Education: Nation of Scrawlers

There was no getting around it: in the U.S., handwriting was becoming a lost art.

It was a day of typewriters, shorthand, telephones and Dictaphones; "Don't Write —Telegraph" was a well-worked slogan, and undecipherable signatures passed for "character" in great & small (see cut).

Last week, an association of stationery manufacturers, with a selfish interest in writing, made public a poll of 600 teachers across the U.S. It was no surprise to them when 70% of the replies agreed that either the nation's penmanship was getting no better, or it was getting worse. In many schools, classes in penmanship had been abolished; in...