The question is not really about the French language, but about contemporary teaching in French schools. I hope there is an elementary school teacher that can answer this.
I am currently studying various scripts for a project visualising the process of writing, showing the movement of the pen when forming letters and words. As an example of a modern learners script, I have looked at the 2013 polices de caractères pour l'enseignement de l'écriture and especially its Modèle B with letters that are very much formed like their printed counterparts.
While the authors of that script / font make a honest effort to maintain the traditional way letters are attached to each other when writing a word, there are some situations where their solutions, as can be seen from the published fonts, are problematic. From the document d'accompagnement:
Ce modèle comporte essentiellement deux types de manière de lier les lettres : les liaisons horizontales et les liaisons diagonales...
Dans le contexte de l’apprentissage, il sera important de bien veiller à savoir présenter toutes ces variations de formes et tous ses possibles sans le perdre. Si l’identité du mot est bien marquée, en revanche un décalage existe cette fois entre l’apprentissage des lettres et leur intégrité avec celles qu’elles ont dans les mots.
Problems arise for the horizontal attachments (at the upper line, the starting letters are o, r, v, w) when connected to the letters e, f and t. Let me show you how these letter combinations are rendered when using the font:
The basic concept, and I would expect that is what is taught to children when they learn to write, is when letters are attached to each other, the pen moves uninterrupted from writing one letter to the next.
In the first line, you can see how that would work (albeit not perfectly when compared to other scripts). Moving from a to e, the pen would rise from the base line to the middle and then take a turn to the right to form the loop for the e. From a to f or t, the pen would rise from the base line, going to the top of these letters, and come down again following the same form.
But in the second line, the concept as implemented in the font is broken. From r to e, the end of the connecting line does not meet the start of the loop. From r to f or t, the connecting line is shown to arrive horizontally, while the starting line of the next letter is coming down vertically. If you look closely, you can spot a difference in handling the horizontal stroke of the f and the z. The stroke of the f starts on top of the connecting line, left of the vertical form. The stroke of the t is shortened to only show on the right side of the vertical form.
Remember that both horizontal strokes are to be drawn after the body form of the letter. The document d'accompagnement makes it clear that ductus is important in teaching:
La conformité au ductus doit être respectée. Il est important pour cela de ne pas considérer uniquement le résultat produit mais bien observer l’enfant en train d’écrire. Le respect du sens du tracé des lettres participe à une logique globale du tracé du mot et un « o » convenable visuellement mais tracé, en sens inverse du sens attendu, contrariera la poursuite du geste sur les autres lettres.
My question now is: If this script is used in elementary school, how is the execution of these liaisons / connections taught to the children? Is it left to them to make up their own mind how to form them, will the teacher divert from the way the font is presented, and is there a common directive for this?
Edit: From my research, "cursive" writing is taught in cycle 2, although the document I found clearly refers to the Modèle A script, or older versions of essentially the same.
Please note that I am only asking about the specific Modèle B script, so answers about the suitability of this script for teaching or proposals to use another one are not what I am looking for.
The angle I am coming from is not trying to choose a script for teaching a child (I would certainly go with Modèle A), but to find out if you can have a script that maintains letter forms that closely resemble printed letters, and just the same can be written with the appearance of a natural movement of the pen. The practical usage of such a script in school would be a test of feasability, then.
