I was surprised to learn that cursive writing is still being taught in elementary schools. I’m not sure why I was surprised to learn this, but I was. My daughter is learning cursive in grade 3.
Short of writing a grocery shopping list, a few brief notes in my calendar and the odd form, I’m not sure I actually hand write anything any more. And when I do, it’s almost never in cursive hand.
I’m wondering if kids wouldn’t be better served by teaching them typing skills earlier rather than cursive writing skills.
Typing is a skill that they will most definitely use and need later in life, but why lose the art of the written word? I use cursive whenever I write anything. It seems a lot faster than printing the letters out one by one. When I have to print anything, I feel like it takes FOREVER.
I use cursive a lot while taking notes in my college classes. It is faster than hand printing, and it usually looks neater (in my case). For the majority of my classes I cannot use a laptop for notes, I am a science major and there are too many drawings and diagrams in my notes to make it worthwhile.
I teach high school, and most of my students write in print, with a non-trivial minority writing in cursive. That said, there are still many, many times when you must be able to read cursive, and learning to write it is the best way to insure that you can. Cna you imagine an 18 year old who couldn’t read a note written by their boss because it was in cursive?
I can’t imagine a boss actually handwriting a note to me. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I received a hand written note from anyone at work.
I learned cursive in school as well. In fact I learned cursive in 3 languages, one of them cyrillic. Perhaps it’s my line of work (IT), but when I handwrite anything it’s usually done in print fashion. My cursive writing has become almost illegiable. Of couse signatures and initialing, well, that’s cursive, but I don’t think it should count.
Usual is fine, of course, but it only takes one unusual occurance to make someone look like a fool. It’s like not knowing how to read an analog clock: you can more or less avoid having to read one 99% of the time, but the one time you are asked the time and all there is is an analog clock, it’s real uncomfortable.
I think that it is important to be able to write quickly, for note taking, if nothing else (as has been mentioned). Having two different writing styles to cobble together and make into your own style seems to be efficient.
Why don’t you talk to your daughter’s teacher and find out how much time they spend on cursive, and how much time they will spend on it in the next few years? I think you will find that they spend much, much less time on it than they did 20 years ago, and less than they did ten years ago, but that they still familiarize the kids with the writing style. This reflects the declining importance of cursive: it is still around, and still needs to be taught, just not as much.
I do cursive more easily than printing. It’s faster and less effort, but it’s far less readable–someone could pick up the notes in my English binder and think I was working on a physics problem, it’s that illegible.
Not sure what the benefits of teaching cursive vs. printing to kids are, but I do know I have a nice signature.
I never write anything in cursive (except signing my name). I’ve been out of practice for so long that it takes me forever to think through how to write something in cursive.
Cursive takes me forever to write in, like PigBoy it takes me a bit to think about it. Also, if I get distracted I misspell my name when signing something. Sometimes though, I want to write in cursive and I do. I have poems that I wrote in cursive because it just seemed they needed to be written that way. I also write in cursive when I’m angry, it just gets the frustration across better.
I don’t have any real concern or issues over this matter, just haven’t given it much thought until my daughter asked me how to write a capital cursive “S”.
I am all in favor of kids learning joined-up handwriting.
Cursive, on the other hand, by which I mean the Palmer method or whateve they’re inflicting upon schoolkids nowdays, sucks.
It’s a very unnatural way to write. Those who do it well can turn out beautiful script, but I think most writers would be better served by italic handwriting. It’s equally attractive whether the letters are separate or joined up.
I had illegible printing and cursive, but my handwriting is much improved since I retrained myself using an italic style.
IIRC, one of the better arguments I’ve read about teaching children to write cursive is that it helps train out some of the letter reversal problems seen with dyslexia. It would also, I think, help young readers train their brains to remember letter combinations like “ph” and “sh”. That’s a gut feeling from experience using kinesthetic methods to teach. I don’t have a cite to back it up.
I’m a little shocked by the blithe dismissal of the idea of penmanship here. I mean, yeah, I write in a sort of connected print, but… I mean… civilized adults (like my mother) have nice handwriting! Beautiful cursive writing is an art form. Isn’t reading and writing sort of the hallmark of civilization?! Sure, I type more than I write these days; a lot more. Essay exams in college hurt the hell out of my fingers because I was out of practice. But that dosen’t mean we should give up on beautiful penmanship!
www.zanerian.com makes me weep. I’d love to have beautiful penmanship to go with my nice stationery. You guys seriously aren’t a little embarassed that your mom writes a far more beautiful thank-you note than you do?
I do think that cursive should continue to be taught, but it takes absolutely forever for me to write in cursive. I don’t know why, for most people it’s the opposite. My print isn’t completely print, though. I connect quite a few of my letters and write pretty quickly when I need to.
My mother doesn’t write a far nicer thank-you note than I, and she learned to write with a nib pen and inkwell. Her cursive is awful, and also identically awful to all the other women of her generation and the one before in her family. It’s fun trying to identify who wrote what. My handwriting is good, no thanks to school efforts. I taught myself for the purpose of writing a sappy love letter when I was fourteen. I do think that good penmanship has its uses, and while typing is eminently more practical in the modern world, teaching children cursive is not a complete waste of time.
Besides which, it did wonders for my absymal fine-motor skills which had contributed to chicken-scratchy print before I taught myself cursive, even after a year or so of physical therapy as a small child. I don’t know, but I can speculate, that it may be useful for the purposes of improving control to learn a couple of forms of writing - print and cursive.
Really? I get handwritten stuff from my boss all the time. True, she doesn’t hand write memos or anything like that. However, she comments on work I give her to review by writing in the margins, adds a note to an article she passes on to me to review, forwards me copies of her notes from meetings, gives me forms to fill out with a post it or small note attached saying “please fill this out by X date and forward to Y department,” etc. All are handwritten and in cursive. I do the same thing.
I can’t imagine taking notes in a meeting by printing. It would take forever and I’d miss half of what was said!
Actually, my cursive looks better than both my Mom’s and my Nana’s. I’m usually the one who puzzles out what the letter’s we recieve say.
I don’t think we should give up on it at all, I have pinned up on my corkboard a beautiful example of my name and would love to take courses on doing fancier work… but there are many people who can print much more nicely, and legibly, then they can write cursive.
I use it all the time. I love it. About ten years ago I learned Palmer so I could write all old-fashioned. The cursive we learned in school was plainer.
