Penpersonship

The 8- and 9-year-olds answered assignments to define women’s liberation in Mission View and Lewis and Clark grade schools recently. In sometimes painful penpersonship, they scrawled their answers.

A year later, after spending a week in sixth grade at Alcott, Soil observed: Changes occurred which cannot be calculated by tabulating new test scores or by observing neater penpersonship. It takes more time than that to notice the subtle and remarkable ways in which a child’s mind grows and begins to reach out for a larger chunk of the world.

In Unity under your direction has added one more atrocity to its list of many. The worst to date had been the article of absurdity called “The Trek” by the penpersonship of a Shelley Hamilton. Now the editor deems it necessary to ostracize a whole congregation in an editorial. You see it was a decision of our congregation to return the pieces of paper called In Unity. […] William Coulter / Chairperson / Christian Education / MCCR - Houston

The Olympics will consist of teams of the “average American family (Mom, Dad, Buddy, and Sis),” with anyone playing whatever role they wish. The events will include duck and cover drills; spare door and shovel carrying; digging a hole, driving a car over it, and getting into the hole; automobile packing contests; possession of the best post-destruction documents; penpersonship of P.O. change of address forms, etc.

French composition, his mother tells him, is invaluable, since “one always has to write letters.” Antoine, as if to illustrate her claim, mimics her penpersonship in a note of excuse. He subsequently steals a typewriter so that the principal will not recognize his handwriting.

Writing. Handwriting activities are clearly focused on the improvement of penpersonship. Work might be done from or on the chalkboard, dittoes, worksheets, or with pencil and paper.

Holy Scribbles! Study Your Penpersonship […] Making ministers into penpersons promises to have other favorable long-term effects. The new Church Vocations Unit will need to study the theology of penpersonship. Committees on the Ministry will need to consider copying as a valid call.

Tracing exercises may be more effective if the stencils are coded to encourage a uniform sequence of motor patterns for each letter (e.g., for the letter b, first trace the vertical bar from top to bottom, then draw the circle). This is both because control develops through repetition and because it enhances the chances that the child will attend to the individual features of the letters and their interrelations. (Note that the basis of this recommendation is orthogonal to any puritanical notions about the hygiene of penpersonship. After the children have thoroughly learned the letters, it is okay if they want to write them in a mirror, with their toes, while standing on their heads.)