Cursive Letters are Doomed in Many American schools

Aloha from Hawaii. I am on our Communication Committee in a small independent school. We are having this same conversation!!! I teach in our multi-age 2/3 class...so this year we have decided to let our students choose between working on italic or cursive...but still wonder....what are the main objections and are we teaching an ancient form of writing for these future citizens...or are we thinking of it as an artform??? Any good articles for my committee...Mahalo...Maile Ostrem

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Maile Ostrem - I work nationwide with schools and others making decisions about handwriting. Most of them find Italic the best choice by far. For more about this, please contact me (via my web-site link which you should see near this message). I can also put you in touch with a colleague of mine in Kaneohe, Hawai'i - Sherry Matsumoto, who strongly favors Italic as do I, and who has worked with quite a few folks on handwriting!
Let me hear from you soon!

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Unless I'm doing something for my 3-y-o, everything I write is in cursive. I am more bothered by the fact that kindergarten and first grade teaches children to print letters that look more cursive than print.

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Everytime I write anything that is more than a word or two -- a thank you note, a note to my husband, a letter to family members who don't use their computers all that much -- I write in cursive. And despite the fact that we have a total of 6 working computers in our home (both my husband and I work in IT), the first draft of any of my short stories or essays are always written longhand.

I think it is incredibly sad that schools are starting to phase out writing cursive. Writing anything extenisve in print is much more laborious, and only further discourages kids from using pen and paper rather than a computer.

There are times that a hand-written note, rather than an e-mail or word processor document, is truly the way to go.

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I teach 3rd and 4th grade and ask myself this question every time I give a penmanship lesson. I do it because I'm supposed to abd because the 5th grade teacher expects the kids to do their spelling tests in cursive, but it is a valid point that it is becoming obsolete. I spend as much time each week teaching keyboarding as penmanship; which is more important?

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Hi,

I wrote about the decline of penmanship from a different perspective -- that of someone whose own penmanship stinks because I use the computer so much.

Here's a link:

http://tinyurl.com/dmvub

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A case for cursive/penmenship:
"Not important", many would say. I would ask if you have taken a look at a youth's handwriting recently. I think you would reconsider. More is learned in handwriting than simply the "function" of it. One learns pride for neatness. I think that the computer generated writing de-emphasizes grammer, and even content. I often find careless mistakes when reading online writings. I plan on teaching my children and they will surely learn the art of cursive, along with computer skills. They CAN both be taught.

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I am of the mind that the hand-eye coordination and hard wiring of the brain that occurs through learning things like penmanship will be sorely missed by kids in the next few generations. Kids may evolve to develop these skills in other ways that are more technological in nature, but for now, it seems kids who spend an inordinate amount of time with handheld devices and television, etc. are at a disadvantage overall.

I almost always write in cursive and it still makes me feel satisfied when someone tells me they like my penmanship. :)

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I went to a Catholic School, and had to write letters over and over again in my notebook. Even now, as I look back at those notebooks, I feel a sense of pride at the lettering. I feel that cursive is elegant and should still be taught in school. If my child's school did not teach cursive, I would teach it to my child on my own. (I do not yet know if My childs school teaches cursive as he is only 4).

Anne

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The principal at the school where I teach also thinks we shouldn't be teaching cursive writing. (It doesn't appear on any Texas Assessment of Knowledge & Skills - TAKS - test, so why waste time.) However, the argument from some of the teachers is this: 1) If you look at a child's developmental writing at ages 3-4, the naturally write in loops and whorls. Dyslexia research shows that many kids who are dyslexic find it easier to read and write in cursive than print. My own experience with 5th graders leads me to believe that, after they get past the point of remembering how to form the letters, my students who are usually of lower ability find writing in cursive easier than writing using print letter. 2) At the middle school, high school, and college levels, note taking is faster if one is able to write in cursive than in print. Block letters take longer to form than letters that naturally lead into one another. 3) The writing portion of the SAT requires the applicant to write in cursive (this was as of 2 years ago.)

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I guess I was probably one of the first kids to not remember life without a computer. I learned how to type long before I could write. For me, cursive was more about art than anything useful and it was what you used for your "official" signature on your library card.

As far as notetaking goes, I've had better luck with my odd shorthand mix of printed letters, greek, math symbols, arrows, and diagrams when I had to go back and read my notes again. I started taking notes on a laptop my freshman year of college and haven't looked back. I wish I could have made the switch sooner. I could never take notes fast enough when I was using pen and paper, because I was a lefty. (My school district and college had a thing for those tiny chair-desks with the writing area on the right side.)

I'm not sure if my son's school will teach cursive or not. If they don't, he will have to learn it. The only use outside of signatures I have for it is when I dealt with older clients who preferred a handwritten note. I count being able to read and write cursive as a useful business skill. Having pride in the quality of your work should taught in all areas of your life, not just cursive writing.

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I thought learning cursive was a waste of time way back when I was in elementary school. We already knew how to write, why spend so much time teaching everyone how to write a different way? Then we were required to write in cursive for many school assignments, and as soon as it wasn't required anymore, almost everyone went back to print. If parents want their kids to learn cursive, they are certainly free to teach it themselves. The schools need that time to teach more useful information. I don't know a single person who still uses cursive, but everyone I know, from my 83 year old grandma to my 2 year old daughter, uses a keyboard. That is what should be taught early-- it will be much more beneficial to our kids.

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Should we teach people how to shoe a horse, when they should know how to put a tire on a car? I think that, while cursive may be pretty and elegant, we should now focus on internet etiquette. It is important that we teach them to type correctly (that you is spelled "you", not "u").

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Interestingly I just blogged about this two days ago. There have been studies that showed positive effects on the brain when children learn cursive.

Also, when I was applying for jobs (I'm a work at home Mom now) I was taught to always follow up a job interview with a thank you note. I wonder what a prospective employer would think about a printed note?

Cursive isn't just attractive. It's a shame that our society forgets sometimes that just because something is old it's not automatically redundant or obsolete.

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As a dyslexic who found cursive far harder than printing (which had its own vast difficulties), and who eventually became a (self-remediated) handwriting instruction/remediation consultant, I'd like to remind folks here of some important facts:

/1/
Handwriting stil matters - if only because we all, at times, have to communicate in permanent fashion without an electric power supply (e.g., the SAT exam now requires a timed *handwritten* essay, with points lost for illegible work) ... *but* "handwriting" does not have to mean "cursive" (or "printed" either, for that matter).
Research done through the 1990s by learning-disabilities specialist Virginia Graham and handwriting specialist Steve Berninger established conclusively that the fastest and most legible handwriters do not use "cursive" - neither do they "print." The highest-speed, highest-legibility handwriters overwhelmingly tend to join some but not all letters (making the easiest, most rapid joins and skipping the rest) and tend generally to combine the best elements of printed and cursive writing-styles (e.g., by using streamlined but essentially print-like formations for those letters that differ greatly between printing and cursive.) [Citation available on request.]
/2/ The people who claim that "research supports cursive," "research says cursive makes you smarter," or whatever (I have seen numerous such claims, phrased in numerous ways) have never managed to show the actual research-studies, give citations, or even name the authors of the alleged studies when asked to do so.
/3/ No law in the USA or anywhere else (as far as lawyers and I can discover) requires using a particular writing-style (such as "cursive") for a signature. Your signature belongs to you, not to your penmanship teacher; legally, your written signature consists of whatever way *you* habitually write your name when using it for legal purposes (such as signing a contract, writing a check, registering to vote, etc.) The notion that "signatures require cursive" apparently started with elementary-school teachers who realized that telling this untruth could effectively persuade seven- and eight-year-olds to replace their existing printed handwriting (established by the kids' previous teachers) with cursive that the new teacher wanted them to suddenly learn and do instead.

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I don't really care which writing style schools focus on, but I wish they would pick one and skip it. When I was in first grade, I was two standard deviations behind in gross and fine motor skills, so being forced to learn to write twice made me seem dumb. If we want our kids to learn cursive, why don't we teach them cursive to begin with. I currently write notes in horrid cursive and letters and other documents to be seen by others in legible but childish cursive. I keyboard with onehand only, because I never learned to use a QWERTY keyboard efficiantly. For today's kids, who have to learn both keyboarding and handwriting to communicate effectively, one handwriting style should be plenty.

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