My mom sent me this article on the decline of cursive handwriting

[conuly]

http://www.parentdish.com/2011/01/21/cursive-handwriting/

Nevermind that they've been writing this article again and again since I was a kid, people never tire of talking about how Western civilization is about to fall because schools in America no longer emphasize cursive.

The comments are a morass of the usual fear-mongering:

OMG! If you don't write in cursive, you can't cash a check!!!

Yes, you can. There is no law, no, none requiring you to use any particular style when signing your name. The closest I can come to finding such a thing is a voter registration page for Ohio saying that sign means a "cursive style" mark unless you don't regularly use a cursive style mark in your business affairs, in which case your habitual mark in your own handwriting is what is desired, and that furthermore you can make an X if you can't sign your name at all.

Which sounds to me like you can write your name any damn way you please when voting in Ohio. And that is the only official information I can find on the subject.

OMG! If they can't write in cursive, they can't write a love letter or read the Declaration of Independence!

The first being beside the point (seriously? Only literate people love each other? And then only if they can write in a certain way?), anybody can read the Declaration of Independence in a printed form. You don't have to view the original.

Here's a dirty little secret about that, though. That pretty, official one that we all know about? That's not Jefferson's handwriting. They got a professional to write it out for them!

OMG! I can't spell, or use punctuation correctly, but I'm about to talk about declining standards!

STFU, hypocrite.

OMG! Teachers are too liberal! I'm going to go wildly off topic now! Also, I have no idea what a paragraph is!

See above.

OMG! If I can't write in cursive, my handwriting will be too slow when taking notes in class in college!

1. Learn shorthand.
2. Teach your kids to take notes - they should NOT be writing down every word. Not even in shorthand.
3. The premise here is debatable, but I'm not going to bother with that because let's go back to point 1. - this is why we have shorthand.

OMG! Like, the Scriptures are written in cursive, not printed!

WTF? Okay, maybe? But then they're in cursive Hebrew and Greek. I'm utterly failing to see your point here.

And, my personal favorite:

OMG! Kids today can't even recite the state capitals! followed by (exact quote) "Many things we learn aren't used after we leave school; that's no excuse not to to teach it."

1. Who the hell needs to know the state capitals at the drop of a hat? But if it's so important to you, I refer you back to Pippi, who has a very healthy take on this.

2. Actually, if something is truly useless for most of the population, won't kill you if you don't know it, and can be learned in adulthood, then yes, I kinda think that is an excuse to not teach it... or at least, to not teach it to elementary school kids. There are only six and a half hours in the school day, and some of that time is taken up with lunch and (hopefully) recess and gym. There simply isn't time to teach the kids everything on the off-chance that some of it might be useful one day.

Alternatively, if you think cursive writing is that important, teach it earlier. Start with cursive, and then have them learn print. Or teach print in kindergarten and the first half of first grade, and then they learn cursive and they're done. It does nobody any favors to spend three or more years teaching them to write one way, just to try to struggle to find time in the day to teach them another way when they already have all those printing habits. (And you don't have to tell me many teachers don't teach print very effectively either. I know, I know. Many teachers aren't taught how to teach any form of handwriting at all.)

Comments

[omens]

AHHH, SO MUCH (unsolicited, here via network) AGREEMENT!! Kids'll learn cursive when/if they want to learn cursive (that's another thing that really bothers me.. this idea of Window of Opportunity: if you don't get it now YOU NEVER WILL OMG). We contemplated starting our kid with cursive, but in the end it just wasn't that much of a priority.

[conuly]

Yes, the "They must learn in childhood!" nonsense bugs the heck outta me. It's cursive writing, it's not language itself. They can learn it later. REALLY.

I did teach my older niece cursive in the first grade, actually, but that's because she wasn't learning to print properly either (too many students, too many subjects, too little time to teach writing correctly) and in cursive you can't form your letters any which way. (Plus, they still do make a big deal of it in the 3rd grade here, which is... just about the worst time ever to tell kids to switch writing styles, really.)

[dragonwolf]

While I found the act of learning cursive to be useful in my later development of my handwriting (I now have a style that is a hybrid of print and cursive), I agree that it's not the end of the world if kids don't learn it. I didn't even like learning it (or writing with it, as we were forced to do until 5th grade). As a lefty, it was even more painful to learn, since all the teaching was geared more toward right handed people.

The comments both crack me up and sadden me with how many say something along the lines of "if they don't learn cursive, they won't know how to communicate and read." So...uh...what have they been doing between the time they were born (since I'm one that believes that infants communicate in their own way, even if it isn't with a learned language), or at least a year or three old, until they reached third grade?

[dragonwolf]

Oh, and I learned a lot about spelling and grammar by defeating Word 97's spelling and grammar checker (on its most strict). :)

[dragonwolf]

The first being beside the point (seriously? Only literate people love each other? And then only if they can write in a certain way?), anybody can read the Declaration of Independence in a printed form. You don't have to view the original.

Also, two words: Project Gutenberg.

1. Learn shorthand.
2. Teach your kids to take notes - they should NOT be writing down every word. Not even in shorthand.
3. The premise here is debatable, but I'm not going to bother with that because let's go back to point 1. - this is why we have shorthand.

Better yet (if permitted), record the lecture.


OMG! I can't spell, or use punctuation correctly, but I'm about to talk about declining standards!

STFU, hypocrite.

There is a certain irony to seeing people lament about students who don't know how to write in cursive are illiterate, when they, themselves, can't even manage basic punctuation and capitalization.

It does nobody any favors to spend three or more years teaching them to write one way, just to try to struggle to find time in the day to teach them another way when they already have all those printing habits.

That remind me of some of the comments to that article. One of them actually says something along the lines of "to those that print, how does it feel to write like a child?" and "cursive is how adults write." If we're teaching children to become self-sufficient adults, and if writing is cursive is supposed to be the "adult way," then why teach print to begin with? That, of course, would be too much logic for some people's little pea brains to handle...

[pne]

Better yet (if permitted), record the lecture.

I disagree that that's better - video and (especially) audio recordings are inherently mostly one-dimensional: you can only see a bit at a time and have to wind forwards or backwards in time to see another glimpse. (Or keep it running at normal speed to see a quick succession of glimpses.)

Written words on a two-dimensional page are easier to scan and skim-read in a way that I find simply not possible with AV recordings.

(Of course that means that if you use shorthand to take notes and want to be able to scan/skim/speed-read, you have to be able to read at least as quickly as you write, and have good pattern recognition so that you can identify key bits and know where you are, without having to actually read letter-by-letter. Just like you need good reading speed and pattern recognition in print or cursive if you use that for notes.)

[dragonwolf]

True, but you can then take notes from the recording. Plus, if your notes don't make sense, you can find that point in the lecture and listen to the original lecture to put the context back.

There's pros and cons to all methods, that's why it can sometimes be good to do more than one.

[pne]

1. Learn shorthand.

Did you? If so, I'm curious which system you used - and if not, whether there's any one in particular that captures your fancy.

[conuly]

Nope, I can barely manage handwriting as it is. But I'm not going around telling people they must write in script because it's faster. I just think that's a stupid argument. (And not very true, either, although it IS true that somebody who has been writing in cursive for 20 years will be faster than somebody who has been writing in print for only two or three, and who is just learning to spell besides.)

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

I blocked cursive from my brain decades ago and have never missed it. But trying to read someone else's cursive is like trying to read something in an entirely different alphabet, to me.

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

I'm of the opinion that letting kids spend time drawing is just as useful in improving penmanship as handwriting drills, the point of it being to teach the hand to make the writing implement do what you want it to do. Once you have that and letter recognition, you can write any damned way you prefer.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

the point of it being to teach the hand to make the writing implement do what you want it to do

Haha. If only my brain could command my hand what to write. XD; (Or my mouth what to say, for that matter.) Half the time when I'm writing something, I end up writing words that are very different from what I intended. And then, there are the times when my hands are so cramped that I can't write anything legibly, no matter what handwriting.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Have you looked into handwriting dystonia? My understanding is that that sort of thing isn't normal. Of course, my understanding is that there also isn't much they can do about it, so having a fancy label may not help much.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

Actually, I hadn't because I hadn't even heard of it before, but that sounds like a fascinating thing to look into. Even if nothing can really be done for it, but then, the same could be said of a number of other conditions.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

http://handwritingrepair.info/

Now, as far as we are concerned, beautiful handwriting has always been extremely important to many of us. But we know that is not the same for everyone, and this program looks really good, especially the idea of teaching Italic to children (http://handwritingrepair.info/WritingRebels.html) first, or instead of.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

More here.

Script & Scribble: Kitty Florey on WILL's Afternoon Magazine (http://will.illinois.edu/afternoonmagazine/interview/aftmag090211/)

Jane Kennedy interviews Kate on her blog:

Part 1 (http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/2010/01/brief-history-of-handwriting.html)

Part 2 (http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-kids-hate-cursive-part-2-of.html)

Part 3 (http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/2010/02/politician-legibility-act-part-3-of.html)

Part 4 (http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/2010/02/handwriting-contest-and-national.html)

Part 5 (http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/2010/02/handwriting-disasters-part-5-of.html)

[leora.livejournal.com]

I was taught cursive. I can write in cursive. I have written love letters. However, I wrote them in print, because I thought it was more loving to make them easier to read. I also took my notes in college in print and never had any problems keeping up. I never learned shorthand.

The children of the future are likely to write their love letters and take their notes on a keyboard, so typing speed will be vitally more important than cursive anyway.

I was, however, taught both forms of Hebrew, but I mostly remember print Hebrew, these days, which is unfortunate. But, ummm... is the Torah actually written in script? I actually thought it was written in print, But I'm not positive. I really think it is though. You never ever see Hebrew prayers written in script. You never see quotes from the Torah, even in Hebrew, written in script. I'm not even sure the script form existed then, but maybe it did? I haven't researched it.

I'm vaguely reminded of a debate I got into with someone about capitalizing certain terms. His argument was that it is capitalized that way int he Bible, so God meant us to do it that way. My argument was, maybe it's capitalized that way in your translation of the Bible, but that was done by people, but neither Hebrew nor the Greek from the time of the New Testament had an upper case - lower case distinction so there is absolutely no way that it was originally written that way. And, in general, if you're reading great meaning into the typography, you really should not be using a translation of the original.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

My niece takes notes on her laptop now, never mind in the future, and her love-notes appear to be conducted on Facebook. Handwriting, cursive or otherwise, is already more or less dead.

[conuly]

Yeah, I didn't think they were in any form of cursive writing either, but sometimes it's better to avoid the little problem in favor of the big one.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

This may go in with your college notes comment, but having written in cursive since they taught it to us in 4th grade or whatever, I find it to take a lot of concentration (and time) to write in print, plus it just looks childishly sloppy, so I actually am a bit frustrated that I'm going to have to start writing in print (whenever the need to print rather than, well, print something I typed) comes up.

[conuly]

My handwriting does tend towards childishness, but that's not because I usually print (or, for Ana, write in a very careful cursive). It's because I wasn't taught to write which, combined with the lefthandedness and some fine motor issues, led to childish handwriting. No reason printing should look childish except that some people were raised to think that it is. But guess what? As that generation dies off, that attitude will go away. Letting the prejudices of the older generation (or any generation) determine the curriculum without any corroboration from, y'know, evidence strikes me as a very bad idea in general.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

No,you misinterpret me. I don't print in general looks childish - I just mean that my print looks childish because I haven't been practicing it the last 15 years of my life, whereas I have been practicing cursive, so my cursive looks much more refined.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

As someone who deals with a lot of paperwork filled out by children, all I can say is: teach them something. Printing, cursive, or typing, I don't care which.

I'm a lefty who never learned to properly hold a pen, so I get that it isn't easy, but I've been a little alarmed to see whole classes of twelve-year-olds who can't print well enough to legibly put their name on a line and at the same time are obviously manually centering typed text in Word and making double quotation marks by hitting the single quotation key twice.

(Although, I wonder how much the latter has to do with the widespread overestimation of children's computer skills—they spend all their time hammering away at a keyboard, so they must know word processing.)