtured.

There is sort of nirvana-like state  in creating art when you as the left-brain, analytical thinking person can disappear and there is an exquisite harmony of, I presume, the artistic right brain and the connection of your internal energy to the tool in your hand. You are not even aware that you are creating something. It is not conscious. It is intuitive and almost dreamlike. Time is suspended and the entire world consists of your subconscious and a connection between the tool that is making the marks. In my experience, at that point, my art is beyond my abilities—or truly beyond my conscious abilities. I have done a lot of typing and this has never happened at a keyboard.

For those who may be artistically inclined, the process of competently using a tool—crayon, pencil, pen, brush, or rasp, requires thousands of hours of eye and hand coordination. If we never put tools in hands—except for smart phones, screens and keyboards—will we lose our ability to create art?

This painting is part of my “Maladjusted Vegetables” Series of paintings depicting “vegetables with an attitude.” There was a great deal of alliteration involved in the little stories I made up about each of the vegetables featured. But in the context of this post, I created this alphabet–or some would say, this font– to augment the whimsical quality of the paintings. The “whirliness” of the cursive added to the silliness of the mood of the painting.

My Second Argument:

An entirely different argument raised for me by this question of cursive was: is cursive another language and therefore a natural way to introduce bilingualism to our students?

The study of other languages, allows us to step outside our assumptions and try on someone else’s culture—learn what they value, their sense of humor, their sense of courtesy, their idioms and slang. Additionally, to learn that there exist hundreds of alphabets that have no relation to the Roman alphabet can be an eye opener. Cursive in itself—similar to the sheet of hieroglyphics my son brought me so many years ago—can be an entry point to expanding one’s thinking to understand that these protocols of sticks and curves, characters and icons, are representations of words and concepts.

For example, it has always fascinated me how kids make the jump from looking at a stylized drawing of an apple, let’s say. And we repeatedly say “apple” in the A-B-C book to the child. Then we show her an apple to eat. Somehow the concept of the iconic representation of the flat, two-dimensional picture in a book is translated within her mind to equate to a three-dimensional delicious sweet fruit. Perhaps the apple that is put in her hand is even sliced up and without its skin, so it has virtually no relation to the visual of the apple in the book. But because we as humans can grasp these abstract thoughts, even tiny toddlers can allow these two vastly different concepts to merge into one word and the three-dimensional reality of a wonderful fruit. I think exposure to different alphabets creates another portal to abstract thinking. Where would math and science be without abstract thinking—let alone art! How could the Internet even exist—as well as smartphones?

Summary:

I don’t know what the long-term effects would be of eliminating cursive, and I’m not sure anyone does. But I recommend we continue to teach it. If not in schools then somewhere! I think it is valuable not only for hand-eye coordination and fine motor development but for the time it gives a child to let her mind wander and think creative thoughts. And for the grounding of the abstract concept that these different symbols represent the same words as the Roman alphabet. I’m an advocate for those who are attracted by it and find it faster, easier or more beautiful and for the ability to create a signature. But also to allow us to continue to decipher our founding documents, diaries and correspondence of our history.

What do you think about cursive?

For some great information on cursive and penmanship, and a wonderful video about the value of teachers and good writing, go to: http://www.zaner-bloser.com/about-us/history

Here’s a paragraph from the site about a developing “penman” in America: “In 1888, Charles Paxton Zaner founded the Zanerian College of Penmanship in Columbus, Ohio. The school’s curriculum included courses that prepared students for careers as penmen, who, at that time, wrote by hand most of the documents used by business and industry. The school also trained students to become teachers of penmanship, illustrators, engravers, and engrossers-specialists in the kind of ornamental writing used for diplomas and certificates.”

 

Courage and Creativity: Clashing on the Journey

Being an artist takes courage. To really get into the deep muck of being an artist you have to conquer your fears and allow yourself to be put out there—by your own doing. You have to grapple with challenging the conventions of normalcy. The creative process might involve the sometimes brutal slamming together of unknowing, wallowing, passion, apathy, indolence, depression, confusion, genius, inspiration, method, fear, nausea, light-headedness, and this insistent pounding from within to create something.

When you feel this drive in your belly to create something it pushes, pushes, pushes. Sometimes the process is less obnoxious—your muse might pop into your head with a quiet little ray of sunshine—it’s quieter, but not necessarily less insistent.

Once you acquiesce and give in to the insistence of this drive, you can be sucked into discussions you don’t want to have with yourself, and crammed into rooms in your head you don’t want to visit. And yet, there you are. It can pull you down a staircase and through a crowd of ideas that seem oh-so-easy-to-solve and past those off-the-shelf solutions and onto the bare stage of confronting the reality that you have no idea how you are going to solve this creative dilemma.

Confidence and lack of confidence show themselves with wild abandon in your work. Independent of your intentions, they flaunt themselves. It doesn’t work to fake it. There have been occasions in my painting career when I thought; Hmmm…I’ll stop here. I don’t know how to solve this now, but maybe in a year, I will. I knew I couldn’t fake it. I just had to wait it out.

It is weird, outrageous and courageous to stop; to pull the brush off the paper and step away. But when I did, a year later, the solution came to me, and I finished the piece.

Photo by Jason Chalmers, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonchalmers/4421517767/

Along those same lines, they say, the Leaning Tower of Pisa had a couple of “holding” patterns while artists and engineers (and city finances) determined how to solve the lean. During the construction in 1173, they figured they could just sort of straighten it out as they went, but it didn’t solve the problem.

(There’s sort of a weird subtle kind of curve to the outside edge of the tower as you can see where they attempted to accommodate the leaning).

They waited hundreds of years, until a new idea came along. Benito Mussolini wanted it straight and yet that effort actually made it worse. so again they waited to allow more engineering and more scholarship to devise a solution, The tower was closed in the 1990s with a precipitous lean; the risk was accelerating. They waited knowing that a better idea to solve it would eventually come along. An intricate plan was crafted in 1998 and was fussed with until almost a decade later. In 2007, the Tower was straightened to its 1838 position—a lean they feel comfortable with… for now.

Yet it is “problem solving,” patience, battles over disciplines and ideas, along with the courage to try something that produces the art. It may involve jumping the chasms of fear and managing the clashing of ideas to distill a solution—that’s how the creative process sometimes works. It is a process though, which I often find confuses people. It’s not just a random serious of sparks until a flames ignites. It’s more like childbirth. It may be painful and chaotic, but there is a journey through a tunnel and then you see daylight.

Another example of courageous problem solving is depicted in this video of Boston artist and sculpture, Janet Echelman giving a TED talk on her journey with her art. Her work is breathtakingly beautiful and almost stupefyingly astonishing.

She was confronted with a challenge to create art with unfamiliar materials, then her brain took her to places she had never intended to go, and she continued to problem solve until she created airy, ephemeral, gossamer mists of art—more like floating music than actual 3-dimensional art.

Janet Echelman's sculpture, Museum of the Center of Europe, Vilnius, Lithuania, Permanent Collection, completed August 1998. "Trying to hide with your tail in the air." http://www.florencelynchgallery.com/janetechelman.htm

As expressed in her TED talk, her courage to keep pressing through empowers me. Her humility humbles me. Her vision allows my mind to be carried away of her floating billowy art and to imagine once again that anything is possible.

 

Creativity and how to bludgeon it to death.

Quick update on Creativity. Just noticed that Emory University appointed the Dalai Lama as a Presidential Distinguished Professor. www.emory.edu/tweetpeace has a number of YouTube videos, etc. Some discuss the relationship between spirituality and creativity, some talk about the difference in creativity between the East and the West, and about how those differences express themselves in our art. Another point of view to broaden the discussion. 10/30/2010.

Up to our elbows in spiral notebooks is part of the national “back-to-school” mentality, but let’s consider what we are putting in our students’ heads instead of into the back-to-school shopping cart. Retail is a vital cog in our economic vitality, but the current buzz is that perhaps the most important component of the economic health for a culture is creativity. A Newsweek article, “The Creativity Crisis,” cited a study in which 1,500 CEO’s said creativity was the number one most important “leadership competency.”

This is right-side up. A dramatic view of the Milwaukee Art Museum taken from a table at the museum's restaurant. A soaring example of architectural creativity.

What is creativity? The article suggests a definition of creativity as: requiring the ability for “divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).”

Creativity as embodied in artist Billyo O'Donnel. En plein air painting in Siena, Italy, 2010.

So, how we are doing nurturing creativity in our classrooms and in our culture?

Newsweek reported that for the first time in the decades that it has been measured, American creativity is declining. A report by the Alliance for Childhood, documents that creative learning and the arts are being programmed out of schools starting as early as kindergarten (Edward Miller and Joan Almon, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School. Alliance for Childhood: College Park, 2009.)

The authors found that in some of today’s classrooms, children are so unfamiliar with open-ended creative play, that “as one kindergarten teacher put it, ‘If I give the children time to play, they don’t know what to do. They have no ideas of their own.’” (8) For me, it is almost too sobering to accept that children in our communities do not have a concept of play.

Sidewalk art by children in Minneapolis-St. Paul as part of the Walker Art Center, Drawing Club project.

The report summarizes, “Research shows that children who engage in complex forms of socio-dramatic play have greater language skills than nonplayers, better social skills, more empathy, more imagination, and more of the subtle capacity to know what others mean. They are less aggressive and show more self-control and higher levels of thinking. Animal research suggests that they have larger brains with more complex neurological structures than nonplayers.” (7). These seem to be qualities it would be helpful to nurture in the next generation on our fragile planet.

How much damage has “teaching to the test” done to the ability of our students to ask questions, think independently, look for novel solutions, or engage in discussions presenting various points of view? How much damage has the amount of time taken from the arts –and even recess—done to minimize the sparkle in the eyes of an elementary student? (Or an elementary teacher?)

Richard Florida in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, argues that creativity is the key economic and healthy-community resource of the future. Having an enclave of creative thinkers, or “creative class” as he calls it, will bring businesses, (with jobs), economic vitality and economic stability to a region. He writes that jobs don’t “come to a region.” They come to an area where creative people have nurtured an inspiring, creative community. (xix). “At all levels of government and even in the private sector, Americans have been cutting back crucial investment in creativity—in education, in research, in arts and culture—while pouring billions into low-return or no-return public projects like sports stadiums. …The real threat to American security is not terrorism, it’s that creative and talented people may stop wanting to come here.” (xxiv)

Independent student filmmaker in Chicago.

Visitors outside the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Boston, MA Fall 2009.

Consider for example that other countries are identifying creativity as a national priority:

-       In 2008, British secondary-school curricula was rewritten to focus on “idea-generation.”
-       The European Union identified 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation.
-       In China, “there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.” (These points are from the Newsweek article, “Creativity Crisis.”)

Think about it: it’s the creative members of a community that solve the problems, offer new opportunities, new products, new ways of using resources—the creative class offers the excitement and hope for the future. And it is a vital resource. Richard Florida says, “Creativity is not a tangible asset like mineral deposits that can be hoarded or fought over or even bought or sold. We must begin to think of creativity as a common good, like liberty or security. It is something essential that belongs to all of us, and that must always be fed, renewed and maintained—or else it will slip away.” (xxvi)

Music in the streets during a festival in the North End, Boston, MA.

It is linear thinking that confines creativity and innovation exclusively to art classes. These vital skills can be honed in many divergent forums. Although I am a huge advocate (naturally) of keeping the fine arts in all or our lives and in our curricula, perhaps, as the Newsweek article suggests it would be more palatable to introduce creativity in other areas of instruction, like in history or writing term papers. “Researchers say creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom. The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process. Scholars argue that current curriculum standards can still be met, if taught in a different way.” (Newsweek).

Creativity and imagination are vital in science too, not only in discovery but in disproving, challenging and proving theses. “The obvious role of imagination is in the context of discovery. Unimaginative scientists don’t produce radically new ideas. But even in science imagination plays a role in justification too. Experiment and calculation cannot do all its work.” (Timothy Williamson, New York Times: Opinionator, “Reclaiming the Imagination,” August 15, 2010.)

Another benefit to society of using creativity and imagination, as suggested by Florida, is that it goes beyond problem solving, “Along with problem solving…work may entail problem finding: not just building a better mousetrap, but noticing first that a better mousetrap would be a handy thing to have.” (69)

Are the students you know given:

• enough introduction to the arts?
• enough time to find their voices through creativity?
• enough time to process and problem solve through open-ended creative play or group problem solving?
• enough immersion in a curriculum built around thinking in order to develop divergent thinking and convergent thinking?


Painting (c) Jane M. Mason, "Bird with Aspirations." What aspirations for innovation do kids have that we are squashing?

Are students in your community supported for engaging in the arts such as the visual arts, music, theater, dance, film, performance art, or writing? Are opportunities available? Is creative thinking and problem solving important? Is it important that students have a chance to stretch their creative wings?

The video “Schools Kill Creativity,” from TED.com will challenge your concept of creativity and how we are bludgeoning it out of our educational systems.

Let’s get real about true intelligence, knowledge and the skills we need to survive and thrive. Problem solving with divergent and convergent thinking are way up at the top. I think our culture and our schools are bludgeoning creativity to death.

Think about creativity. Watch the video on TED.com and think about what we each can do to put the emphasis on the right side of the brain in our schools and in our society.

"Bird with Sensible Shoes." Watercolor painting by Jane M. Mason, (C). This series of bird paintings popped into my head. It's a whimsical example of how creativity can be a stress reliever as humor for the artist and the viewer-- another true benefit in the world today.

 

Where would we be without music or ways to record it?

Whether listening to Scott Joplin, Bolero, Pink, or Louis Armstrong—or all of them—where would we be without music and without the ability to record and re-play music for our pleasure?

A recent article in the New York Times announced that a fantastic collection of historical jazz recordings has been  acquired from the estate of William Savory. “The National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired the entire set of nearly 1,000 discs, made at the height of the swing era, and has begun digitizing recordings of inspired performances by Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday… and others that had been thought to be lost forever.” According to the article, some of the recordings were made by Savory on aluminum disks or even acetate. This is a far cry from the wax cylinders invented by Thomas Edison in the last quarter of the nineteenth-century.

This summer, Matt Musselman and his band, Grandpa Musselman and His Syncopators,

Grandpa Musselman and His Syncopators at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park

were asked by the Thomas Edison National Historic Park, New Jersey, to perform some ragtime music to celebrate Thomas Edison Day.

The event was to recreate what happens during the recording of music on wax cylinders and to save the performance for posterity in a historical format.

Wax cylinders waiting to for the performance to begin.

Grandpa Musselman and His Syncopators rocked out some of Scott Joplin’s ragtime compositions.

As the Syncopators performed, Musselman’s music was captured on yellow paraffin wax cylinders, exactly as it would have been done from about 1880-1915.

The sound is transferred by a stylus into the soft wax. The scratchy, “dusty” sounds we hear in old recordings, are said to be in part some of the wax filings that collect in the cylinder. Ideally, while the music is being performed and inscribed in the cylinder, an assistant blows the shavings away to eliminate the background noise.

Thomas Edison staff removing wax shavings

And, luckily for Musselman the Edison National Historic Site has promised to take the wax recording of his music, and give him back a digitized version. Grandpa Musselman and His Syncopators frequently perform in New York and this year have included tours to Dubai, Scandinavia—and the Thomas Edison National Historic Park—in their schedule.

Where would we be without the musicians and composers AND the scientists and inventors like Edison who found ways to preserve the music! (See also Wikipedia for info on wax cylinders.)

Quotation from: Larry Rohter, “Storied Trove of 1930s Jazz Is Acquired by Museum.” New York Times, ARTS. 16 Aug 2010.

 

Update to my Art and Fibanacci Post

This is a quick update to my post about the Fibonacci number series, math, geometry and the elegant relationship to art. The Science Museum of Minnesota will be launching a Special Exhibition, “Geometry Playground,” 10/15/2010.

Here’s the overview from the website: “The Geometry Playground exhibition will change the way you think about geometry, letting you use your hands, brain, and body to play with physical demonstrations of this often ‘textbook subject.’” So the Science Museum is adding another sensory experience to synthesize the concept of geometry;  a playful way to invite participation in experiencing geometry. Sounds like fun!

Regarding geometry and its relation to art, this week I presented a program on art and geometry at a third-grade summer-school class in St. Paul, MN. We talked about handmade quilts and the geometry involved in the design, artistry and construction of the quilts. The third-graders delighted in the surprise of seeing the squares, triangles, hexagons, and rectangles in the quilts. And since there were 16 students in the group, it was an ideal teaching opportunity to bring the concept of square numbers (i.e. 4 x 4) into the discussion. A beautiful way to bring geometry, math, art and an American craft to a group of students.

For images and other ideas for a project such as my quilt lesson, try the ArtsConnectEd project online, a joint venture of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center.

 

Fibonacci intersecting nature and art

For me, the archetypical example of the intersection of art and science (and math) is the sequence of numbers commonly called the “Fibonacci numbers.” By definition it is the sum of the previous two numbers in a series. So, it gets started with 0 and 1, and then picks up speed. Next is 1, then 2, then, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, etc. The sequence plays out visually in things we may encounter every day, like in the spin of the Milky Way or the magnitude of the increasing size in a chambered nautilus shell.

The following link is a gorgeous visual of the occurrence, beauty and magnificence of the diversity in nature that illustrates and validates the Fibonacci series. Click the link and then click on “Nature by the Numbers.” Mathematics in Sunflowers Shubha Bala, associate….

“Ideal proportion” and the geometry of visually pleasing balance is also suggested by the Fibonacci series. It correlates to how we perceive things that are beautiful and balanced. For example, Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, demonstrates the proportions of the human body that (at least at that time in the 15th Century) were considered ideal.

The illustration of a fellow from Tuscany (who knows he may have been from Florence, or da Vinci’s town, Vinci) presents a drawing of someone who was well proportioned and elegantly composed within a circle. Here da Vinci, who was an inventor and engineer as well as an artist, created an illustration that was not only a masterful expression of the human body, but also suggests a parallel and masterful design of a balanced and harmonious universe.

Traditionally-trained artists–even today–spend plenty of time in drawing classes learning about proportion and balance, and in working within the divisions, ratios and “chambers” of a visual composition. They may not know that a primary source for what seems pleasing to a Western sensibility is carried forward by the repetition of the concepts portrayed by da Vinci in the geometry and balance of Vitruvian Man.

And now, perhaps the underlying sense of what is balanced and pleasing to the eye has been permanently ingrained in us, as quantified by us via the Fibonacci series, and illustrated by da Vinci. Yet, it still makes us consider the hidden mathematical sequences in nature and therefore the predictability in the patterns of the seeds growing in sunflowers… it is so awe-inspiring that it’s calming and invigorating at the same time.

Image of Vitruvian Man from Wikimedia Commons, a freely licensed media file depository, licensed through Creative Commons. Accessed June 14, 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Da_Vinci_Vitruve_Luc_Viatour.jpg&gt;

 

Art in the Intersection of Life

Art in the Center is a blog that considers the intersection of art with life, as well as supporting my core belief that art belongs at the center of everyone’s life.  Creation is how we got here and through our creativity and innovation, human life on earth will produce art, solve problems, and hopefully not only survive but thrive. I am fascinated by the intersection of art and science. I embrace a very broad definition of art—and why not?