About a special child and handwriting

I was reading the newspaper when I was touched by the plight of an seven-year-old girl, Ooi Zhao Qian, who entered primary 1 this year. She is a special girl because she had no limbs when she was born. Yet she was trained by her mother to write with her right leg which has only four toes. Her uncle had made a custom-made wheelchair for her so that she can move around in school.

The newspaper report also showed her handwriting of her name. It is very neatly written. When it comes to handwriting I am very angry at the poor handwriting of my pupils especially the boys. The a's are not closed, the e's has no space as if c is intended and the n's look like h's. All these poor handwriting makes reading their essays more like deciphering what they are writing rather than knowing exactly when they have written.

The Chinese pride themselves in writing properly and forcefully. There are even kungfu exponents who practise writing as a form of kungfu. This happens when they write on the rocks or on papers with Chinese brushes.

Writing properly is a form of discipline and a way of showing that we want to do a job properly. Poor handwriting makes lives of teachers horrible.

Let us write properly if there is still a need to write now that we key in words with our keyboards.