The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • E3

Orlando Sentinel: PRODUCT: LIV DESK: LIV DATE: 03-26-2003 EDITION: FLA ZONE: FLA PAGE: E3.0 DEADLINE: 15.3 OP: adunlap COMPOSETIME: 17.06 CMYK Orlando Sentinel WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2003 E3 Reports offer very limited viewpoints Critics say skill eads to problems REPORTING FROM El CURSIVE FROM El Surprising as Sean's story may sound, it probably isn't rare. In our nation's public schools, including those in Central Florida, consistent, formal handwriting instruction especially lessons in cursive has largely gone the way of the slide rule. Critics blame shifts in education theory, reliance on computers, shrinking education budgets, and pressures to prep pupils for state tests. "Today's trendy educators view handwriting as an archaic relic of a teacher-centered, drill-based classroom," says Marty Rochester, author of Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids, and the Attack on Excellence. Truth is, handwriting hasn't sparked the fireworks that mark the combustible debate of whole language versus phonics.

But critics warn the writing is on the wall. Ignoring handwriting instruction, they say, retards fine motor coordination, produces less-detail-oriented children, and augurs poorly for excellence in core subjects. "We are promoting illiteracy," Rochester says. "The attack on handwriting represents an attack on the very notion of rigor, care, precision and neatness we should be trying to imbue in our K-12 students." ANGELA PETERSONORLANDO SENTINEL Honing skills. Second-graders trace P's in the air at St.

James. A computer program helps students follow along. two days, the war has become quite ferocious, but you don't see that ferocity in the embedded reports. They either aren't seeing it or aren't allowed to report or they're maybe a little farther back." The comment echoes Rumsfeld's view that the reports are "slices of the war" from the "particularized perspective" of the journalist. CNN correspondent Walter Rodgers has delivered mesmerizing live shots from inside Iraq.

On Tuesday morning, he showed a rolling convoy, three Iraqi prisoners and a dense sandstorm as the Army's 7th Cavalry moved toward Baghdad. "This is a difficult journalistic assignment," he said by phone from southern Iraq last week. "You have to agree in advance to self-censorship. It's not a difficult decision, talking about your life and the lives of a lot of good, young men. The Army lays it all out for you.

Then you suddenly realize, 'I have this fantastic story. I have to be extra I don't want to compromise my company and the lives of people around me." But, he adds, "I try very hard not to express personal views on the air." The colonel in charge of the unit shared the plan of attack and said it was embargoed, Rodgers adds. "There are objective points along the way," he says. "When the objective is attained, you can report 'this was the Kalb has found the overall coverage to be terrific, but he has one qualm. "There are occasions when sympathetic reporting edges over the line and becomes patriotic boosterism, sort of losing the edge of professionalism, and that is bothersome," he says.

Steele said journalists could over-identify with the military and be less independent in their reporting. He hasn't seen that, but he has heard reporters use "us" and "we" in describing the units they are covering, and says they need to be careful. "It can give the implication the journalists are covering the war on behalf of what we'd call 'the home he says. "There are many positions on the war. If viewers or readers see us as championing the war or championing the antiwar movement, our credibility will be seriously eroded." Steele warns that correspondents should not tell their stories in "such a concrete fashion" that viewers might be misled.

"Truth is always elusive," he says. "It's exceptionally elusive during wartime." Traveling with troops will test journalists' professional discipline, says Ben Bagdikian, former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. "A really good journalist is able to make workable relations with all kinds of people but never forgets what the point of the story ought to be, regardless of personalities involved," he says. The networks have generally outlined the official story on the war, Bagdikian says. "What they have tended to emphasize is what their new technology permits," he says.

"They're able to transmit an immediate picture." Bagdikian sees an advantage in that. "The public sees war is not a chess game and a Rumsfeld press conference," he says. "The disadvantage is it's a snapshot that's only a snapshot. Because it's dramatic footage, it's more likely the larger picture will be lost the larger picture being what's happening to the strategy of the war, the overall conduct and goals of the war. One of the things the public needs to talk about is what happens after Saddam Hussein's power structure is defeated." Television has offered layer after layer of partial reports, Rosenstiel says, and it's hard to understand what happened until you read a newspaper the next day.

"It remains to be seen how much further we're going to get beyond 'what I saw in front of me, this is how my gas mask Rosenstiel adds. "Journalism is more than 'what I happened to The war coverage so far reflects television's unending fascination with the visual and the immediate. New technology allows the live reports from embedded reporters on 24-hour cable channels. "It is so exhilarating and new and different that I think there's a tendency to go heavily with it," Rosenstiel says. "It's a valuable tool that is more limited than some people thought.

The media are still groping with how best to use the reports." Hal Boedekercan be reached at hboedekerorlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5756. An assistant slides a disc into a computer. "Listen to the music as your teacher traces the lower case a voice commands. Metzger's arm swoops down, flashes up, circles around. Students imitate.

"Holding your pencil just right, sit straight but not tight, and you'll be ready to write," the voice sings in a Mary Pop-pinsesque lilt. Suddenly, the tune of "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" is heard. Students write to the beat. In all, the lesson, orchestrated by a Zaner-Bloser computer program, lasts 15 minutes; the class is closer to mastering the printed letter P. "There are some things in education that are still valuable," insists Principal Barbara this is one of them." Earl Taylor can attest to that.

He has seen the fallout from the de-emphasis on handwriting among the executives who attend his Dale Carnegie training courses. He often sees well-paid, well-educated clients skip sections of the course exercises and some can't convey complete thoughts. "When you were younger and learned penmanship, you learned not only how to form the letters, you learned how to think," says Taylor, a North Carolina-based master trainer with Dale Carnegie and Associates. Back in the Freeney home, Michael isn't worried that his son's cursive blind spot will prevent him from becoming president. Sean's smart.

He'll do OK. Although he wonders about the scholastic consequences of limited cursive instruction, his is a more soulful concern. "Cursive is a signature of you," Michael Freeney says. "There's something about the incredible flexibility and unique quality of cursive writing that makes it distinctive to you. To see that go away, then quite literally, people will no longer leave a signature on Earth." Darryl E.

Owens can be reached at dowensorlandosentinel.com or 407- as it once was," she says. "You're working every day with kids struggling with reading, math, or not speaking any English. Something has to give so that kids have what they need to be able to survive in the world. So, they might not get as much handwriting as their parents would like. If these kids can't read, period, what good is the handwriting going to do them?" Old-fashioned lessons Some private schools, in contrast, employ a more directed approach to handwriting.

Students as young as 4 learn rudimentary manuscript at Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando. Teachers use the modified Zaner-Bloser method, which features less-decorative flourishes. Formal cursive instruction begins in third grade. Those lessons ebb after fourth grade, but because the school preaches "pride in penmanship," the focus never wanes, says Susan Keogh, curriculum coordinator for the Lake Highland Lower School. Likewise, students at St.

James Cathedral School in Orlando ready their No. 2 pencils at least twice a week for an old-fashioned lesson in handwriting, taught with newfangled tools. One recent Thursday, girls in white sailor shirts and blue plaid skirts and boys in blue sweatshirts and shorts sat at their desks in Liz Metzger's second-grade class. Cursive instruction at St. James begins in the third grading quarter in the second grade.

This time, Metzg-er decided to delay introducing cursive for a few weeks to fine-tune her pupils' printing skills. Michael Bulmer, 7, distributed worksheets. Each pictured a strolling pig, and examples of the lowercase and uppercase letter "Flat feet," Metzger reminded the class. "Nice sitting position." "Let's talk about the animal on the paper." "Why a pig?" "We're doing the letter the class answers in chorus. in the means of delivery.

Student success, since 1996, is refracted through the Sunshine State Standards, which outline expectations for student achievement. The standards focus on arts, foreign language, health, language arts, mathematics, physical education, science and social studies. But the standards are general. Guidelines for disciplines such as handwriting are often vaguely conveyed from district to school level. In effect, how and when handwriting is taught is left to each school's discretion.

Crowded class day Central Florida public schools generally integrate handwriting instruction throughout the curriculum, rather than treating it as a formal component. Children typically are introduced to printing in kindergarten, and pick it up well enough to complete their assignments. Students usually begin a crash course in cursive in the third grade. In Polk County Schools, there's no formal policy on teaching handwriting, says Diana Myrick, director of elementary education for the district. But, handwriting is assessed on Polk report cards for excellent, for needs improvement.

"We are expected somehow to come up with handwriting" instruction, Myrick says. Such autonomy, educators concede, yields uneven results. Teachers in Orange County use software programs and Zaner-Bloser curricula to teach handwriting. Instruction in cursive is "not occasional," says Pat Weber, the system's elementary reading resource teacher, "but it's not necessarily every day." Public school teachers often must conduct scholastic triage, Weber concedes. Faced with crowded curricula, core subjects come first and then perhaps a shorthand lesson in handwriting, if time permits.

"The thing about it is formal handwriting is not as important Vague guidelines In her paper, "Handwriting: A Neglected Cornerstone of Literacy," published in the Annals of Dyslexia, Betty Sheffield argues that the importance of teaching handwriting rises and falls in cycles, as with much in American education. Sheffield, an expert on teaching dyslexic children to read and write, contends that educators often buy what is stylish now. In the '60s, schools shifted away from teaching handwriting. In the late '80s, penmanship sashayed back into vogue. Whole language is now the teaching method of choice.

Because it uses stories to capture children's interest in reading and teaches phonics secondarily, Sheffield laments, "the American school system is working its way through another wave of handwriting not being taught directly." When it is taught, handwriting methods fall into two major categories D'Nealian and Zaner-Bloser and both have their advocates. The D'Nealian print method is a modified italic form in which print letters are shaped without lifting the pencil from the paper, thus making letter reversals virtually impossible. Proponents say the D'Nealian approach eases the transition to cursive. Zaner-Bloser's print method uses vertical, straight letters that more closely resemble book print. The problem in Florida, some say, lies not in the method, but This vehicle for comedy should have big tires and a gun rack F0XW0RTHY FROM El Bubba does Hollywood.

Foxworthy (left) and friends bring blue-collar, redneck comedy to the silver screen. New York Times best seller, and his ABC sitcom, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, ran for two seasons in the mid-'90s. Despite the affluence that goes with fame, Foxworthy claims to have remained a redneck at heart. "Even if you move into a nice neighborhood, they still get snooty," he complains. "The people here won't even let us put a clothes line up in the front yard.

That ain't right." OK, but doesn't he have some secret, sophisticated guilty pleasure, like watching subtitled movies or playing cricket? "Sometimes I play with the crickets," he confesses. "But I'll put 'em on the hook and fish with 'em eventually." Jay Boyarcan be reached at jboyarorlandosentinel.com or and, in 2000, saw their efforts immortalized in a comedy-concert film directed by Spike Lee. "They said they were for the urban-hip audiences," recalls Foxworthy. "And I thought: That still leaves a lot of people out there." The "Blue Collar" tour, which was supposed to take four months, has lasted more than three years. It's winding down this month, just as the movie is being released.

"It's been the most fun thing, I think, any of us has ever done," says Foxworthy, whose "You might be a redneck if catchphrase has made him a household name. "I'm glad it's preserved" on film. Blue-collar crew Foxworthy's fellow stand-ups include the physically formidable Larry the Cable Guy, a Nebraskan now living in Flori- observes, "people are pretty much alike." A natural comedian The 44-year-old comedian never planned to be a movie star or, for that matter, a comedian. He was repairing mainframe computers for IBM when friends encouraged him to try out at a comedy club. Not only did he win the club's comedy contest his first time out, but his future wife happened to be in the audience.

Married nearly 18 years, they have two young daughters and live in Atlanta. Foxworthy's comedy, which Patrick MacDonald of the Seattle Times has called "sharp and clever," has spawned such top-selling albums as You Might be a Redneck If and Games Rednecks Play. His autobiography, No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem, spent two months as a and a drink in hand. Offstage, the four are very good friends. "You can't really fake that," Foxworthy says.

The movie's title may be misleading. The words "blue collar" usually summon up thoughts of factory workers in urban centers. The Cracker Comedy Tour or The Redneck Comedy Tour might have come closer to describing the movie's down-home flavor. "We debated that," admits Foxworthy, who eventually decided that the film's "Everyman" perspective was best summed up by the "blue collar" phrase. Besides, he adds, his definition of a redneck as someone with "a glorious absence of sophistication" refers more to a state of mind than to a region of the country.

"Once you get 10 minutes outside of any major city," he be so disarming that the casual observer or the city slicker might fail to notice that, underneath it all, the guy is darn clever. In his new comedy-concert film, Foxworthy and three corn-pone pals take turns on stage. Then they meet up for a session that suggests what the Algonquin Round Table might have been like had it been situated, say, just outside Memphis. "It was kind of like the Rat Pack," Foxworthy says. "Everybody can work by themselves, but when we were doin' it together, it was better." But it wasn't Frank Sinatra's pack or the Algonquin set that inspired the new film.

It was "The Original Kings of Comedy," an act featuring four African-American comedians who toured the country together da, who is often the butt of his ownjokes. "I was seein' this good-loo-kin' girl for about six weeks," says Larry in the film. "Then somebody took my binoculars out of my trunk." Texas-born Bill Engvall, whose gimmick is his conviction that stupid people should carry signs labeling them as such, is known by his catch-phrase, "Here's your sign." Rounding out the quartet is another Texan, Ron White. In purest Rat Pack tradition, White performs with a cigarette.