The handwriting's on the wall

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

The College Board, on the SAT essay (really):

''Essays will be evaluated holistically. Each essay will be read for the total impression it creates, rather than for its individual aspects. Even with some errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, students can still get a top score on the essay. Handwriting will not count against students, but essay readers must be able to read handwriting in order to score student essays, so students should try to write legibly.''

One must shudder at what passes for handwriting among members of the younger generations.

One shudders at their basic technique and at what it produces. Instead of grasping writing instruments twixt thumb and index finger, with support from the middle finger, they seize their pencils in their fists, as though they were a stabbing implements. The pencil point protrudes between the middle and ring fingers – or even between the ring finger and pinky. There is no fine control of letters flowing from a relaxed hand. Rather there is a laborious arching of the wrist, a tiring exercise of the whole arm, right up to the shoulder.

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Usually the result can be read, but the idea of producing an entire essay this way is daunting in concept, exhausting in execution. This is why the College Board has taken pains to tell test takers not to worry about handwriting. Neatness is one more thing that doesn't count among today's educators.

Penmanship is not taught because teachers are too busy developing ''critical thinking skills.'' Further, it is not taught because most kids have computers, so essays are spell-checked, grammar-checked and neatly computer printed.

Thus it is unnecessary for students to know how to spell (the computer does it for them) or to understand grammar (the computer does it for them) or how to write well with pen or pencil.

The SAT (no longer called the Scholastic Aptitude Test) has eliminated the difficult analogies section (thanks to pressure from University of California numbskulls) and added an essay, the better to measure those ''critical thinking skills.''

But students are not allowed to use computers to write the SAT essay. Computers could be used to cheat, so everybody has to write in pencil. With no spell check, there will be spelling errors; with no grammar check, there will be grammar errors. With no computer printers, the students' must fall back on their dreadful handwriting. Sometimes, employing block letters, they can't finish on time.

Those scoring the tests are advised to look at the essays ''holistically,'' which, according to the Blind Partisan's Dictionary, means ''without regard to proper form, organization or coherence.''

Concerned about where all this might lead, we contacted College Board spokesman Howard Bashford, who earlier had explained the elimination of the SAT's analogies with the pithy summation: ''Analogies hard!''

''Where are we headed with students' handwriting?'' we asked.

''We're studying the problem,'' Bashford replied, ''and preliminary conclusions indicate that not only is essay writing under pressure stressful and physically exhausting, it is culturally biased.''

He explained that in a multi-cultural society, many students may not be familiar with handwriting as a means of expression.

''There are cultures with an oral tradition,'' he explained, ''but we can't record an auditorium full of kids talking into recorders.

''However, many of these cultures also have used highly sophisticated pictographic and hieroglyphic modes of expression. Eventually, we believe the College Board will be able to employ enough ethnographers to grade pictographic essays, which we should appreciate as alternatives to the Eurocentric concept of communication.''

''But won't that limit the amount of material students will be able to convey?'' we asked.

Bashford scoffed.

''As a society, we're already on our way to pictographic clarity,'' he smirked, ''You can put a whole lot of message into a single smiley face.''

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