Comment by jmilloy

There are other features about a piece of homework than how the handwriting appears. Is the content high quality? Did he learn? Did he do it efficiently? Did he enjoy doing it? Is it well-designed or beautiful in other ways? Etc. Your kid can feel pride about these other features of his work, some of which may be mutually exclusive with high quality handwriting! Selecting the handwriting as high priority is somewhat arbitrary on your part. I'd be concerned that you're overlooking other arguably more important signals of pride and joy in your kid's work by focusing on this one.

If you want your kid to practice high quality craftsmanship, to feel pride in a job well-done, let him choose another craft where the quality is inherently relevant, like woodworking or sewing (or calligraphy)!

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A second angle. Imagine you are trying to learn to write code and someone insisted you use a difficult keyboard: each key is a different size, they're spaced out across the desk facing different directions. (Or, say, insisted you use punch cards). You'll surely have a harder time learning to code!