Compared to what ?

Can someone tell me how bad a hand writing should be before it can be called illegible ? Typically, when a teacher corrects a note book or an answer sheet, a badly written answer sheet can take twice as long to correct. As the hand writing degrades, teachers struggle to understand what is written. After all, the marks are to be given for the content alone – who cares if teacher takes twice as long in grading that paper. Most teachers evolve strategy to deal with badly written papers – they either correct them up-front or keep them pending till the end. 

Many urban schools have taken their eyes off the art of writing. We teach writing alphabets, then words and then cursive writing. Thereafter we do not enforce writing – it’s not in the syllabus. For many children down-hill journey starts from here. They adopt bad postures and use jell-pens. As the pressure to write lot and fast builds their hand writing degrades.

By the time children reach secondary school their hand-writing ranges from good (for a few) to ok, readable, bad and unreadable (for many). Badly written notes, illegible answer-sheets, poorly drawn diagrams now result in poor academic performance. But it’s too late.

It's hard to say when a teacher should give-up. However its easy to get consensus on a good hand writing. This is why we need to establish writing standards in schools. These standards help us, students and teachers, realize that one needs to be close to the standards. In absence of any such guidelines, we are on a slippery slope leading to illegibility.

Adopt fairly broad standards for good writing, push students to conform to them though not strictly. Instead of not having standards, not promoting it and then suffering from a range of illegible writings.