A、It’s now taught with the aid of computers. B、It isn’ t considered as important today as it was in the past. C、Children today l

Listen to part of a talk in a class on early childhood education. The professor is discussing penmanship: the quality of one’ s handwriting.
    As you prepare to become elementary school teachers, you’ll be hearing a lot of discussion about the relevance of teaching penmanship. Now years ago when I was studying education in college, reading, writing and arithmetic were the basics of elementary school education. It went without saying that writing meant first and foremost penmanship. That is, the neatness of child’s handwriting, Back then, penmanship was often taught as a separate subject from the first grade right up through the sixth grade long after the children had moved from writing in block capital letters to cursive script. It was considered so important that sometimes prizes were even awarded for the best handwriting. But when we move ahead a few decades into the 1980’s, we see teachers and administrators and even parents telling us that teaching penmanship is a waste of time. With computers, they said, children can successfully manipulate the keyboard or mouse of their home computers before they can even hold a pencil. The change in attitude had an impact on the classroom. In your homework for this week you’ll be looking at what penmanship. You’ll see that in my states penmanship has been de-emphasized in a required curriculum, especially in the later years of elementary school. In California, for example, the curriculum calls for fourth-grade students to ... and I quote, "write fluently and legibly in cursive or joined Italics, essentially a level appropriate for fourth-graders." But after this, the curriculum makes no further mention of penmanship in grade five, six or beyond any curricular objectives. Your assignment is to look at what the curricular standards say for all fifty states say about penmanship. Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 22 to 25.
22. What is the professor’ s main point about penmanship in early childhood education?
23. Why does the professor mention prizes?
24. What will the students read about for homework?
25. What does the professor quote from California’ s curriculum requirements?