Chicken Scratches

52 Weeks of Steiner – Week 23  (This is part of a weekly serial started on Michaelmas 2023. To see the other entries, please see the post linked HERE and scroll down to the bottom for individual links)

I do not think that any improvement can be brought about in handwriting through attempting to make the children write better. Your efforts must be directed to making them more skillful in the drawing of forms.”

Rudolf Steiner
Faculty Meetings, June 14, 1920
via Handwork Indications

I was just lamenting quietly to myself about MY OWN handwriting. It has become sloppy and scrawled quickly without much thought to the fact that I will, indeed, need to decode what I wrote at a later date! Today, as I was going over my notes from my handwork training weekend, I realized I need to get to work!

So what did Steiner recommend to help bad handwriting?

He actually recommended working with forms and the feet! He suggested drawing forms, like circles, semi-circles and triangles, using a pencil between the big and second toe, or even taking it outdoors and using a stick to do the same thing. He also recommended picking a cloth up with the toes. Regular form drawing with the hands is helpful too, but wouldn’t the novelty of using feet be so much fun?

This is really important to remember when working with children. Many of the supports we can create for children are not what you’d think they are. Our first impulse is to adjust their pencil grip or have them write more slowly, tell them to do their best work (which if they already are doing their best work is just horrible for them to hear), and find ways for them to practice more. Trying something different is akin to letting it sleep. It allows some distance and rest, while focusing on something quite different that will still be supportive. As for using feet, there has been so much science about using feet to strengthen hand movements. Using one’s feet is even used with stroke patients to help gain better control of their hands.

But back to me and my horrible handwriting.

In another lecture, Overcoming Nervousness, Steiner discusses how it is good exercise to change your handwriting because it is something we do out of habit most of the time.

The point here is that when a man consciously changes his handwriting, he is obliged to pay attention to, and to bring the innermost core of his being into connection with what he is doing. The etheric body is strengthened in this way and the person is made healthier.

It would not be a bad idea to introduce such exercises systematically into the classroom to strengthen the etheric body even in childhood. But, even though anthroposophy can give such pedagogical advice, it will doubtless be a long time before leading educators will consider it anything but foolish. Nevertheless, suppose that children were first taught to write a particular style of penmanship and after a few years were expected to acquire an entirely different character in their handwriting. The change, and the conscious attention it would involve, would result in a remarkable strengthening of the etheric body…

It is an excellent accomplishment to be able to do quite differently the things we do out of habit. Nowadays, people only alter their handwriting for unlawful purposes, but I am not advocating a school of forgery when I suggest that if one changes one’s handwriting honestly, it will help to consolidate one’s etheric body. The point is that it is good to be able to do quite differently on occasion the things we do habitually. This does not mean that we need become fanatical about the indifferent use of our right and left hands. If a man, however, is occasionally able to do with his left hand what he commonly does with the right, he will strengthen the control of his astral over his etheric body.

Rudolf Steiner
Overcoming Nervousness, GA 143

My first instinct when I started to lament was that I must make time to sit down and work on my handwriting (because it is totally ingrained in my learning reflexes that if you aren’t skilled at something the answer must be to do it more!), but I think I’ll start with a return to form drawing followed by some foot work and then work on trying a new style of handwriting!

I’ll keep you posted on how it is going!

Until next time,
Marina