Name: 【TEDx】Why write? Penmanship for the 21st Century | Jake Weidmann | TEDxMileHigh
Uploaded: 2016-12-15T06:05:50.000Z
Duration: 16 min 21 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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It doesn't have a battery or a motherboard.

It doesn't require a service plan or a satellite orbiting the Earth

It's never smarter than you are, which I like.

or any distance higher than your own knee on a hard surface,

In fact, purchasing an insurance plan for it

would be, well, silly, and slightly ridiculous.

Yet, this simple pen has shaped the very world in which we live.

It has recorded the discoveries of scientists and inventors.

It has charted the course for nearly every explorer

who has braved the open ocean or explored the vast terrain.

and the doctrine of nearly every one of the world's religions

It has recorded the genius of composers and artists alike,

and more lovers have succumb at its tip than any of Cupid's arrows.

You see, more than a pen, this is a vital part of our humanity.

It is the facilitator to genius, the strongest weapon in war time,

the baton passed from one generation to the next,

the needle on the Richter scale of our hearts,

the value of this amazing tool hangs in the balance.

With 41 out of 50 states no longer requiring handwriting

to be a fundamental part of their curriculum,

we declare its value by what we teach or do not teach our children.

Yet I stand before you today not only as an advocate for the pen,

for while the hand empowers the pen, the pen empowers the man.

So empower yourselves today and write this down.

Use this and you will develop not one but three forms of literacy.

The first form of literacy is that of historical literacy.

You see, we have a vast chronology of handwriting

because man has been writing by hand for literally thousands of years.

In every culture, time period, and nation has had its own form of handwriting,

and they are each as unique as one individual's is to another's.

I could regale you with a vast background on each one of these forms,

but let me bring things a little closer to home

This is America's first style of penmanship

It is called Spencerian script, created by Platt Rogers Spencer

in the middle of the 19th century when he was only 13 years old.

one of the most dynamic forms of penmanship known to man

he also had a beautiful philosophy and even theology behind his handwriting.

You see, he believed that God, being the originator of all beauty,

so if Spencer could take his cues from nature,

then he would have the beauty of God in his own handwriting.

So, this is one of the pieces that I did,

but to show the place from which it was inspired.

He was inspired by the flowing lines he saw in the streams by his house,

the gentle lean of the wheat blowing in the wind,

and the rolling clouds over mountain peaks.

Spencer's form was not only genius in its appearance,

but it was a thing of brilliance in function as well.

the way that we typically write is we plant our palm on the side of our hand,

and we use a whole variety of horrible pen grips,

and we write using mainly finger movement.

This puts stress on all of the smallest joints, muscles, tendons,

and in the end, it results in what we know as writer's cramp.

Back in the day, Platt Rogers Spencer devised

that his handwriting should be written with the knuckles up towards the ceiling

using muscular movement, which is movement at the wrist,

and whole arm movement for those larger graceful curves,

so you could write all day long and never get writer's cramp.

There were others that followed in Spencer's pen-strokes.

regarded as the greatest ornamental penman who ever lived.

to bring us some of the most dynamic scripts known to man,

one of which is said to have inspired the Coca-Cola logo,

one of the longest standing, most dynamic logos of all times.

Or this man, F.B. Courtney, the pen wizard,

so-called because of the magic created at the tip of his pen.

It was said that Courtney, whenever he taught,

would go into a room and fill a chalkboard with museum-worthy flourishing and script,

and then, at the end, he would take a piece of chalk in each hand,

stand at the chalkboard and sign his name simultaneously in opposite directions

Now I know what you're saying, "Jake, this is all well and good,

but I'm afraid my penmanship has sailed and sunk."

with the natural facilities that these masters were."

and possibly make you feel worse about yourself.

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【TEDx】Why write? Penmanship for the 21st Century | Jake Weidmann | TEDxMileHigh

individual

stick

engage

applause