[wintertime]

Those who do have trouble with their own legible handwriting were taught to **print** before learning cursive. Unfortunately, the strokes they were taught to use for printing are **opposite** in many letters than those used in cursive. This is the fault of the teaching method and completely **AVOIDABLE**. Children from the very first day in school should be taught to use the exact **same** strokes ( in the same direction) in printing that they will use later in cursive. The transition to cursive is then seamlessly EASY!!!

Cursive handwriting is a simple skill that is quickly learned by children. If coupled with another school activity it doesn't need to take time from other subjects. My homeschoolers learned cursive and they were learning to read and they used it when practicing the spelling words. Writing words out manually helps in memorization.

I simply don't see this as an “either learn this skill but not that” type of situation.

Finally....When I ask people who are dead set against teaching cursive to children, I find that they never fully mastered the skill. It was a source of frustration for them in school because they were IMPROPERLY taught the wrong strokes in printing and they very understandably had a very hard time reversing the direction of the strokes in cursive.

Given the extremely **minimal** amount of time it takes to teach children cursive ( if done properly when children are first learning to print), it is worth the **minor** amount of effort. It is nice skill, and many see it as a sign of refinement and education. Now how could that hurt on the job or anywhere else in life?

By the way....Knowing a little bit of calligraphy is sometimes useful as well!

[discostu]

you have to learn print first. Print matches what you see in the real world, the first thing you’re going to learn to write has to be the first thing you’re going to learn to read.

There’s no reason to make a transition to cursive. It was always pointless, it never actually accomplished anything, it was just there to look pretty. It’s the sorority girl of communication methods. You could write something in print just as well to aid memorization, actually it would aid it more because then what you wrote actually looks like the original version of the word you’re trying to memorize.

The only reason it’s “learn this or that” is because the “that” in question is completely and utterly useless and probably should never have been taught in the first place. The only place cursive could ever belong is an art class, because the only point it has ever had was being pretty. Pretty is fine for art class, pretty is without point in the rest of school.

In the modern age of fonts calligraphy is a completely useless skill. I can pop any calligraphy you can do into a font and replicate it in Word in seconds.