Comment by gumby

My son was in a school that taught English via immersion (they hired English teachers who couldn't even speak any German).

Starting with grade 1 the kids wrote exclusively with fountain pens, and were marked early on on penmanship. Except in English, where they were allowed to write with pencils or biros so of course they did because it was a change, and the teachers didn't seem to care about penmanship at all.

Two decades later his writing with a fountain pen in any language is as clear as a bell, while anything else results in a scrawl. I don't believe it's because the tool is superior in some way, I think it's simply the attention to detail got wired in.

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An amusing nerd side point: In grade 1 they learnt a letter a week, and from that were reading by xmas. To avoid confusing the kids, English was supposed to use "German letterforms" but really they are pretty much the same! Anyway the funny thing is that in English they start the first week with "A" (Apple, Ant), then "B" (Banana, Buffalo) and so on. German was taught in the alphabetic frequency order: "E" (Elefant), then "N" (Nase), "I" (Igel) and so on. Disappointingly, Christmas came before they got to ß as I was curious what they would do (no word starts with it).