Stop Teaching Cursive Writing in the Classroom

http://www.spectacle.org/298/auren.html ^

[Brookhaven]

Print, not cursive, won the handwriting battle

By Auren Hoffman

Mr. Nancetti, my third grade teacher, was wrong.

Mr. Nancetti claimed that script, or "cursive", handwriting was much easier and faster to write. He was wrong.

Writing in script is slower, messier, harder to read, and rare. What percent of the population writes in script? I doubt that it is very high. I can't remember the last note I received in "cursive" writing.

With typing now the norm rather than the exception, print handwriting will be forever dominant over script. Gone are the days when z's look like y's or when n's and m's are barely distinguishable.

I used to tease my mother that she did not know how to write in "cursive" -- she had never learnt it in school. But now I envy her for not spending time learning a soon-to-be defunct dialect of handwriting.

It could be that "graffiti," the handwriting style introduced by US Robotics' (now 3com) Pilot, will soon overtake script as the number 2 form of penmanship in the United States.

The biggest problem with teaching kids cursive writing is it takes the place of ensuring better penmanship. I can't tell you how many times I get notes from co-workers, colleagues, and friends that I can't read. Important messages are indecipherable and beautiful post-cards contain cryptic messages. If people would focus, just a little bit, on improving their handwriting rather than learning a new handwriting style, messages would be a little clearer.

So my suggestion is to scrap cursive writing altogether. Stop wasting third graders time when you could be teach more math, spelling, reading, government, or typing. Getting rid of cursive writing won't make the world a significantly better place or solve world hunger or create lasting peace, but it will ensure that written documents will be more legible. It will be a very tiny step toward a more productive society -- and we won't waste months of our children's life having to learn a handwriting style that is virtually useless.

Summation: stop teaching cursive writing in the classroom and stop encourage people to write neatly in print.

[Rodney King]

My signature would not really be described as cursive, it is a jumbled mass of squiggly lines.

[coydog]

I'm female and my general handwriting sort of veers between cursive and printing, sometimes within the same sentence. Fun. Wow.

[blue jeans]

Ridiculous.

Cursive is faster... no doubt about it. You don't have to keep picking up the writing instrument.

However, it's much easier to be sloppy (because you're going at a much higher speed). I think it boils down to a tradeoff between speed and legibility.

My daughter is in a class where they tried to started to teach them the basics of touch typing last spring (and that was in 1st grade). That was a little ludicrous, however I'm all for teaching em to type by 5th grade or so.

But as for cursive.... I think to try to repeal that is akin to trying to get the fluoride out of our water.

[InvisibleChurch]

anything that is too tough to teach is not worth teaching ... yes public school system , dilute your education system even further ; my homeschooled kids write in cursive , oh the time they are wasting ... (hee hee - Go Hope Christian School Bunnies!!!!)

[babyface00]

I agree. I'm the product of private Catholic elementary school. Cursive was just another class, and we didn't have to spend that much time on it. There wasn't a question of learning it - it was expected of us and our parents insured we learned it. When I went to public high school, I was quite amazed at the pathetic quality of penmanship from my public-educated peers.

I happen to be able to type with the best of them, yet there are still times when writing a note is important, both in business and in personal life, and cursive is much faster than printing if you've developed any skill at it.

Plus, nothing beats a personal, hand-written (in cursive) letter for writing a thank you, love letter, or other important correspondence.

[Carol Roberts]

I like the idea of dropping cursive writting in school. I'm just not sure it's a good idea. Other than my signature, I haven't used cursive writing since the mid 1970s.

[wjeanw]

The reason why most US child do not make the transition to print is that learning to print in the first place is problematic. Up until Dewey's restructing of the public schools, all children learned to write cursive FIRST. Children in Europe today continue this practice. (For example, when we were living in the Netherlands, my eldest son learned to write beautiful cursive in the first grade.) However, Dewey was trying to reduce the level of literacy in the country (first by discarding phonetics, then by discarding easy cursive called Spencerian). If you doubt the accuracy of the last statement, I recommend Samuel Blumenfeld's IS PUBLIC SCHOOLING NECESSARY? or John Gatto's THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION.

[OldFriend]

LOL...way to go. We are now at a point where if something is not easily learned, let's say in five minutes, then it's too much trouble. Nice to know you are homeschooling.

[OldFriend]

Well, fits right in with the movement to eliminate all testing. Why not just send the kids out to play! FORGET SCHOOL.

[Mikerow]

As a courier for Fedex I can assure you, that when most people sign their names it is indecipherable.

[Prodigal Son]

Really? Never asked to sign your name?

Homer Simpson says "Doh!"

That is an excellent point. Although to be fair, after having had to sign my name too many times in the military, my signature looks nothing like it did when I got out of school and isn't legible (as far as being able to tell what the scrawls actually say). It does look like the scrawl on the back of my credit card, however, and store clerks seem to be generally happy with it when they compare the two.

[Rum Tum Tugger]

My six year-old daughter taught herself how to write in cursive.

[francisandbeans]

My writing is a mix of both....Capital letters are block print (except T and F) and the rest is cursive. I have several friends who use block or cursive exclusively. One friend intermixes capital and lower case letters quite liberally. It ends up looking like hacker speak.

[Lady Heron]

Actually I taught my youngest cursive only. He sees print everyday and can write it but was never taught it. He has great handwriting unlike my middle son who was taught print, connective print, and cursive in school. His handwriting is so messy that you can not read it and once I started homeschooling him in the 3rd grade I was never able to fix it.

[monkey]

Our robot descendants will scratch their plastic domes wondering what we had in mind with the ridiculous cursive version of "Q".

[boris]

How could doctors write illegible prescriptions?

This proposal would cause permanent injury to our nation's health-care system!

--Boris

[TomSmedley]

My 6-year-old is doing just fine learning it at home.
Sneaky homeschool bump!

My home school kids learned to type by age 7. To this day, their hand lettering looks as though it froze at that point! (I've heard nice things about "cursive italic" and consider learning it myself...)

[Grut]

I gave up cursive when people started assuming I was a Doctor.

[ben richards]

she had never learnt it in school

There are some things that weren't learnt by this writer in school.

[dawn53]

I homeschool, and we've used print, cursive, and italic in that order.

I think learning cursive is important because you will no doubt need to read someone else's cursive someday.

However, when I look at most folks writing, I see a mix of different styles, so I see nothing wrong with developing one's own style as long as it's legible.

And I will agree that typing is invaluable in this day and age. Every child should learn it by Middle School. Just hire Mavis Beacon and she'll come to your home and give you lessons, LOL.