# 47 PENMANSHIP DIGNITY

Some days, and today is one of them, I pine for the large chunk of my life I wasted on what adults ensured me were things of ultimate importance when I was a kid. They swore I would need this stuff, that it would be valuable, that it could be recycled for useful purposes throughout my lifetime. But that was such a bunch of crap.

So I gave them so much time from the limited period of my youth. I am particularly chagrined about the time I dedicated to learning shorthand. Believe me nothing, not even a second language, is as difficult to learn as shorthand. It took the strictest dedication and perseverance. And to what purpose? Everyone promised me it was good and necessary. But I never used it and obviously never will.

And French. Three years of that study in order to be able to graduate from school. Too little time to learn French but at the same time a pursuit that extracted way too much time from my youth. And when I finally visited Montreal after more than twenty years, I found I couldn’t even figure out how to ask for a cup of coffee.

And then there was math. We had to be able to do the math. Algebra, cosines, multiplication, division. That was a big chunk out of my youth as well. And do I use it? Yeh, I use my elementary math. For simple stuff like how many dinner guests do I have so how many plates will I need? But other than that, like everyone else I whip out my calculator if any part of the equation is two digits or more.

And research. How much time I dedicated to research only to find that a few years later it had suddenly become fiction or so irrelevant, there was no practical use for it.

Even English. All that stuff about prepositions, verbs, nouns and pronouns. All that stuff did was make me angry and bitter in later years over those who disregarded the rules. Offended that those rules I so conscientiously tucked away were now altered or no longer mattered. I think I could have learned as much (or more) through reading the classics. But in order to be soundly versed in English grammar, I read my thick, cumbersome, English text twice in Grade nine – from cover to cover. That was time I could have spent reading something applicable to real life on an enduring and long-term basis.

But my Mother and my Father taught me relevant stuff. I guess what today’s society would call "Life skills" although I think there is much of this missing from today’s curriculum. My parents taught me honesty and integrity. How to nurture, care for, and empathize with others. My mother taught me how to care for babies, love God, bake, sew and garden. She taught me about morals and ethics and self-fulfillment. None of it a waste of time. All of it relevant and usable in every stage of life. No refuse here.

But going back to that refuse I learned in school, that I can’t even recycle, the biggest and most concentrated effort in school was good penmanship. Bah. What for? I’ve seen people write twice as fast though each one of the letters is improperly formed – starting at the bottom instead of the top or starting at the left instead of the write.

I mentioned this to MD (middle daughter) while whining about the robbery of great chunks of my youth. For the sake of good penmanship, which at the time seemed to be the be-all and end-all, I spent more time rewriting notes than studying notes. An endeavor that dramatically reduced my absorption of facts. To what purpose? Better marks at the time for 'year's work' but lower marks on exams. But ultimately, nothing practical on a long-term basis. After all, the only thing I write manually now is my own personal grocery list.

But MD insists that good penmanship is not a waste of time. "There is a great sense of worth and dignity that comes with good penmanship," she responded, "and whether you manually write anything or not, that sense stays with you for life." Is she right? I don’t know.

And so now, one final thought. We have become such a sophisticated society. So conscientious of waste and recycling. Our kitchen waste is labeled and sorted, sold, recycled and toxic stuff sealed and packed off to appropriately designated sites. We worry ourselves into a frenzy about sustainability of the purity of forests, trees, and lakes. We stand in our kitchen surveying bins of inanimate debris and constantly ask ourselves, ‘What else can I do with this stuff today to positively affect what happens tomorrow?’

So why, prey tell me, with this level of consciousness about these things, do we dump on our children, during the limited years of their youth, facts and ideologies that assassinate their purity and lap up their time but cannot be reused or recycled. There is no thought given to sorting garbage here. There is no repeated asking of one’s-self ‘What can I do today to positively affect this child’s future?’

When it comes to our children, we may not teach them, but we allow them, even encourage them, to waste great chunks of time lapping up ideologies that are equivalent to toxic and radioactive waste. And we give no thought to worthwhile conservation. Life Skills should have much to do with sustainability of things of importance, but the courses offered in school are sketchy. Nothing in there about empathy, charity, and integrity. Instead, much to-do about money and time management and balancing relationships in a way that glorifies the refuse that has been dumped there. And I’m not talking about English, French, Math, shorthand and penmanship either.