Posted on 03/15/2014 7:47:09 PM PDT by Olog-hai
When kids put pen to paper, chances are they are printing.
But Toronto’s Catholic board, hand-wringing over the handwriting skills of its students, is now looking to make sure all of them learn cursive.
Parents have told her their children can’t sign their name, “or they have been handed a handwritten note and can’t read it,” said Trustee Ann Andrachuk. She proposed a recent motion—unanimously approved—asking board staff how to reintroduce cursive in all schools, and how early children should start learning it. […]
Across Canada and the United States, concerns have been raised that cursive is becoming a lost art in an age where keyboards and keypads rule. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thestar.com ...
I never was very good at cursive writing. I never used it for note taking in college. For decades the only thing for which I use cursive is my signature.
My father had us practicing our penmanship for about three years every day after school for about 15 minutes when we were just beginning cursive.
HE had a BEAUTIFUL script. I still us his fancy "A" when I can.
Calligraphy was popular a hundred years ago, and we surely could benefit from learning how to write eloquently.
A monument to fast food, GMOs, glyphosate, and hormone-treated livestock.
My father is like you. The only examples I've ever seen of his cursive writing is his signature. Everything else is in a very bold and distinctive print. My mother is the exact opposite, her cursive is right out of the 1940's textbook she used to learn it.
I just closed on a house a couple of weeks ago. I normally write my signature with my first name, middle initial, and last name. One document I had to sign was different variations of my name. I had to sign my name without the middle initial. I only use that variant online. Another variant was spelling out my whole name. That was hard, because I had to think about how to write the letters of my middle name. A couple of years ago when I got my passport renewed, I aske how I should sign my name. The official at the local post office told me to sign my passport the way I normally sign documents.
Latin cursive!
“I have noticed how many younger people print when they should be writing...OMG! how stupid, how backward! God help these kids and their parents...”
I work with many who never write as part of their work (both low-skilled workers and highly skilled); that probably plays a role in this.
That is beautiful writing by your great grandfather, cripplecreek. I particularly like the way he formed the capital letter “A” in April.
Ir’a an old observation, but one wonders whether there is a class in medical school in which they teach the future doctors to write illegibly.
After eight years of 1960's elementary school cursive drills. my writing was still a barely legible scrawl.
My intelligence and work ethic was good enough to earn me a four-year college scholarship, and my fine motor skills good enough for me to build prizewinning model planes, so I don't think it was me. It was the cursive.
Far better for me is Getty-Dubay italic writing, which I taught myself from the books at the link and to which I have referred several others with success.
I never understood why they didn’t teach some sort of universal shorthand instead of cursive. Cursive is faster than printing, but if that’s the point why not teach something that’s waaay faster than both?
Freegards
You end up with logographs and possibly syllabograms with shorthand. Although they take up less space, you need way more of them, i.e. to represent unique sounds and words.
Right, it would be like learning a completely different very fast way of writing the language you speak. Instead of learning two very similar styles of writing the language you speak. Or am I missing something?
FReegards
My son liked to print. (Early 70's) His teacher told him he was neurotic, too.
My granddaughter prints...I'm waiting to hear "the word".
When will teachers stop criticizing kids when they are doing absolutely nothing wrong? That's one of the problems with teachers...
All of my sons complained and complained about learning cursive. (lol) The eldest can write cursive, but he rarely does. He does print in a very nice font. But, because he’s always done well in his studies - scored high on the SAT, etc. - I eventually stopped insisting on cursive writing from that son. I still keep telling him that cursive is quicker, though.
Not long ago, I told my sons that, if something should happen to me, I’ve left letters behind in a journal for them to read. Written in cursive, of course.
Because I transferred to a Catholic school, where they had already been taught to write in cursive, from a public school where they had not, I had some learning and catching up to do. It was so enjoyable and it gave me a sense of pride to write as beautifully as I could. That was back in 1951. As I’ve aged, my writing has become shaky,and so I print instead, except, of course, when I sign my name. At this stage of my life, both forms of communication have been very useful to me.
I like that! My handwriting at this stage of my life is shaky and my right hand is arthritic, so I must print, other than signing in cursive when I sign my name. So, I guess, in the end printing has become my friend, but how I miss the days when I devoted myself to beautiful penmanship, as the Nuns had taught me in 1951.
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