Handwork and Handicrafts - Waldorf Research Institute

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organization to write in this way. It need not incline too much, but it ought to be a
handwriting that gives an artistic impression. Upright handwriting would be justified only if
it gave an artistic impression, but it does not do this.
“I have explained elsewhere that there are two ways of writing. One is writing from
the wrist. People who do this do not use their eye when writing. They make their body into
a mechanism and write from the wrist. Many people have been taught to write in this way.
But artistic handwriting is writing in which the eye is used. The hand is merely the executing
organ.
“Now no one will ever develop an upright writing through writing mechanically from
the wrist. Such writing will always be oblique; hence upright writing could be justified only
if it were artistic. It is a matter of taste, but it does not satisfy an aesthetic judgment. It can
never be beautiful; it always looks unnatural. Thus it is not justified, and there is no reason to
introduce upright handwriting. You must try to see to it that no child in the school writes an
upright hand, but in the upper classes you cannot be too insistent.” 8
ENDNOTES
1. Teachers’ Conference, June 12, 1920.
2. Teachers’ Conference, November 22, 1920.
3. Teachers’ Conference, June 14, 1920.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Teachers’ Conference, May 10, 1922.
7. Teachers’ Conference, May 25, 1923.
8. Teachers’ Conference, October 28, 1922.