Cursive

[Algernon Moncrieff]

This is an argument, I've discovered, that transcends politics. There are two sides, and they are dug-in.

Should cursive handwriting be taught to third graders?

The pro-cursive side cites the simple expedient that it is the only way to learn to sign a document, and points to studies linking learning handwriting to bring development.

The anti-cursive side says that cursive is going extinct, ad that valuable teaching time would be better spent teaching proper keyboarding techniques.

Several people have told me that the real problem is that many schools have solved the problem by simply not teaching cursive or keyboarding.

32 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
	Keep cursive in schools!
	28 (88%)
	Get rid of teaching cursive, and teach keyboarding instead!
	4 (13%)
	1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. teach both.

[steve2470]

2. +1 nt

[OriginalGeek]

3. That plus

there is a cursive font so we could even teach both at the same time.

[MattBaggins]

22. How many hours exist in your day

[Tuesday Afternoon]

44. cute. Please see post#3 above in this thread.

[GoCubsGo]

59. It doesn't take that long to learn either of them.

I learned "keyboarding" long before most people ever got near a PC. It was called "typing class." It only took a semester, and I still had plenty of time for math, science, literature, history, phys ed... It would probably take even less time to learn how to "keyboard", because it's a hell of a lot easier to use a computer/word processor than it is a typewriter--even an electric one.

[nolabels]

74. Moreover, how many hours a day will that school age child be willing to learn cursive?

Our problem is our social stratus ridicules many people in professions and trades that deal with the written word and especially teachers. Kids would probably do the written word thing at nausea if they felt other kids were having fun with it and was important for them.

The idea of learning by rout or repetitive behavior rather than understanding how everything around us wouldn't exist without it is just one of the thousands of reasons for learning a needed skill like cursive. Cursive writing skills can be fun. A person skilled at cursive can write many times faster than the person connecting the sticks. My cursive is much faster and clearer than than the whole hand written print thing as a rule.

Keyboarding is just as important in today's world but sometimes always cannot be applied

[LanternWaste]

81. The same amount of hours as when both were taught consistently?

The same amount of hours as when both were taught consistently?

[pnwmom]

94. That's irrelevant. My sons in elementary school were taught cursive

and then keyboard. It's very doable.

[JustAnotherGen]

26. In total agreement

Im in the wireless business at HQ. I came into it from the VoIP world directly into handsets. As much as people hate telecom right now for various reasons - I don't understand why the ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM is not hated . . .

I mean - the device manufacturers are laughing about how are children are becoming thumb dominant.

When that happens say goodbye to the creative soul.

[KitSileya]

4. Being taught to lead a pen over paper teaches more than just writing.

It creates neural pathways in the brain that will stand you in good stead the rest of your life. Learning to write is but one dimension of what you learn when you are taught to write.

In fact, I am becoming more and more convinced that using computers isn't the only way to help dyslexics. Today, that seems to be the only accepted method of getting dyslexics to write. However, I wonder whether programs that focus on the muscle memory could be of help too. Not only doing extra phys ed, but also learning to write, say, the 500 most common words in the language by hand, by muscle memory rather than focusing on each letter would make it easier to write in general.

Writing on a keyboard is a boon to some students, I know, (like children with cerebral palsy who do not have the fine muscle co-ordination necessary to write pen to paper,) but I believe that the process of learning to write with pen on paper unlocks more than just the ability to write a post-it note.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

6. I'm sure there is great benefit from teaching a child how to handle a team of horses

...but it's not a skill that's used much.

My younger daughter puts pen and pencil to paper quite a bit, because she's in elementary school. I'd be surprised if I write 50 words a week on paper. I haven't written a check in years. Most stores have raised the bar so high on credit card purchases that I sign receipts less and less frequently. Short reminder notes? isn't that what smart phones are for?

I understand where you are coming from, but I see paper going the way of papyrus and sealing wax -- things that are used in art studios, and few other places.

[KitSileya]

9. I don't think that there's any other exercise that combines muscles and mind the same way.

We teach kids to play baseball, we teach kids to draw, we teach kids to build legos, all kinds of things that they won't necessarily be doing when they are adults, but we do it because we know that these activities have a wider benefit than simply to learn the rules of baseball for when they watch it on tv as adults.

The fine motorical skills kids learn when they learn to write, to lead muscles not only to do a movement in itself, but a movement that is part of a wider whole, has a meaning beyond itself, are the skills they will use when they build circuitry for computers, when they craft something, when they build the future. I think that we may not know what development we are denying our kids by letting them take the easier way. After all, we could just put each kid on a treadmill to keep them fit, but playing in the playground, learning team sports, climbing jungle gyms do much more than simply keep the kids fit.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

17. I gotta kinda disagree here

We teach kids to draw... and many of us, on occasion, have to draw as adults. It's helpful to Home Depot if you can show a basic layout of one's kitchen, for example.

Do we teach kids how to play with Legos? I don't remember that part of school. I remember being given Leos and figuring it out for myself.

Kids aren't taught to play baseball in elementary school. Not in public schools, anyway. Kids learn Baseball, Softball, Basketball, Soccer, etc. in youth leagues as an elective activity. They sign up for it -- or their parents sign them up. The public elementary schools here mostly play less skill and rule intensive games, like dodge ball, or have kids climbing fake rock walls.

I guess my take is that the fine motor skills they should be learning -- and need to learn -- are the proper keyboarding techniques that will have them avoiding carpal tunnel in their 40s.

[Gormy Cuss]

66. By the time they're in their 40s, keyboarding will be irrelevant.

Keyboarding is inefficient by design thanks to the standard QWERTY layout.

Voice recognition is probably the next wave, followed probably by some sort of direct thought recognition.

All that said, will there be a need for manual writing? Probably. Is printing the best form? Not if any volume of writing is to be done. Cursive allows for a speed that just isn't possible with printing because cursive uses letter forms that don't require full stops after each letter. That doesn't mean we need to write cursive using the current forms -- cursive letters have been simplified over time and probably should be simplified again to trim out the extra flourishes and leave only the connective strokes that give cursive the advantage over printing.

[SheilaT]

30. Plus, there's good research showing that those students

who take notes via keyboard simply don't retain very much.

It may well be that those you've referenced who lack the muscle co-ordination to write will learn otherwise, but for most of us, those neural pathways are important.

Just as I suspect someone from a pre-literate society will develop intelligence along quite different pathways than we do. I can recall reading that researchers who spent time with non-literate hunters and gatherers being quite amazed at how well those people knew the physical world they inhabited. I'm not surprised. Of course they do. They live in that world more intimately than most of us live in our physical world. Their survival depends on knowing exactly where every berry bush is, where the animals hide, and so on. Our survival depends on other things.

[kentauros]

5. Printing is good enough.

If anyone wants kids to know cursive later in life, teach them calligraphy.

[Codeine]

61. "Good enough" should not be that to which

our educational system aspires.

[kentauros]

63. To me, it applies to the rest of everyday life.

So, "good enough" is good enough for something like printing. Legibility, on the other hand, should be taught strictly.

[JVS]

7. 2nd graders

[msongs]

8. race to the top takes up too much classroom time, eliminating other things nt

[ecstatic]

10. I used to think so, but times have changed...

I used to judge adults who only wrote in print, but lately I've noticed that my cursive is pretty much illegible because I rarely have to write anything down these days. I'm used to typing 100+wpm on my computer, or swyping text on my phone and tablet. On the rare occasions when I have to submit a document with my own handwriting, I find myself accidentally skipping over letters and struggling to NOT write in cursive.

My point is, if that can happen to someone like me who grew up writing tons of papers with neat handwriting, imagine what it would be like for kids these days who might not ever have to write anything after the 5th grade. With manual handwriting (both print and cursive) becoming a thing of the past, I think children should probably spend the time they would have spent learning cursive doing something more productive.

[Heidi]

13. I understand your point. By why limit kids' skills?

I tend to believe we're all better off with more skills than fewer; limiting our skills often limits our choices.

[Orrex]

41. I say we should teach them falconry and scrimshaw.

[Chan790]

52. ...and smithing.

I say knowing how to smith iron would be a more useful skill to have than writing in cursive.

[Chan790]

51. Because skills-acquisition is not entirely additive.

You don't expand your capacity of skills by learning a new skill...typically, it's to the detriment of other skills.

So we're not better off with more skills than fewer...we're best off with a medium array of skills of high-competency.

We're better off if we can identify useless skills and eradicate them. Almost nobody today needs to know how to write cursive or rig a snare-trap.

[Heidi]

69. Good luck, then, with a handwritten love letter or thank-you note.

There are some skills that we underestimate until we want/need them. I'd rather have more choices than fewer choices, but that's just me, I guess.

[Chan790]

70. I hand-write constantly.

I never use cursive.

[Heidi]

72. Good.

Cursive is not the be-all. Committing thoughts to handwriting, in my experience (and the experience of friends I've had for a long while), is a great deal more meaningful than an email or printed letter. (There's a quote I need to find about Cy Twombly and the sensual act of handwriting, in the contest of gestural art.)

[quinnox]

11. Kids are so dumbed down these days

I have seen it first hand. The standards have been lowered so far that it is making kids dumb. It's not their fault, but standards have to be raised if America is going to compete world wide against countries with much higher, tougher, and better education standards. Hate to say it, but we are seeing generations of spoiled, non-reading, dumbed down kids.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

19. I see a divide

In my older daughter's school (and our school is above - average in terms of parental affluence) I see about 20-30% of the kids who are driven. They are making outstanding grades; they do volunteer hours; they are involved in extra-curricular activities at school or travel team sports outside of school; and they have big college plans.

The rest are what you said.


However, I think every generation of adults going back to ancient Egypt has begun a sentence along the lines of "These kids today don't know how good they've got it......."

[dilby]

12. Cursive is very outdated and should go the route of Calligraphy.

They can maybe teach it in art class like they do Calligraphy.

[Heidi]

14. NYT: What's Lost as Handwriting Fades

Does handwriting matter?

Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.

But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.

“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.

“And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn’t realize,” he continued. “Learning is made easier.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html

[Algernon Moncrieff]

15. Bloomberg View: The Case Against Cursive

Legislatures in California, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia have responded by mandating cursive teaching. Similar bills have been introduced in five other states this year. This counteraction is the product of an understandable but unhelpful attachment to tradition.

The blowback is also a result of flawed reasoning. There’s an argument that new generations must master cursive in order to read their forebears’ cursive documents. Yet students who can read print can be taught to read cursive in as little as an hour without spending the months of practice necessary to master formation of the loopy, connected letters of cursive.

There’s also an argument that cursive writing bestows benefits to the brain. This is far from established science. Some of the cited research actually deals with any writing by hand, including printing, while some is simply insubstantial. Even if it were clear that cursive writing somehow stimulates the brain, that’s not a reason to teach it. Plenty of activities arouse the brain -- meditation, learning to use a slide rule, playing Sudoku.

The issue is how students spend their limited time in school. In districts where cursive has been dropped, its former teachers have been among the most enthusiastic, because the change liberates them to teach more valuable subjects.

Complete article at link

[Heidi]

21. How many kindergarten through third-grade students are meditating, learning to use a slide rule,

or playing Sodoku*?

Look, I'm not suggesting that kids be taught cursive exclusively, just as I do not believe kids in US schools should be taught English exclusively. My assertion is that the more choices we have in life, the better off we often are.

*ETA: I do not oppose teaching kids any of these.

[MattBaggins]

23. I have to ask this again

How many hours are in your day?

[Heidi]

24. What on earth are you talking about?

ETA: You've never asked me this before, so your question really does strike me as odd.

ETA: Oh, I see now. Up thread you seem to be implying that there aren't enough hours in the day to teach cursive. To answer your question, there are 24 hours in my day, just like everyone else's. Perhaps if teachers in public schools were not so pressured to "teach to the test," there would be more time for teaching things like cursive writing. Just an idea.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

45. thank you, Heidi

[pipi_k]

83. They could also do

the same as my own teachers did... when I was a kid back in the 50s and 60s and the classes were quite large due to the Baby Boom...

The teacher would take a small group over to the other side of the room to maybe do remedial reading, leaving the rest of us to do other types of classroom work.

I don't know how big classes are these days, but even if they're as large as they were when I was in school, I don't see why that couldn't work.

Or maybe classroom helpers. Parent volunteers.


Also, talk about some things that should never have been taught and turned out to be pointless in terms of usefulness...a few times a month, or maybe even once a week, we would push our desks back against the walls and learn...

Square dance!!!

yay!


Then there was movie day, which I always suspected was just an excuse for the teacher to get some downtime, unless the movie projector messed up.


I dunno...For those in favor of doing away with cursive writing just because it's become/becoming more and more irrelevant in our daily lives (texting and keyboarding, etc), I would ask, well then what about basic math skills? Who needs to know how to add, subtract, etc. when we have affordable calculators now to do it all for us?

[KateGladstone]

55. What the NY TIMES left out ...

The closest that the NY TIMES article approached to giving a reason specifically for _cursive_ (as opposed to just a reason for handwriting in _any_ of its forms, rather than keyboarding 0) was in noting that some stroke survivors retain the ability to read cursive but lose the ability to read typefonts. Not mentioned: just as often, the ability to read cursive is lost, but the reading of type and/or print-writing is preserved.
The NY TIMES science writer who was interviewed, Maria Konnikova, also ignored research that discomfits the cheerleaders for cursive. It turns out (sources below) that:
• legible cursive writing averages no faster than print-writing of equal or greater legibility, [1]
• cursive does NOT objectively improve the reading, spelling, or other language use of students who have dyslexia and/or dysgraphia, [2]
and:
• the fastest, clearest handwriters are neither the “print”-writers nor the cursive writers. Highest speed and legibility are attained by those who join only some letters, not all of them—making the simplest joins, omitting the rest, using print-like shapes for letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree. [3, 4]
Why — here, as elsewhere throughout the media’s and legislatures’ discussions of handwriting — do studies which are headlined as supporting cursive actually say something different when one finds and reads the originals? Why does Ms. Konnikova, science writer, one-sidedly ignore whatever research on handwriting is not so easily obscured?

SOURCES:
[1] Arthur Dale Jackson. “A Comparison of Speed and Legibility of Manuscript and Cursive Handwriting of Intermediate Grade Pupils.”
Ed. D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1970: on-line at http://www.eric.ed.gov/?id=ED056015
[2] “Does cursive handwriting have an impact on the reading and spelling performance of children with dyslexic dysgraphia: A quasi-experimental study.” Authors: Lorene Ann Nalpon & Noel Kok Hwee Chia — URL: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/234451547_Does_cursive_handwriting_have_an_impact_on_the_reading_and_spelling_performance_of_children_with_dyslexic_dysgraphia_A_quasi-experimental_study
[3] Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May – June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf
[4] Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September – October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf

[GoCubsGo]

64. Yep. I can't imagine taking lecture notes with a laptop.

There's something about writing stuff down that helps commit it to memory, while typing it just doesn't do that. And, while I'm pretty fast at typing, I'm still way faster at writing. My handwriting is a hybrid of cursive and printing, mostly cursive.

[kentauros]

67. I can easily imagine taking notes with a keyboard.

My notes were always lousy and always way behind the instructor because I write so slowly. I can type faster than your average college instructor can ()or would) dictate to a class. At least then it will be legible, even if there are a few typing mistakes. If I could scan old notes for you, maybe you'd understand just how bad I was at taking notes

[GoCubsGo]

73. My handwriting sucks, too.

The faster I write, the worse it gets. But, the issue I have is that I'm a little bit dyslexic. If I'm using both hands, I tend to invert numbers and letters a lot. My right side works a lot faster than my left side. I don't have that issue if I'm only using one hand.

A friend of mine took shorthand when she was in high school. I guess they were pushing her to become a secretary. She eventually got a degree in biology, but later went on to become a CPA. She said knowing shorthand made it a lot easier to take notes in college. I kind of wish I had done that, too. I don't think they even teach shorthand anymore, thanks to voice recorders.

[Heidi]

71. I touch type about 150 wpm with high accuracy. However,

I appreciate being able to record a call/lecture/event an my smartphone and supplement it with legible handwritten notes about key points. I have the skills to do both and I will always err on the side of more choices than fewer choices. And, like you, I recall a great deal more of what I hand write than what I type. (I also take much greater care in framing my thoughts when I hand write than I do when I type.)

[TexasTowelie]

76. Really?

That means that you are tapping out 12.5 keystrokes per second! In typing a word is considered to take five keystrokes. That means that you have to type 750 keystrokes per minute. Divide that by 60 and that is how you get 12.5 keystrokes a second.

It's possible, but unless you are a professional secretary it isn't likely.

[TexasTowelie]

78. Okay.

I typed about 65 wpm on electric typewriters in high school and about 85 wpm in the short sprint drills. I've never had a test on a computer keyboard, but was a state calculator champion so that should provide a clue as to my speed and accuracy. I've also used a computer for over 25 years, but I don't think I'm anywhere near 150 wpm--maybe a 100, but not 150.

I'll give you kudos for shorthand, I never learned it.

[davidpdx]

16. Not sure I have an opinion either way

I was taught cursive in school and then took typing in high school. Granted with technology younger kids can use computers so teaching keyboarding (typing) is worthwhile. I'm not sure that you have to sacrifice one for the other. I guess my ass hurts from sitting on the fence on this one.

[Aerows]

18. I'd rather a child learn keyboarding than cursive

Okay, I'm biased. I was kept of the Honor Roll every year because I got bad dings on penmanship. I got a D once in penmanship, and A's everywhere else. I got switched in the first grade from a lefty to a righty so of course my writing sucked.

I print very cleanly, and surprisingly enough, I had a little side business doing calligraphy for a while after high school - because neither of those are cursive. I can't read my own writing in cursive, why on earth would I subject anyone else to it?

I CAN, I just suck severely at cursive.

[white_wolf]

20. I feel your pain.

My hand writing is pretty terrible, but honestly most of the work I did in middle and high school was typed anyway and in college I couldn't imagine a student turning in a hand-written paper or a teacher accepting one. I just think learning to type is a more useful skill than learning cursive.

[LostOne4Ever]

25. I want to say to teach both and keep cursive in schools

But not the horrid scribble that they teach in public schools. The Palmer method/D'Nealian script is horrid. It sacrifices the beauty of Spencerian script in the name of efficiency while at the same time making the letters in bizzare if not idiotic manner.




For instance, why the hell do they insist on making cursive lower case B's look like lower case L's? It is not that hard to make a loop and make a lower case B look like a b. And why the freaking hell did they make capital G's look like capital S's? The capital G bears no resemblance at all to its print counter part. And lowercase cursive r's dont look like print r's at all. And all the unecessary loops just make reading the script even worse.

If we are going to teach our kids cursive it should be something more like the Getty-Dubay script, where the cursive forms are based off the print forms and you can easily tell what letter is supposed to be what.



Having struggled with a crappy handwriting for years, I feel that had they taught a better script many of the issues I have had with my handwriting would not have materialized.

[Liberal_in_LA]

36. agreed. make time for both cursive and keyboarding

[mainstreetonce]

27. No morecthan 15 min a day

For the first three months of third grade. After that review practice in signing your name in cursive. Students should be allowed to print or type assignments. Keyboarding should be given more time.

No grades for cursive writing.

[HockeyMom]

28. I still write notes in Gregg Shorthand

when I want to take something down FAST. Cursive is SLOW in comparison. Forget printing. I never, ever print. Added advantage to shorthand is that NOBODY knows what I am writing. Is that Arabic? lol

My daughter taught herself cursive when she was 6 from copying my grocery lists. Is cursive really that difficult?

[NuttyFluffers]

29. i believe in the cruel oppression of diversified skills!

besides, you haven't lived until your hand cramps and your middle finger has its own bunion the size of a chickpea.

i also believe in music and art and etiquette and home ec and everything else should be in schools. the more agonizing the better. life is torture, temper their mettle young.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

43. Home Ec should be taught. It needs to be re-imagined, but it should be taught (nt)

[treestar]

31. I don't see that we need give up entirely on writing

One does not always have a device handy. Sometimes writing is better or faster.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

37. Nobody is suggesting we stop teaching manuscript

..at least not yet

[treestar]

39. I thought the purpose of cursive was that it was faster than printing

Another thing - in some languages they only write in cursive - Russian, for example. Probably any cyrillic language. Printing would be overly burdensome.

[Chan790]

53. I am. (suggesting we end cursive-education entirely.) n/t

[ananda]

32. Cursive is actually a dying art.

It's been dying for the last 20 years.

Around 15 or 20 years ago I had to stop using cursive with my students
because some of them couldn't read it.

I didn't mind printing, but it was so much slower.

[grilled onions]

33. Cursive Is An Art Form

We actually had an art "workshop" in high school where one of the segments was fancy writing using ink and writing in Old English.
One thing you can say is the students of decades ago had beautiful penmanship. I can't imagine many of our countries first formal documents written by students today in their primitive "script".
Is it a waste of time for today's students? I would think it would go according to what a student plans for a career. Just like many thought reading the classics in English class or having to name the different clouds or knowing the segments of a worm it depends if you feel it important to get to that career you are striving for.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

40. When you read the Constitution, do you look for a photo in the original written form

If you are like most of us, you look for a reprinted version in some printed typeface. Notwithstanding John Hancock's signature, I'd have been fine if the founding documents had come typeset from Ben Franklin's print shop.

I can tell you that both of my daughters (who are still in school) have been taught cursive. My older daughter tells me she never uses it, save for signing her name. Since signing documents seems to be going away in favor of PIN numbers, I question the cost/benefit unless one is -- as you say -- learning it as an art form in support of a career.

[Quantess]

34. I thought we wasted WAY TOO MUCH time practicing cursive handwriting.

I was good at it, but I found it to be boring to do and ugly to look at. The cursive they teach in schools is buttugly and not all that easy to read nor efficient to write.

Mostly it was a waste of time. I'm not saying we should get rid of cursive altogether, but keyboarding skills are more useful in life.

[Orrex]

35. I'm still mad that we got rid of Carolingian Miniscule.

Since graduating from high school, and excluding my signature, I've used cursive exactly zero times in my life.

In contrast, I have used my keyboard skills almost every day since graduating.

I'm left handed, and the hours and hours spent on cursive writing were a non-stop punishment. I'm also not convinced that cursive actually helps with mental development, at least not in a way that can't equally be achieved by practicing other skills.

[Quantess]

87. It's interesting that someone can be "still mad that" a certain font is no longer taught..?

In any case, I agree with you that cursive writing practice is mostly overkill and that way too much time is spent practicing cursive writing, which looks butt-ugly anyway!

[betterdemsonly]

38. It is pretty clear that the anticursive crowd are a loud minority

and mostly concentrated in the computer tech field, and generally the same people who support charter schools and blame teachers unions for every social ill.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

42. You are painting with a very broad brush there

Personally, I have the highest respect for teachers and public schools. However, we owe it to our children to give them skills for the future. Kids don't write in cursive. After they are taught the skill in third grade, they don't use it except to sign things. What they do is compose documents on desktops, laptops, and tablets -- and then print them. The same way folks do in offices, everywhere. Why waste time teaching them a dead skill.

[MillennialDem]

46. I am a professor and union member and find cursive worthless.

[MillennialDem]

47. I am 33 and grew up learning cursive - I find it worthless. I type and use my computer a lot and hav

e since I was given my first one at age 7.

I do print written stuff quite a bit. Including at work. I understand the use of the neural pathways in writing things down as opposed to typing them - this is also readily apparent when you're doing math. For some reason using your hands to work out a problem is much, much easier than solely trying to use your head.

That said - I see no point to cursive. Printing is fine and more legible. Even the best cursive can be a bit annoying to read. On a side note, at those stupid touch pad things at stores where you have to sign for credit card purchases I just scribble because there is no way the vast majority of the population can do a legible cursive signature on those. One time I just signed it Mickey Mouse for a goof.

[NightWatcher]

48. No one can read anyone else's cursive anyway. Teach printing and typing

[hunter]

49. "Learning" cursive was a horrible, horrible experience for me.

I never could make it "flow" in my mind; neither reading it nor writing it.

From third grade to eighth grade I had teachers who insisted on torturing me by requiring cursive. I'd get lower grades on exams because I couldn't decipher the questions in a timely manner, or write down my answers quickly enough.

My favorite teachers typed their exams and only demanded some kind of legibility in my answers. Sadly my handwriting is still a wretched childish scrawl (in college I'd bring at least three bluebooks for a one bluebook exam) but damn, I did try!

Nevertheless, I do respect elegant handwriting as an art form. We need more art in schools and big business needs to get the fuck out of education.

The purpose of schools is not to produce more compliant worker bees useful to the military-industrial complex. There is much to know beyond literacy, numeracy, and a basic understanding of the scientific method.

And yes, some of this knowledge will be dangerous to the existing fascist oligarchy.

The problem with our schools is not the lack of a "common core." What we lack is institutions that encourage a natural curiosity and enthusiasm for learning in our children.

Certainly literacy, numeracy, and a basic understanding of the scientific method ought to be the minimal standard of a high school education. But there are many ways to get there, all best determined in the interactions between the students and teachers who are respected and paid as important professionals.

[Chan790]

50. I've always felt that cursive should be abandoned.

Whether they replace it with keyboarding or not-at-all...let's kill cursive.

[KateGladstone]

54. What the promoters of cursive hope you'll never ask or learn ...

Handwriting matters — but does cursive matter? The research is surprising — almost as surprising as how often the research gets misquoted to appear in favor of cursive.

For instance, it has long been documented that legible cursive writing averages no faster than “printed” handwriting of equal or greater legibility.
More recently, it has also been documented that cursive does NOT objectively improve the reading, spelling, or language of students who have dyslexia/dysgraphia. (Sources for all research are listed below.)
Further research demonstrates that the fastest, clearest handwriters are neither the “print”-writers nor the cursive writers. The highest speed and highest legibility in handwriting are attained by those who join only some letters, not all of them – making only the simplest of joins, omitting the rest, and using print-like shapes for letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree.

Reading cursive matters, still — just because cursive exists where one cannot avoid the need to read it. However, even quite young children can be taught to read handwriting which they are not taught to replicate.

Reading cursive can (and should) be taught in just 30 to 60 minutes — even to five- or six-year-olds, once they read ordinary print.

In fact, now there’s even an iPad app to teach how: named “Read Cursive,” of course — http://appstore.com/readcursive (further info in the notes below). So why not simply teach children to _read_ cursive, along with teaching other vital skills — such as some handwriting style that’s actually typical of effective handwriters?

Educated adults increasingly quit cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers from all over North America were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority — 55 percent — wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling “print”-writing, others resembling cursive. When even most handwriting teachers do not themselves use cursive, why mandate it?

Cursive’s cheerleaders sometimes claim that cursive adds new brain cells — or that it instills proper etiquette, grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and/or (yes, I have heard this claimed) patriotism — or that it confers any number of blessings which are in fact no more frequently found among cursive’s learners and users than among the rest of us.

Some devotees of cursive allege that research supports their notions — citing studies that consistently prove to have been misquoted or otherwise misrepresented by the claimant.

(Consistently, studies claimed to support cursive actually say something different when anyone looks up the research. Some of the "cursive" studies were not even about handwriting in any form — the rest found advantages for handwriting over keyboarding, but no advantage for cursive over any of the other forms of handwriting.)

So far, whenever a devotee of cursive claims the support of research, one or more of the following things has become evident when others examine the claimed support:

/1/ either the claim provides no traceable source,

or

/2/ if a source is cited, it is misquoted or is incorrectly described (e.g., an Indiana University research study comparing print-writing with keyboarding is perennially misrepresented by cursive’s defenders as a study “comparing print-writing with cursive”),

or

/3/ the claimant _correctly_ quotes/cites a source which itself indulges in either /1/ or /2/.

What about signatures and cursive? Here in the USA, at least — where children grow up being told by their elders that “signatures require cursive to be legal” — cursive signatures in fact have no special legal validity over any other kind. (This is quite surprising to the occasional well-meaning schoolteacher who finds out that one of her students is the child of an attorney, and who asks that parent to visit the class and “please help me make sure that the students know the law requires cursive for signatures”!)

I suspect that questioned document examiners (specialists in the identification of signatures, the verification of documents, etc.) must run into the same teacherly stubbornness if they ever tell a teacher what they tell me: namely, that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest (including the “print-written” ones).
Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls: the rest, if they follow the rules of cursive at all, are fairly complicated: these make a forger’s life easy.
All writing, not just cursive, is individual — just as all writing involves neuronal,pathways and fine motor skills. That is why any teacher of small children can immediately identify (from the “print-writing” on unsigned work) which of 25 or 30 students produced it.

Mandating cursive in order to preserve the skill of handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines in order to preserve the art of tailoring.



SOURCES:

Handwriting research on speed and legibility:

/1/ Arthur Dale Jackson. “A Comparison of Speed and Legibility of Manuscript and Cursive Handwriting of Intermediate Grade Pupils.”
Ed. D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1970: on-line at http://www.eric.ed.gov/?id=ED056015

/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May – June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf

/3 Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September – October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf

Handwriting research on cursive’s lack of observable benefit for students with dyslexia/dysgraphia:

“Does cursive handwriting have an impact on the reading and spelling performance of children with dyslexic dysgraphia: A quasi-experimental study.” Authors: Lorene Ann Nalpon & Noel Kok Hwee Chia — URL: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/234451547_Does_cursive_handwriting_have_an_impact_on_the_reading_and_spelling_performance_of_children_with_dyslexic_dysgraphia_A_quasi-experimental_study

Zaner-Bloser handwriting survey: Results on-line at http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H2937N_post_event_stats.pdf

Background on our handwriting, past and present:
3 videos, by a colleague, show why cursive is NOT a sacrament —

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CURSIVE —

TIPS TO FIX HANDWRITING —

HANDWRITING AND MOTOR MEMORY
(shows how to develop fine motor skills WITHOUT cursive) —

Yours for better letters,

Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
[e-mail] • HandwritingThatWorks.com

[hunter]

56. I like this!

Thank You!

[kentauros]

89. Thanks for the great information!

I hope everyone else reads this, too

Had a look at your site as well. I don't think I'd need it, though, as I was taught printing (and graded on it) in hand-drafting classes some decades back. Eventually, I dropped cursive altogether, my print taking over for anything hand-written. It's still quite legible, yet I never got anything better than a B on it in drafting classes. Of course, drafting is all software now, so no more graphite-covered edges of my hand from pencil-drafting

[Algernon Moncrieff]

92. Interesting! - Thanks (nt)

[Quantess]

93. Thank you!

[politicat]

57. Skip print. Start with cursive or an Italianate script. Add keyboarding.

Neurologically, print forces a brain to stutter multiple times in each word -- the pause between the end of each letter and the beginning of the next. It breaks words down below their point of discrete meaning. The point of writing is to express thought and speech, which we do in words, not individual letters. It's also pointless to teach one method and just as the child is gaining competence, switch to something else. It's a system that sets kids up to fail. Since cursive has neurological benefits that print lacks, let's go with what provides the most bang for the buck earliest.

Five year old cursive won't be any neater or prettier than five year old print, but print is a skill that can be acquired after the muscle training of cursive. Neatness and legibility are the result of muscle training, not script style.

Italianates have most of the advantages of both script and print -- fluidity, legibility, speed -- but for some reason, parents find them weird, so those aren't getting traction.

[KateGladstone]

75. "Italianate' and defusing objections

I suspect that "Italianate" means the italic script(s) — Renaissance and modern examples appear on the "exemplars" page of the Society for Italic Handwriting web-site at http://www.italic-handwriting.org, and modem examples of italic handwriting teaching/materials appear throughout http://www.BFHhandwriting.com, http://www.handwritingsuccess.com, http://www.briem.net, http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com, http://www.italic-handwriting.org, http://www.studioarts.net/calligraphy/italic/hwlesson.html

As an italic teacher, the way I defuse possible objections that it looks unconventional is to demonstrate, point by point, how very close italic is to the handwriting that the fastest and most legible handwriters evolve for themselves anyway: what looks like a smooth blend of the best of conventional printed and cursive forms. If this is what the best handwriters end with, who not teach it to begin with?
Admittedly, with the youngest beginners I do not use even the relatively few joins that italic allows (neither do most italic teachers I know), so I teach kids to keep the pen or pencil always moving between letters: whether or not that movement happens to be on the paper, or off the paper, at any particular instant. (If you are somewhere that you are expected to teach/use print-writing, you and your students can build this "always moving" technique into the print-writing, and enjoy the results.)

[politicat]

79. Yes, italic script. Thanks.

My brain was refusing to cough up the correct word.

I'm in neuropsych, not education, so my interest is at best an interested bystander. The piece that irks me, and did back to my own elementary days, was the perceived waste of time spent in K-2 on print when I wasn't allowed to use it from third grade on, and watching my friends struggle because the arbitrary rules shifted. Many children fall out of love with school around third grade, or when cursive is introduced. I don't think that's a coincidence, since children are alert to fairness and the perception of disunity/disorganization. (The print/cursive shift feels like the teachers aren't coordinating.)

[Initech]

58. Cursive? Well I know hell and damn and bi...

[Codeine]

60. We just don't want to make kids do anything

that might prove remotely difficult. Why is that? What motivates an adult to think that learning-based challenges are to be avoided and tough educational tasks shirked?

I've seen this place argue against teaching kids algebra. Against teaching kids classic literature. And now against basic cursive handwriting! What gives? Do we want a generation that learned only that hard or non-intuitive stuff should be skipped?

[Nevernose]

62. Cursive is an archaic throwback to quills and fountain pens

That is the only advantage: so we don't have to use blotter paper every time we start a new letter, just when we start sentences.

There are no laws that say a legal signature must be in cursive.

The science says that writing things with a pencil is what aids memory, not the particular style of handwriting, block or cursive.

[alarimer]

65. There is evidence that writing things down makes you remember them better.

Not that you have to write in cursive, but decent penmanship is important so at least you can read your notes later.

Writing is preferable to note-taking on a computer or other device.

I guess cursive is important for signatures, and may be a little faster than block printing.

[Jamastiene]

68. Teach cursive AND keyboarding/typing.

I wish that had been a specific option in your poll.

[Xyzse]

80. Teach both... Proper keyboarding techniques could be learned.

Besides, sooner or later, depending on the user, they would change the keyboard.

I mean, I love the QWERTY right now, but there are proponents of an even faster and more efficient method.
The French have their AVERTY and other stuff, while cursive will always be around.

Sorry, I guess it is the scribe in me talking.

[randome]

82. Cursive is dying out because of brain evolution.

Our minds are changing because our minds created technology that changes our minds...it's a vicious circle!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[IronLionZion]

84. The cursive they taught in school looks and is so terrible

that I straight up changed it for my signature to make it look better and clearer. And of course my signature is the only time I ever use cursive. Things get really interesting when an American finds out for the first time that other English language countries have different ways of writing in cursive, like India for example.

I prefer typing for most situations. Its a good skill to be able to type quickly, and I learned it on my own.

I suppose it would be useful to teach both because its always good to have multiple skills. But if I had to choose one, I wish they had taught me typing instead of cursive. I never learned shorthand either.

[ileus]

85. Engineering print is the only way to go.

[Boom Sound 416]

86. Who says the keyboard is here to stay

But I would wager pens are.

[haele]

88. Teach it as part of art in grades 1 - 3.

Let the kids write (or type) their graded writing assignments, but teach cursive as part of the art of writing. Start with block letters in kindergarten or grade 1, then go on to simple cursive (2nd grade), then fanciful, expressive cursive (where you can make swooshes at the beginning and ends of words and sentances with nib pens that look like leaves or trains or musical instruments).

It's excellent for eye-hand coordination, and being able to recognize what cursive letters looks like helps young people when they start learning to use primary source documents in research when they get older.

Of course, if all you want is to teach children how to produce something rather than the whats and whys of life - how to question contemplate, and understand, then stick with keyboarding. Teach them how to be automated, fungible (i.e., interchangeable and disposable) tools in a workforce.

I still sometimes doodle in cursive just for the joy and beauty of the loops and curves. And I never, ever, dotted my "i"s with hearts - I usually dotted them with eyes, complete with eyelashes and the occasional bloodshot whites...

Haele

[kentauros]

90. In that case, it seems like it would be better to forego cursive

and straight to calligraphy. It's got all of the swoops and fanciful bits to it as with cursive, and, there are multiple types of calligraphy, unlike most cursive.

Plus, art programs like Corel Painter come with calligraphy pens. Of course, such art programs work best when you have a stylus instead of a mouse to make the art. Here's something I just threw together from what little I remember after teaching myself calligraphy during art classes (I use a Wacom Intuos graphics tablet) :



Painter is a pretty versatile program, allowing one to practice things like calligraphy before going on to ink pen and paper. Once you know the strokes, you can do it whether on the screen or on the page, or vice versa

[bigwillq]

91. I say keep.

The more you know the better, imo.