they use free-hand exercises, and they urge the student to write these forms rhythmically, swiftly. In penmanship the idea of rapid, continuous movement, as well as form, is kept before the student from the first lesson. Indeed there is an impetus given to the work by counting as the forms are made. The result is that the students who are taught penmanship in this way write rapidly, tirelessly, continuously, and with a marvelous degree of uniformity.
In shorthand teaching a very large percentage of teachers still adhere to the old-fashioned copybook way of teaching. It is the traditional way, just as it was for a long time the traditional way of teaching penmanship. These teachers compel their students to copy laboriously the shorthand forms in a circumscribed space, and instruct them to write them "slowly and carefully." The idea that the forms are to be written freely, or that the object
