You know, people get damn *emotional* about cursive writing!

[conuly]

And they say such silly things. If you want your preferred writing style to be taught, try not to defend it with gems like "You need it to sign your name". Not only is that not true, but it's easily avoidable - people could learn cursive just for namesigning and not for anything else! Alternatively, learning to type isn't something that you can't do after a certain age. Unless your kid has serious motor control issues they can probably wait until they're 10 or 15 to do it, they really *don't* need to learn when they're six... although this article is fascinating, I must admit!

When I was in elementary school, the other gifted first grade class learned cursive that year. The rest of us learned in the third grade. I guess they sorta re-learned it? I didn't learn it at all, for various reasons. (A word to the wise? Attempting to bully a child into learning by saying they'll "need to know this next year" and "won't pass if they don't know it" is just not helpful. Especially when it's not true. My seventh grade English teacher should note that by high school (her personal benchmark) all my teachers didn't care and liked stuff typed anyway.)

And then we moved to Staten Island, where I became acquainted with a totally different style of penmanship than the one I'd failed to learn in Brooklyn. I'm not sure if the people using it developed it on their own, or if my school in Brooklyn just taught differently than their schools here, but it was different. No slant, and very round. The general shapes of the letters are the same (I'm having a fun time on Google looking at different examples of cursive script as taught for handwriting in different countries), but they're all round. It's very neat, and it's very careful, and it's a pain in the butt to read because all the letters look alike, like variations on os and as. (Picture that as an Ariel a, thanks.)

I think I could spend all day doing this - but! I just woke up (I had intestinal difficulties and didn't make it to bed until the birds started chirping) and wish to go *do* something today.

If you want, though, I'd appreciate images of your own handwriting (cursive or otherwise) and your handwriting if you were writing for a strict teacher. Just for my own edification. Location, times, etc. are useful.

Oh, also, a random video I found on the subject of overcrowding, from the 50s! It's absolutely fascinating for reasons I can't quite articulate, though surely the fact that "classes in boiler rooms" is a popular (and not altogether non-existent) boogeyman in NYC today helps with that.

Comments

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

I learned cursive in the second grade. By my senior year in high school, my brain had all but blocked out how to READ it, let alone write it. =P

[firingneurons.livejournal.com]

I never learned to write in cursive effectively, the words always ended up taking up 2-3 times as much space. In high school and shortly thereafter I had a sort of printing where I just didn't lift the pen entirely resulting in this weird half and half and if I wasn't careful it was incredibly hard to read.

Sometime after I turned 21 I started writing in allCAPs (larger CAPs for upper case, half-sized for lower case), this was simply for clarity, as I said, my printing was none too neat. Now I've gotten used to writing this way and the curly curvy-ness of regular lower case seems so strange I can't do it naturally anymore.

[conuly]

I had a sort of printing where I just didn't lift the pen entirely resulting in this weird half and half and if I wasn't careful it was incredibly hard to read.

My writing is largely like that too.

On the plus side, my biggest psychological barrier to cursive (the letter forms don't make sense!) was lifted after years of that when I independently replicated some cursive forms in my own handwriting. NOW they make sense.

[firingneurons.livejournal.com]

Exactly the same for me!! I think Ss and Rs always confused me the most. But after my weird writing style developed they make a lot more sense!

[conuly]

I wish they'd just explained! I asked, and they didn't answer me, they just said "that's the way it is" like that should be good enough!

I had enough issues with writing that I didn't need one more.

[conuly]

It was s and r for me, too. And capital Q, though that makes sense now.

[firingneurons.livejournal.com]

Capital letters never did, and still don't make any sense.

I just loved all the empty 'your high school teachers won't accept work that *isn't* in cursive!!' Even then my thoughts were along the lines of 'Well I'll wait and ask *them* about it.'

[conuly]

That was on top of several years of being outright lied to on the homework front. "We won't pass you if you don't do your homework" was, every year, followed by "Well, we passed you, but you need to shape up or you won't pass NEXT year".

What did I learn? Ultimately that my teachers were liars and that I didn't have to do my homework. (I had multiple homework issues as well, but they didn't help any.)

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

So why DOES the Q look like a 2?

Edit: And even when writing in cursive, I tend to write the capital letters in a print/cursive hybrid of my own, lol.

[conuly]

My guess (and this is the one that makes sense) is that it used to be a full Q but people got lazy and started starting it at the top instead of at the bottom, which means it's not a full circle anymore.

Didja know there's a new Tortall book out?

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, lol.

Is it a Beka Cooper one? I haven't read hers. They didn't grab my attention.

I'm anxiously awaiting a new Circle book, though!

[conuly]

Yes it is, and nice and heavy too.

A new circle book, now... oh, that'd rock.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, bleh, Beka Cooper bleh. :-p

Yeah, I forgot what the next one is to be called, though. I'm sure I could look it up but I'm lazy haha. But Melting Stones was awesome, so.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Seth is writing in cursive now, and his capital S cracks me right the hell up. XD

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Handwriting (cursive) is a dying art, and people get upset when a skill they labored over is discarded.

I myself saw a lot of that round-round-round writing from the girls in my class, but my own writing (no pics, sorry) came out pointy, much like my mother's. (Her handwriting is damn near copperplate, from a childhood when inkwells were still standard--though the kids were refilling fountain pens rather than dipping nibs.)

I'm probably a bit biased since I also do calligraphy and copperplate, and I've even invented a font myself. (I blended futhark runes with cursive letterforms and came up with cursive runic, which I can handwrite--slowly--and which probably no one but myself can read because nobody ever tried to learn it.)

[leora.livejournal.com]

In first grade I learned to read and write and we learned print. In second grade, because I was in the gifted class, we learned cursive, but we didn't have to use it (the regular starting year was third). In third grade we relearned cursive and had to use it. In fourth grade we went back over cursive and had to use it. In fifth grade we went back over cursive and had to use it.

In sixth grade all of my teachers insisted that everything be printed or typed for legibility and I never had to use cursive again. Nor was I allowed to use cursive in school for any school purposes again.

But cursive was useful to me and served me well. I always had security issues. It was hard for me to protect my stuff from privacy invasions. So, the diary I really didn't want to be read I wrote in cursive with a pen that bled a bit and wrote on both sides of each page. My penmanship is and always has been awful. You have to really, really want to read that diary to read it. My print is reasonably legible though. So, cursive works as a decent light code.

Personally, I would probably have gotten more use out of being taught Braille than cursive, but that wasn't offered. It would even have been useful if I didn't have vision issues, since I often wanted to read in low-light conditions, such as on car rides at night. Plus it would have worked as a decent encoding system for light security purposes the same way script does with the added bonus that I'd have been better prepared when I lost a bunch of my vision.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Can you read Braille now? How well? (For example, just Grade 1, some Grade 2, or all of Grade 2?)

[leora.livejournal.com]

Some grade two and I've really been slacking on my Braille studying. A lot of things have been really eating my time, mainly real life social, but also health issues.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

OOOhhhh speaking of typing with all 10 fingers (something I really need to tutor myself on, I know I cheat quite a bit though I do better than many), can you maybe bring your laptop up and start teaching Ana how to type properly soon?

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

I remember learning it in 3rd or 4th grade, meanwhile Seth learned it in the first half of the school year (so, the K half, since they changed his grade in January). I was like 'EXCUSE ME WHAT CURSIVE IN KINDERGARTEN? REALLY?!", and yet...yes, cursive in kindergarten. :( They grow up so fast.

I need to take a picture of how he insists on writing everything now, lol.

[(Anonymous)]

Outside of the United States, in Europe and Africa (probably South America and Asia as well), they teach cursive starting at 5 years old. But the results are not nearly as nice as when it is started when the children are a bit older.

As a cursive teacher, it's best to not wait beyond third grade. In second or third grade it makes the kids feel really grown up. But if you wait until older elementary grades, they no longer care about that "grown-up" feeling.

Eileen
Dedicated Elementary Teacher Overseas (in the Middle East)
elementaryteacher.wordpress.com

[conuly]

This is the whole reason I posted on your blog at all, you know. You never did finish that series on cursive language teaching!

Now, I don't know if you said it or if somebody else said it, but I read somewhere that in many places they don't teach penmanship as such, they just show how the letters look and not an efficient way to form them...?

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Oh! Thank you. We're in the US, in New York specifically. And it just seemed so ODD to me that they taught it so early. :)

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

I think we learned it in 2nd or 3rd grade ... I know in 4th grade they wouldn't accept our homework if it wasn't in script, and then after that, no one cared.

I have at least 3 distinct styles of cursive: the one I use normally looks almost exactly like I was taught (then again my mother *was* a very strict English teacher!); then there is one that looks almost like my printing but connected that I use when I write fast; when I'm upset my handwriting is very small and jagged and looks a lot like my father's.

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

I learned "basic manuscript" in kindergarten/1st, "loopy slanted manuscript" in 2nd or 3rd, then cursive in 3rd or 4th. I used the cursive as force of school habit until about 8th grade, upon which I adopted the handwriting style of my crush at the time (creepy and silly, but it felt more natural) - a quick but very legible all-caps (with "caps-caps" bigger than the other lettering). Since by then most official assignments were done on computer and printed, my style didn't matter much. Later I learned that my handwriting had a "hereditary" element - both my father and maternal grandfather write in all caps, very civil-engineering style. That's still my main style today.

However, I do sign in very sloppy semi-stylized fast cursive. And I have a HUGE range of handwriting styles to suit my mood and situation, sometimes finding a need to temporarily revive the abandoned cursive. I've even had this talent used for semi-nefarious purposes, like forging my boss' signature (on her own insistence) to the point it was indistinguishable side-by-side.

I can also write in symbol font (neglected and somewhat forgotten now - my journals from the late 90s were symbol) as well as my own 9-square secret lettering that only one other person ever figured out (quite simple though if you see how it's done). I also made up a legible "wispy caps" font that I use on occasion artistically (see icon).

If you want scanned samples, remind me and I'll try to get a page of them up for you.