Teaching script
In the sense of a guideline or a prototype, it supports the demanding process of developing handwriting skills and abilities in a visual and illustrative way.
Teaching scripts are represented as alphabets (upper and lower case letters), which are generally accompanied by numbers and punctuation marks.
Historically, the older approach was to provide students with a beautiful, readable, and efficient cursive as a standard script for learning.
In the first third of the 20th century, type teachers such as Rudolf von Larisch[1] and Ludwig Sütterlin[1] changed this traditional approach by defining the teaching script as a starting point instead of a target model.
[citation needed] In 1916, the writing pedagogue Fritz Kuhlmann took an even more far-reaching approach: the students should develop an individual handwriting from block letters rather than from a teaching cursive.
Such an order is aimed at combining the parts into an easily comprehensible whole and is an essential prerequisite for the legibility of the scripts.
This development was continued by the Nuremberg master scribe Johann Neudörffer (1497–1563), who had played a decisive role in the creation of Fraktur.
With the spread of the school system from the 16th century onwards, reading and writing skills became commonplace among ever more diverse classes.
In 1714, a decree in Prussia for the first time introduced a standard script, which is said to go back to the Berlin teacher Hilmar Curas (Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium).
The Berlin graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin (1865–1917) changed this typical style of the German Kurrent script.
He relied entirely on the concept of the teaching script – which as such need be neither beautiful nor efficient, but above all clear and simple – as well as the monoline nib for beginners.
He developed his own typeface, which stood vertically on the line, divided ascenders, corpus size and descenders in a 1:1:1 ratio, and had geometric-looking spikes and curls.
In the Third Reich, the Nazi Party Gauleiter Hans Schemm introduced his own teaching script in Bavaria in 1933: the Bavarian "Volksschrift".
The Lateinische Ausgangsschrift (LA) was developed by the Iserlohner Schreibkreis from the Deutsche Normalschrift and was introduced on 4 November 1953 by the decree of the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs as the school teaching script in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a teaching script was initially used which was essentially the same as the LA, with only minor changes such as the letter t or the omission of the horizontal line of the Z.
Since 2011, interested schools in some federal states have been testing a new concept for teaching writing with the Grundschrift, which was developed by a group of experts on behalf of the Grundschulverband.
The "Richtformen 1924" were declared binding by the Vienna City School Board, while the other provinces used their own teaching scripts before and also afterwards, in part.
The "Österreichische Schulschrift" adopted in 1967/1970 largely followed the Austrian variant of the Lateinische Ausgangsschrift, simplifying the loop to a small arc and a second pointed reversal on the baseline.
In 2006, Hans Eduard Meier developed the no-frills Deutschschweizer Basisschrift, which is similar to the Deutsche Grundschrift, and proposed it as a contemporary alternative.
It was then replaced by the English round hand, a derivative of the ronde script, more suited to metal pointed nibs that had become prevalent.
From 2013 onwards, for teaching purposes, the French Ministry of National Education recommends the modèles d'écriture scolaire A and B [fr], which look more similar to printed scripts.
In 1975, after a period of research and experimentation, the board introduced the Skolöverstyrelsestilen (SÖ-stilen), which was designed by calligrapher Kerstin Anckers and based on Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi's chancery cursive.
However, the copperplate script continued to be taught in state-funded schools because it was required for clerks in commercial and professional offices.
[7] An important influence in the teaching of handwriting in the 20th century was Marion Richardson (1892-1946), a school inspector for the London County Council, who devised a simple cursive script intended to allow children to develop their own style.
While many schools are opting to teach Continuous Cursive throughout the year groups, often starting in Reception, critics have argued that conjoined writing styles leave many children struggling with the high level of gross and fine motor coordination required.
[13] Around 1888, the award-winning Palmer Method was developed as a simplification of Spencerian, which was supposed to be simpler and faster and soon became the most popular handwriting system.
The character shapes to be taught are defined in the Hong Kong Chinese Lexical Lists for Primary Learning (香港小學學習字詞表), published by the Regional Government Office for Education in 2009.
