TYPEWRITERS IN KINDERGARTENS, American children may learn to use typewriters
before they learn handwriting, as a consequence of experiments now under way in a number of American schools. The experiments began with the recognition by psychologists that children in kindergarten classes had difficulty in mastering the complex muscular movements involved in learning to write script. Some letters, the psychologists observed, require as many as eight muscular movements before they are perfectly formed by hand. But by means of a typewriter a perfect letter may be made with a single finger movement. Why not save time and muscular effort by installing portable typewriters in kindergarten, rooms, leaving the learning of handwriting until the pupils are older ? Typewriters were promptly installed and, according to the Federal Educational Authori- ties, with such promising results that the system of teaching children to write may soon be " revolutionized." The children, it seems, took to the typewriters immediately, learned to operate them without difficulty, and showed a literary productivity previously unsuspected.
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