CURSIVE WRITING COULD BE DYING ART : EDUCATORS SEE STERLING PENMANSHIP FADING FAST IN COMPUTER AGE.

Byline: Stephen Lee Chicago Tribune 

In the 19th century, teachers regularly debated the precise angle that one should hold a pen to create the most pleasing cursive writing. Penmanship was considered not only an essential skill of everyday life but a small barometer of breeding and character.

Certainly John Hancock would have made an impression on the Declaration of Independence with the size of his signature, but perhaps not his indelible mark on history, were it not for the flourish of that J and H.

But since the early 20th century, a host of factors - including budget cuts, curriculum changes and cultural influences - have gradually challenged the time-honored art of penmanship in schools. And now, in the last decade or so, the computer has accelerated the demise as kids as young as kindergarten age learn to write on electronic keyboards.

Meanwhile, handwriting has gone from being a separate subject to something usually covered only in third grade and then folded into other subjects. Once taught by specially trained experts whose own penmanship was considered sterling, handwriting often is learned through handouts and the alphabet cards above the chalkboard.

The result is that some pupils are reaching junior high school with handwriting that is virtually illegible, teachers say - a hodgepodge of styles not reflecting any accepted method.

All of this has made some education officials wonder whether, in a world in which handwritten letters are fading and most business is conducted electronically, the next step of evolution is for cursive writing to be phased out in favor of printing - or ``manuscript,'' as it is known - and the keyboard. Some even question whether handwriting will be taught everywhere in 10 years.

``Except for your signature on a check, we don't need cursive. You can certainly print as legibly or even more legibly,'' said Karl Koenke, an associate education professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ``We now have three things in the curriculum: printing, cursive and keyboard. If I were going to eliminate something, I would eliminate cursive.''

Yet other education experts, while admitting that good handwriting is not as critical as it once was, are taking steps to make sure that it does not get left in the dust of the Information Superhighway. And handwriting methods are adapting to the times, becoming less fancy but, to use computer language, more user-friendly.

``Handwriting has taken a big beating because of computers and keyboards,'' sighed Donald Thurber, a Michigan teacher who created the popular D'Nealian method of manuscript and cursive writing in the late 1970s.

He might be heartened by the scene in Elizabeth Taglieri's third-grade class in Lake Zurich, Ill. Pupils learn how to use the computer one morning a week, and many think typing up their papers is easier than writing them out by hand. But every other morning, they still pull out their chewed-up No. 2 pencils, hunch over their desks and copy down words and sentences in their best cursive handwriting.

``Computers are great, but there's always going to be a need for handwriting,'' said Taglieri, a teacher at the Whitney Elementary School.

Garvey Elementary School on Chicago's South Side adopted a new cursive handwriting program last fall after teachers became distressed that pupils were learning the former method so poorly that they were making up their own ways of writing by the sixth grade.

Most cursive systems are becoming faster to learn and are losing the traditional flourishes and loops to get down to what might be considered fighting weight: faster, simpler, better able to keep up with keyboards and printers.

``We've changed with the times, knowing that people don't have time for a lot of flourishes,'' said Richard Northrup of the Columbus, Ohio-based Zaner-Bloser Co., which revised its alphabet last year. ``Teachers really did want it simpler.''

Purists scoff at these modern alphabets and methods, but the history of cursive handwriting has been one of seeking faster and arguably more legible methods of communicating on paper.

Handwritten letters have lost ground to phone calls, word-processed documents, faxes and electronic mail. Keyboards and shorthand make up many adults' experience with the written word rather than the cursive they once learned, and they either print or type when they want to ensure legibility. There may be more and more written communication and information, but it's done less and less in cursive writing.

Children begin learning how to type even as they learn how to print in first grade. When they do write by hand in class or at home, they are usually required to do it in cursive after the third grade, but they also are producing more and more drafts and final papers on their home computers or in the school library.

Tradition, perhaps more than anything, has kept cursive handwriting as part of the elementary school curriculum. It is still viewed by teachers and pupils as a sign of maturity and a necessary part of developing and expressing style and personality.

It also is allegedly faster than printing and more personal and attractive than word processing, teachers and handwriting experts say. There also are more standardized achievement and admissions tests requiring a handwritten essay, a development that should scare some students into more legible handwriting.

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Photo: (1) Kerry Hughes, a third-grader at Whitney School i n Lake Zurich, Ill., discovers that practicing cursive writing can be a hair-pulling experience.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service