I've taught upper division visual design/thinking classes for 32 years. I discovered a noticeable decline in hand skills as well as visual problem solving skills in my student in the past 5 years. It really showed in the applications of continuous line drawing exercises. They just could not keep a controlled line going. This lead me to ask them about cursive writing in public schools. Even though the bulk of my students go to California schools, they only focus on cursive for a short period and now most never touch it again. On the other hand my Asian foreign students all have beautiful line quality and the connected skills, after years of writing out characters using varying line weights. If anything, it would be good if actual calligraphy was a continuing part of every student's art class curriculum in school and viewed more as a creative experience they might continue with. I also found that I could use their cursive signatures in repetitive exercises to help increase student skills in continuous line control since most of them still retain that muscle memory ...
I've taught upper division visual design/thinking classes for 32 years. I discovered a noticeable decline in hand skills as well as visual problem solving skills in my student in the past 5 years. It really showed in the applications of continuous line drawing exercises. They just could not keep a controlled line going. This lead me to ask them about cursive writing in public schools. Even though the bulk of my students go to California schools, they only focus on cursive for a short period and now most never touch it again. On the other hand my Asian foreign students all have beautiful line quality and the connected skills, after years of writing out characters using varying line weights. If anything, it would be good if actual calligraphy was a continuing part of every student's art class curriculum in school and viewed more as a creative experience they might continue with. I also found that I could use their cursive signatures in repetitive exercises to help increase student skills in continuous line control since most of them still retain that muscle memory ...