Handwriting

The photo pictured above captures the amazing handwriting of one of college students. This is a quiz the had to complete this week. Notice, please, the undercipherable words, which are somewhat due to spelling but mostly to symbols that do not represent letters. The overlapping words at the top lend to the overall essence of the quiz. There is also a sense of dizziness where the student does not pay atention to the horizon and kind of slips of to one side or the other. In his other work he likes to start each line further to the right than the line before.

What can I say about this? First, I guess, is that this is not uncommon from a certain type of student. I'm not quite sure what that type is - it's not all of my male students; it's not all of my Muslim students; it's not all of my African students, but it is a combination of the these elements plus something else I can't put my finger on - possibly parental education, or experience in a job that does not require writing? It's amazing that someone of college age, in college, can write this way. It seems like a simple basic skill to be able to separate letters appropriately, then separate words, then get everything going in the same direction. The older women from Mexico who were not previously educated have at least these skills down.

The most difficult part of dealing with this type of problem is that the students in question do not seem to grasp that it is a problem. They don't see that their writing is different from their average classmate. They often choose to handwrite assignments instead of type (and even their typed assignments reflect these errors somehow - their spacing makes no sense, their capitolization is random, and their spelling is not even phonetic. I want to go to one of their childhood schools and learn the completely different knowledge that they have. It must be good.