A short version of the interview of Liliane Lurçat,
search Director Emeritus at CNRS (child psychology)
PhD in Psychology, PhD in Letters and Human Sciences

Upload the complete version of the interview here.

Q : Qui êtes-vous et quel est votre parcours ?

LL : I am an old woman, mother of four children and grand-mother of eleven grandchildren, wife of François Lurçat. I studied psychology. It was just after the War, when they created a new degree in psychology. And this is how I became one of the first people to be a psychologist by profession.

I joined the CNRS in 1951 as the technical collaborator of Professor Henri Wallon. I worked with him for eleven years; I was his technical collaborator and I worked on his researches. I had never done any research in all my life, I was twenty-three. He simply told me : “You’ll visit the schools. Here are some sheets, with dots arranged in quincunx. You’ll make the children draw from one dot to the other.”

Q : And can you tell me what your first works consisted of ?

LL : I visited the schools, by myself, and I made the children draw. I had to invent new shapes. Then I said to myself that this was not enough. So I made them draw their family. But I still thought that it was not enough. I also used a classic test “A lady is having a walk and it rains”, as well as Prudhommeau’s form, another classic test that we used in consultation.

Q : What was the subject of your research ?

LL : I’d given it a lot of thought and discussed the matter with Wallon. I had worked with him on child’s drawing and body sketch, i.e. the spatial organization of the movement. I gathered the five papers written in collaboration with Wallon in a book called “Drawing, space and body sketch in children”.
We see the body sketch as the body’s projection into the space : body’s plane of symmetry and directions. Then I said to myself that I could study handwriting, that is at the junction of these two types of researches : the graphic activity, the genesis of the graphic action, and the projection of the body sketch into the graphic space. I used the ten years of work with Wallon for my research on writing.

I did continuous studies called longitudinal studies (I followed the same children during several years) and transversal studies (the studies on children of different age groups. I could thus re-use my first researches : written language, dictation, copy and essay, transition from oral to written expression.

In the years 1966-1967, we moved to the United. I got a job at Princeton Educational Testing Service and I offered them to carry out a work on handwriting. They went over their big tests dictionary and saw that there was nothing about writing maturity. This was a very big problem since there was a lot of failure in fundamental learning in the United States. They already had a big crisis in reading and more generally in methodical learning. This is what I analyse in my book “Destruction of primary teaching”. While I was in Princeton, I visited the schools. I had an assistant and we carried out children examinations together. I gathered some documents in order to make a maturity test for handwriting. I also wrote my master’s thesis “Studies of graphic actions”. I gave up publishing the test because I feared it would not be used in a positive way. But I learned a lot on the condition of the American teaching. Especially because my daughter Hélène studied there for one year. In her classroom, the children would write on loose sheets of papers, lying down on the floor. This happened in France later on. The primary school got changed into a nursery school, according to the American model of teaching sciences. Reading was parted from writing. Reading was seen as a sense grabbing through the eyes. This, as well as the destruction of the writing pedagogy, all came from America.

When I came back to France in 1967, I gave a lot of conferences in the primary school teachers’ training colleges on the theme of “genesis of graphic action and application to the writing pedagogy”. I was often approached by the A.G.I.E.M. Associations and inspectors of nursery schools. I was lead led to give lectures in training colleges and carry out conferences for teachers.

It’s during the eighties that the teaching schools were transformed into I.U.F.M.. The people who got the power in these institutions imposed the “sense grabbing” method of reading through the eyes. According to them, you learn how to read the same way as you learn how to speak. If this is the case, then how come that all the people who can speak cannot automatically learn how to read ?

Q : What did you deduce from your analysis on writing ?

LL : By that time, I was Wallon’s disciple, specialized in the study of children drawing and writing. The teachers were interested in this matter. I was often approached for the “Genesis of graphic action and application of its study to the writing pedagogy”. This is what I discussed the most with teachers’ audiences. I even showed some primary school teachers how to teach writing to left-handers, because left-hand writing was tolerated but without perfecting a posture pedagogy.

As for the handwriting’s automation, it’s essential that the learning of writing only finishes at the end of primary school, because the children first need to become automated on the shape and trajectory of the letters. For instance, the letter “a” has a positive direction (counterclockwise). The “n” has a negative direction (clockwise). The “x” uses both directions.  
To sum it up, the shape and trajectory of the words, the speed, the spelling, all of this must be automated. At the end of the learning, when everything is automated, remain only conscious the semantic content, i.e. the meaning, and the punctuation. When your handwriting is really automated, you only have to think of what you want to transmit or express.

Q : You mentioned the expression “learning how to write”; are there different phases of learning according to the age of the child ?

LL : In the past, when you were learning how to write, the graphic skills were trained in nursery schools : I refer to the vertical lines, the cycloids with loops, and the way to hold the pen.

Q : The way to hold the pen … was it taught at school ?

LL : Yes, and this is why you would first have a lead pencil, and then a penholder. When you had a penholder, you had to hold it in a certain way, so that the nib wouldn’t scratch the paper and splutter everywhere.

Q : And … this was part of the role of the primary school teacher in those days ?

LL : Of course ! Who else should have done it ? Not the parents.

Q : Forgive me, but the point is that nobody teaches that nowadays.

LL : But they don’t teach it because they don’t know it themselves ! Not to mention the teachers’ spelling mistakes, their dysgraphia and their dysorthographia …

Q : So one must learn how to hold a pen …

LL : Yes, learn to control the gesture, do exercises, and this is why I talk about graphic activities in nursery schools. In my book “Handwriting and written language in children”, republished under the title “Learn to write in order to learn how to read”, I explain more or less all the steps that must be gone through.
One can make early reading in the form of animal training. But one can’t make early writing because this learning depends on the maturation of the nervous system. For instance, it’s only between the ages of two and three that the maturation of the antagonists enables the making of two curves in only one gesture. It’s only at this moment that the writing of letters like “y” and “g” are made possible from a motor point of view.

Q : So, technically speaking, it’s possible to learn how to write from the age of three ?

LL : It is possible to reproduce some cycloids in both ways. The child is not obliged to learn how to write in the nursery school, but he must learn everything preparing his handwriting : how to hold the pen, graphic exercises enabling the child to line up strokes and execute hybrid curves. The learning of the writing can be tried during the last year at nursery school. The teachers must be experimented, in order to install the children in the proper trajectories. The trajectories are distorted as soon as one considers that you learn writing the same way as you learn drawing.

Q : Why ?

LL : Because in letters and writing, the trajectory is imposed, while in drawing a house, for instance, you can start from the top, or from the bottom …
When you draw, you take the shape or the figure you want to make in your own way : there is more freedom in drawing. What actually happened is that we stopped teaching calligraphic writing in grades 2 and 3. In the past, you would learn how to calligraphy. You would learn a large round-type handwriting and the child’s hand would be guided. I’ve worked on the kinaesthetic model, that’s to say the guided hand model, where the child can feel the gesture through the guidance.
The visual information, the model on the blackboard, they don’t give the same information as the guided hand model.

Q : Why ?

Because it’s a purely visual model. And the visual model is static, in other words it’s something that has already been written.

Q : While the feeling model is stronger ?

LL : Yes, through the feeling, the kinaesthesia. “Feeling” is not the exact word, rather “perception”. This model refers to kinaesthetic sensitivity. While you can give another model on the blackboard; the most difficult model is fixed and static, i.e. written in advance; there is also a dynamic model where you can still see that there is a trajectory. But for the guided hand situations, the kinaesthetic model is more in favour.

Q : What happens after the age of three ? Is everything decided before that age, or after ?

LL : Well, actually no, everything is not defined before the age of three because everything is spread over the time. It’s a lengthy learning because it depends at the same time on the physical maturation and the pedagogical conditions.
So, contrarily to what you may think, the learning of the written language is a long process. But if you’ve learned it the right way, you keep it for life. Yet, when it was decided to split the writing from the reading, lots of children happened not to memorize the reading.

Q : Excuse me, do you mean that at a certain period, reading and writing were learned together ?

LL : Of course ! At school, there were constantly graphic exercises and reading at the same time. You must always start with writing, whose execution takes more time. It enables the discovery of reading. 

Q : And nowadays, reading and writing are split ?

LL : Nowadays, it’s a terrible mess. And this is why there are so many illiterates. They are school illiterates, not mentally retarded; these kids have been badly educated by teachers who were themselves badly educated.

Q : It’s surprising, I’m currently reading a few books about fast reading. You need two or three fixation points per line …

LL : This method has been applied to children and it’s had bad effects.

Q : So, with this method, the children were taught not to read each word but to have two or three fixation points per line ?

LL : Yes, that’s it, zigzagging with a few fixation points. And this was an imposed method by that time.

Q : OK, that’s for reading. And what about writing ?

LL : Well, nobody was talking about it anymore. It had become : the writing, you must draw it. We ended up with cases of dysgraphia, dysorthographia, dyslexia. You take whatever type of learning and you put a “dys” in front, and it becomes a school’s pathology.

Q : To sum it up, in the eighties, the focus was on fast reading …

LL : The focus was on a reading separated from writing; it was fast, non systematic, zigzagging.

Q : I go a little backward … After the age of three, is there a continuity in the education methods used before ?

LL : The graphic exercises must continue. From the age of three, you get the hybrid situation, and you can thus ask the children to reproduce some different, more complex curves. In grade 1, you can start writing letters and words, but it depends on the individual abilities of each and everyone. Some don’t have the requested maturity, and the acquisition of writing is not compulsory in nursery schools. From grade 2, the learning must be systematic. For both writing and reading.

Q : If you had a magic wand, or rather a magic pen, what would you change today in order to help the children learn writing ?

LL : Train the primary school teachers in rigorous methods. Reintroduce educational rigour and children’s respect. Have methodical, sustained learning and don’t judge the children according to their failures.

Q : More rigorous methods, what does it mean exactly, the downstrokes and upstrokes that existed in the past ? Or not necessarily such methods ?

LL : No, I talk about education. Because we use different tools today; but the children must learn to write respecting the trajectory of the letters and words; they must learn grammar and orthography. And this is fundamental.

Q : So, according to you, the shape of the writing, the letters, this is not enough taught ?

LL : Yes, one must educate the children in the trajectory of letters and words, and then one must teach them grammar lessons.

Q : So, the gesture was regarded as sacred in the past …

LL : No, but there was a gesture education. Because skilful gestures are like working gestures. If you position your hands badly, you risk all kind of catastrophes. The writing education is the only one that needs to be tailored, because it’s based on hand’s guiding and postures’ control. Each child must be controlled during his learning phase.

Q : Why is it commonly said that you better remember something if you write it ?

LL : Because you connect the body’s memory to the visual memory. Kinaesthetic memory and visual memory. Pianists, for instance, associate the kinaesthetic memory to the visual memory. The kinaesthetic memory is the memory of the body. Unfortunately, the body has been neglected; some said that everything was coming from the brain. But you don’t write with your brain, you write with your hand. You don’t talk with your brain, you talk with your mouth. You don’t hear with your brain, you hear with your ears. So we must expose the links between the senses that contribute to an acquisition. These are the liaisons that I called, after Wallon, the intersensory and interfunctional liaisons.

Q : So, does it mean that “what”, that used to be written WHAT becomes WAT … and by dint of writing it WAT, we tend to think that it’s always be written that way ?
LL : And then we can’t write a proper cover letter for a job application.
They become oversimplifications and what’s more they waste other people’s time.

Thank you very much Liliane. I really enjoyed our discussion because this subject is both global and individual, and it takes me back to my personal passion.

Bibliography

“Etudes de l’acte graphique”, Paris, La Haye, Mouton, 1974 (translated in Italian)
“L’activité graphique à l’école maternelle”, Paris, ESF, 1979 ; 5th ed., 1990 (translated in Spanish)
“Le Temps prisonnier. Des enfances volées par la télévision”, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1995 (translated in Portuguese). 2nd ed., Paris, François-Xavier de Guibert, 2000. 3rd ed., 2004
“La Destruction de l’enseignement élémentaire et ses penseurs”, Paris, François-Xavier de Guibert, 1998. 2nd ed., 2004
“La Manipulation des enfants. Nos enfants face à la violence des images”, Paris, Editions du Rocher, 2002. 2nd ed. : “La Manipulation des enfants par la télévision et par l’ordinateur”, Paris, François-Xavier de Guibert, 2008
“L’Ecriture et le langage écrit de l’enfant. Ecole maternelle et élémentaire”, Paris, ESF, 1985. 3rd ed. under the title “Apprendre à lire en écrivant”, Paris, François-Xavier de Guibert, 2007