MacLean's method 2
Friday, October 25, 2013 at 7:54AM 
On the list of stats for this website, a post I did on MacLean's compendiums a couple of years ago gets a surprising number of visits, every week, week after week. I actually found a compendium in a box I was sorting through after the flood, not mine, but my brother's, from Grade 5.
It starts with the correct way to sit, to place your arm, to angle the paper. In fact the whole compendium is not just about the correct way to write, but how to conduct yourself as a good person, how to write nice thank you letters, get well letters, all in a beautifully smooth hand. If someone hadn't commented on MacLean himself, that he appeared at schools and did magic tricks, I would find this sort of teaching unbearable. As it was, out in Victoria, he never came to our school and we were left with the rules. I was an earnest student, tried hard to have perfect writing. My brother clearly approached it all with a sense of irony.
It looks sort of asemic to me.
drawing, graffiti, hands, material culture 
Reader Comments (3)
I remember, very well, my teacher spending time with us students, on the proper placement of our arms on the desk, the position of the writing compendium and, of course, proper sitting position, as shown in the top picture.
I smiled as I looked at the picture, directly above. I went way back in time when I was doing the same thing in my scribbler, even at home. I really loved to practice and I still have some of my scribblers packed away, showing the practice and also the writing. My parents saved most of my old scribblers, so that's how I got them.
Thanks for bringing back the memories and putting a smile on my face. :^)
I've been thinking about the Maclean's Method that taught you to align your hand, arm and body in relation to the paper and the marks one is making on it. It was an essential and early training of hand-eye coordination, which certainly stood me in good stead when we were being taught to draw in architecture school. Freehand drawing, for an architect, has to be quite accurate, a freehand line has to be straight and level, a circle, perfect. I could always do this, somehow I knew what my arm had to do to make that line. It has only just occurred to me that I perhaps owe this to the MacLean Method.
I think I have to agree with you, Stephanie. The many hours that were put into practising the Maclean's Method, now that I think of it, would have certainly helped you in architecture school. It certainly helped me in doing calligraphy, which I picked up quite easily, as it, too, had to deal with the positioning of the paper and alignment that you mentioned above. It's a shame that it isn't still taught.