To Close the P or not to Close the P: A Question of Penmanship

I found this on a blog online but we definitely have one of these charts in my classroom!

Ever since I stumbled into this beautiful country 7 years ago during a high school trip, the French handwriting is something that has puzzled, entranced and eventually, converted me to it's dark side. Coming from a place where each individual is as different as the way they write their a's (like a or like an o with a stem), the indoctrination of an entire country in it's singular handwriting style is as perplexing as it is thought-provoking. To me, it seems as though the strictness in the formation of letters is representative to the freedom of individuality of each country; The US values individual freedoms and the beauty in diversity hence more individual writing styles whereas in France, there is more pressure to be the same and a general attitude of assimilating into one common culture which explains the rigorous writing rules.

While I can't speak for everyone in the US, I know that my handwriting has evolved so much during my short 23 years on this Earth. My handwriting (before coming back to the land of cheese) was a mixture of a bit of stiff cursive, curly print and looping l's and t's. My r's weren't uniform, constantly changing from print to cursive depending on the previous letter and my f's had become nothing more than 2 odd loops on top of one another. Each year of my childhood (which I count up through College lol) brought slight changes to my writing, partially becoming more lazy/wanting to strike out and wither be different or to mimic the cool kids writing. Now, after 7 months of assisting in a classroom where letter height and shape has been one of the most important things, it's lost touch with itself and has become a messy version of the French penmanship that my students who are 6 are able to master.

My students (again, they are 6 years old) are expected to write with a blue pen ALL OF THE TIME except to draw the equals sign in math and to draw in art, write IN CURSIVE perfect letters, perfectly shaped at the perfect height and write on lines that are difficult even for me to fit my letters on! They impress me so much with their discipline and their ability to remember exactly which letter get a supplementary loop (b,o,r,v, and w) and which letters are 3 spaces tall (b,f,h,k,l,p,q, and z). They snicker at my writing on the board and constantly ask me "What does zis say?" in regards to the letters I've written instead of the meaning of a phrase in a foreign language. They're penmanship is daunting and impressive yet scary at the same time. From the time they are 6 (when I met them in October of their first year of school CP, they basically knew what they were doing) until they die, their handwriting will be exactly the same.

No matter how much I've become accustomed to the meticulous French scribbles (which is basically a sacrilege in and of itself to call it scribbles), I will never become used to the way that the French write their P's. They don't close them. As in, a p is basically an n with a long stem. I vowed in the beginning of the year that I wouldn't let myself become influenced to not close my p's but here we are in April and I've realized that I've started to write my p's  à la française. Maybe I'm not as strong as I had imagined to withstand peer pressure (and when I say peer I definitely mean my 6 year olds...).

I'm not sure what my handwriting will look like tomorrow, in a couple of months or later in life but I do know that I feel blessed that I have the choice as to what it will look like and won't be chastized for the way that I make my 9's or my 7's. My personality is a little bit too wild to limit the number of spaces high my H can go or to limit my t being crossed only half of the way. I feel as though part of my soul bursts out of my pen and onto the paper (both in the words that I write and the way that they're written) and I wouldn't have it any other way.