Boo to pen licences :(

Our ethos as teachers was always to foster a love of learning and freedom when writing – getting all those lovely unimpeded words down while gradually feeding in spellings and an immersion in reading helping the spelling process naturally.  A joyous way to set children up for wanting to read and write, making it fun with schemes like the fabulous Talk4writing and celebrating amazingness. 

Then, comes the Pen Licence.

Suddenly, the focus is not on the importance of great writing, telling a story that engages or writing a real letter that is going to be read.  It’s about what it looks like.

Now, I’m excited with beautiful handwriting as an artform.  To be able to write in italics or use calligraphy is a skill which (I hope) will always wow. Illegible handwriting is so annoying, but it doesn’t have any bearing on intelligence (see doctors’) or the ability to write well.

Some children who are blessed with great fine motor skills and a love of the neat usually fly through the pen licence stage and honestly can’t see what the fuss is about.  For them, it’s another feather in their cap and a chance to shine.

Then there are the try harders, who with a little bit of concentration, can get there.  It makes their work generally look better and off they go.

Then there are the others.  A mix of boys whose fine motor skills are still developing, a group of children with ADHD who without medication, find the intensity and smallness of movement almost impossible to replicate and the already decided (probably by age 5) that they are useless at English, so what’s the point (see Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Autism). It’s just another stick to beat them with.  As if being still and writing wasn’t already a tough ask, there is now enormous pressure to make it look good, according to the often unknown criteria of their teacher or headteacher.  As time goes on, the pressure mounts, as more and more children get their licence, and, at a time when young children should be celebrating the maturity of their writing skills, they become obsessed with getting a licence, to the detriment of everything else.  

This blow in self esteem is totally unnecessary.  We see time and time again, that these children can be some of the most creative students, with amazing ideas and the ones who ‘think outside of the box’. Yet this creativity is stunted by the obsession with the licence. When they reach Year 11, they may well have a scribe, or be able to use a laptop, so what’s the point? 

So let’s celebrate those children who can write neatly for what it is – a skill that some of us possess and understand that the rest of us just need to be understood.  And for those who do not possess these skills, find the thing that they are good at, and praise them for that instead, glossing over the fact that they haven’t got the dying art of beautiful handwriting as one of their strengths, and move on.

SUE

Owner of Red Bird Tutoring