Comment by DharmaPolice

This is my own personal bias talking here but I think handwriting might be a poor subject to teach the wider lesson of taking pride in your work. My hand writing has always been terrible. It was a big deal 30 years ago (when I was at school) - it's not really been an issue since. But it's not whether it's outdated or not, it's just not something which easily improves with practice (at least, in my experience). Even when I spent a lot of time and energy trying to slowly draw individual letters the end result was still messy.

My problem was exacerbated because I sat next to a kid who was a great artist. He used to draw comic strips (at age 9-10) and the lettering looked professional (at least to my eyes). Yes if I had spent an enormous amount of time and effort I could have improved my handwriting but I don't think I'd ever be able to produce 1/5th the quality of what he did. My hand just wasn't (and isn't) that steady.

With other subjects you can spend a lot less time and improve quality a lot easier and faster. With something like code layout it's much easier to brute force tidiness in a way that just isn't possible with handwriting (or drawing).