Learning to write

I found these, saved from when I was a little younger. When I was in Junior school we were taught italic writing, using italic pen nibs. This was all very nice, we used to win prizes in handwriting competitions, but we were never taught how to write at speed, which we needed when we went to secondary school. Adapting was very difficult. 

Whilst I was in London on Monday, I had the chance to go to the British Library and an exhibition about Writing. This traced the history of writing from its very beginnings and included aspects, such as how writing implements developed (emhowl would have loved the section on fountain pens and ink) and how children learn to write. Writing is a difficult skill to teach, as we who have learnt take it for granted - attempting to write with the less dominant hand gives one some idea of how difficult it is to learn the movements needed to form letters. 

The exhibition finished with some speculation about the future of writing. As computers etc. take away the need to write, will there still be handwriting in 50 years time?