maggie, I am in total agreement with you. This attitude drives me *nuts*.
I am frustrated right now with my DS5 K experience. He has done all the age appropriate preschool stuff for letter awareness. He knows his letters. But proper letter formation for speedy writing is *not* taught at our school until 1st grade.
While I am all for letting kids figure things out for themselves, to a certain extent, I don't think it is helpful in this case. Either they are too young to write, and their output should be written through a scribe, or they are not, and they should be taught the most efficient way to do it.
And this whole "do it the way you want" will *hide* problems, if there are any. His handwriting sucks? Don't worry, he'll figure it out. Three years latter: Oh, dysgraphia? Really? Maybe we could have started the OT earlier then?
Handwriting without tears for toddlers, here I come...
PS: I grew up in a school system where we were only taught cursive. It works fine. I find it way faster than printing, but that might be because I was never taught *that* skill.
