24/03/2026
Cursive or Collins; Do we really need any?
If there's anything life has taught us all, it is that it takes a lot of courage to stand your ground on a matter of principle. For me, it was in a school setting where uniformity was treated as the ultimate goal.
I remember sitting in my classroom, staring at a blank page. I remember reading the look on the faces of my colleagues, screaming, "You're too rigid." But it wasn't me. It was the system that was about to kill my creativity for a so-called "perfect" penmanship.
The instruction was clear: Every letter had to follow the strict, sweeping loops of the school-mandated style. The 'Collins' script was the law. Our notebooks were expected to be identical—a sea of uniform, mirrored perfection.
But as I held my pen, I felt a strange resistance. To me, those forced loops weren't just letters; they were a cage. Every time I focused on the 'correct' slant of a 'd' or the 'perfect' curve of an 's,' a little spark of my original thought would vanish. I realized then that I was being taught to be a photocopier, not a creator. I refused to adopt it. Not out of defiance for its own sake, but because I knew that if I let them dictate how I wrote, I was giving them permission to dictate how I thought.
And seeing how fastidious my colleagues paid attention to it, I could read the empty thoughts that were hidden behind those perfect letters. Handwriting is a fingerprint—and I wasn't ready to give mine up.
To be fair, identical, flawless cursive or print looks beautiful in a marketing brochure. It looks disciplined. It looks "standard."
But at what cost?
While legibility is a non-negotiable skill, I feel that the obsession with a "specific" school-wide handwriting style often does more harm than good for our students. Here is why we need to stop chasing the "copybook" look and start focusing on the child:
Handwriting is a Fingerprint: A child’s handwriting is one of their first forms of self-expression. By forcing a specific slant or tail on every letter, we are unintentionally telling them that their unique "voice" on paper isn’t good enough.
The Cognitive Load Issue: For many children—especially those with developing fine motor skills—the mental energy spent trying to "draw" a specific style takes away from the energy they should be using to compose ideas. We want thinkers, not just calligraphers.
The Practicality Gap: In 2026, the world values speed, clarity, and digital literacy. A student who can write legibly and quickly is better prepared than one who can only produce a specific, slow-motion script that they will likely abandon by secondary school anyway.
The Verdict
Let’s stop judging a school’s quality by how uniform the students' notebooks look. True excellence isn't found in identical loops and lines; it’s found in the diversity of thought written inside those pages.
Let them write. Let it be clear. But let it be THEIRS.
