# Not teaching cursive **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 25, 2016, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071 "2016-03-25T00:08:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/61 "2016-03-25T15:01:28Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > Meh. Any time a low opinion of a skill is coupled with being poor at that skill, I take the opinion with a grain of salt. “I’m not good at this, so it is worthless” is just not an argument I find compelling. Nobody is suggesting cause and effect–and if there is one, it goes the other way. I’m really bad at multiplying with Roman numerals, and I think multiplying with Roman numerals is worthless. The cause-and-effect relationship is this: because I think such multiplication is worthless, I’ve never developed that skill. The arguments for the worthlessness of cursive relate to best practices. What are the best uses of a student’s time? There are very good reasons to think that teaching students to write in cursive is not among them, given alternatives such as teaching students preliminary coding skills, teaching students more about how government works, teaching students to speak a foreign language, teaching students to analyze media messages, teaching students to knit, or myriad other skills that are undertaught in a lot of schools. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/62 "2016-03-25T15:02:53Z")
Knitting? Really? You meant that seriously? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/63 "2016-03-25T15:06:53Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > Knitting? Really? You meant that seriously? Not really, no, except inasmuch as arts education is important. I’m unconvinced cursive belongs in a curriculum even as much as a branch of art like knitting does. But yes, that last item was a joke. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/64 "2016-03-25T15:13:24Z")
Knitting teaches math. Geometry. Algebra. And fine motor skills. Much more than cursive does. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/65 "2016-03-25T16:05:21Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Not really, no, except inasmuch as arts education is important. I’m unconvinced cursive belongs in a curriculum even as much as a branch of art like knitting does. > > But yes, that last item was a joke. Oddly enough, you bring one of the few positive context for teaching anything resembling cursive: **calligraphy**. An art form related to cursive like fine painting is related to brush-painting large buildings. An artistic reason to do something that would otherwise make absolutely no practical sense and efficiently fulfills no common need. I studied calligraphy. I enjoyed it. I would never confuse it with a practical tool for communications, other than in the greater sense that art is a means of communication. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/66 "2016-03-25T16:37:02Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > Oddly enough, you bring one of the few positive context for teaching anything resembling cursive: **calligraphy**. Yeah, I thought of calling out calligraphy explicitly :). It’s certainly a legitimate topic for art class, just like knitting. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/67 "2016-03-25T17:42:02Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > I studied calligraphy. I enjoyed it. I would never confuse it with a practical tool for communications, other than in the greater sense that art is a means of communication. Hey, you could make money writing fake diplomas. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/68 "2016-03-25T18:11:46Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Most people’s signatures are so stylized, why can’t you have a stylized print signature? Besides, I think in the sixth or seventh grade, students are still being taught to read cursive, they are just not being taught what used to be called “penmanship” anymore, and it’s about time. It takes years to develop good penmanship, but only a couple of weeks to learn to read recent cursive writing-- heck, when I majored in English, we were taught to read archaic styles of writing and printing. I cannot write any of them, but I can read them just fine. > > I’m sure most kids will experiment with writing their own names. > > Nowadays, learning to input on a computer is much more important than penmanship. Right, There’s no use wasting time teaching calligraphy- teach them keyboard skills instead. Many older or hidebound English majors or teachers are still pushing cursive hard tho. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/69 "2016-03-25T18:25:04Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Many older or hidebound English majors or teachers are still pushing cursive hard tho. :mad: Well, _this_ English major, at least, who does use cursive or a cursive hybrid in his note-taking (and stenoscript shorthand, too!) thinks teaching cursive is a waste of time that can be better spent on other things. I have two daughters, not of school age yet, but I personally hope they don’t waste time teaching cursive in their classes. I do think there is some value in being made familiar with it, in order to read it, but spending too much time learning how to write it, in my opinion, would be time better spent on other things. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/70 "2016-03-25T19:06:37Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > That is called, “Typing Class”. > I took it to meet girls, but I could type on a keyboard when they first came out. Typing on a manual typewriter is a completely different skill from computer keyboarding. My son, when confronted with a typewriter, was mystified as to how to get paper into it. He also didn’t know what to do when he got to the end of the line. And mistakes were forever. It was useless as anything but a blunt instrument, as far as he was concerned. But then he discovered a book of concrete poetry, and after that, couldn’t wait for another crack at Grandma’s typewriter. However, for practical matters, he still has little use for it, kinda like how the wind-up record player is fun once in a while, but not really something you go to for a serious music experience. > [@Derleth](#): > > And _that_ is, at least, arithmetic, which can be defended on its merits as a useful skill. Teaching penmanship in this day and age is simply lifting one obscure handicraft into the pantheon for no good reason. We might as well teach them needlepoint or basic joinery instead, and we likely should, as I mentioned in a previous post. Or let them have freaking recess, which is an endangered species in many school districts. Taking ten minutes out of each day not to learn cursive, and to spend on the playground instead sounds like a good use of time to me. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Stipulate that lit brain scans are better than unlit brain scans: what do the pretty lights created by cursive-writing kids compare to? If I asked these children to tame an ocelot in Minecraft, to write a haiku, to solve a jigsaw puzzle, to design an experiment to test ideal planting conditions, to take care of a duckling, how would those pretty lights look? Which is an unfounded stipulation. Actually, the better we are at something, the less brain activity we have when we do it. Someone who is 60, and has been writing cursive since winning the penmanship medal in 1965, and maybe writes a lot for work, so really gets some practice at it probably hardly thinks about it at all when writing, and has very little light up on a brain scan. All those scans of children’s brains mean is that this is a new skill for them. If we re talking about something like 2nd graders, you probably get the same thing when they read out loud, but a veteran teach reading out loud probably has little activity. Heck, a baby probably has the lights going off when watching television, something that causes near-black outs in most people’s brains. > [@DrDeth](#): > > Many older or hidebound English majors or teachers are still pushing cursive hard tho. :mad: I had an ancient professor when I was an English major who used to gripe that English majors didn’t have to learn Old English anymore, like he did. We used to joke that it was probably his first language. Actually, my school didn’t even offer it as an elective. I might have taken it. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/71 "2016-03-25T19:35:12Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Well, _this_ English major, at least, who does use cursive or a cursive hybrid in his note-taking (and stenoscript shorthand, too!) thinks teaching cursive is a waste of time that can be better spent on other things. I have two daughters, not of school age yet, but I personally hope they don’t waste time teaching cursive in their classes. I do think there is some value in being made familiar with it, in order to read it, but spending too much time learning how to write it, in my opinion, would be time better spent on other things. You think it’s a waste of time to learn a skill that you use yourself? Interesting. Do you wish that you were unable to write cursive, and had better spent that time? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/72 "2016-03-25T19:47:38Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > You think it’s a waste of time to learn a skill that you use yourself? Interesting. Do you wish that you were unable to write cursive, and had better spent that time? Yes. I wish I had been taught typing at that time, but I was teaching myself with a manual typewriter (through no fault of my own–my aunt had one and I just thought it was cool, not realizing the utility of learning typing that would come.) This was early 80s, so computers weren’t really everyday objects quite yet. I do not feel I would have suffered from not knowing cursive. Right now, given a choice between my daughter(s) learning cursive vs. pretty much anything else, I’d rather the time be spent on the pretty much anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/73 "2016-03-25T20:13:57Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > It has always been feasible, and [here’s a link to an algorithm](http://turner.faculty.swau.edu/mathematics/materialslibrary/roman/) that will let you do it, assuming you’re a big enough of an idiot to want to. I was forced to do this in grade school in the 1950’s, probably because someone as idiotic as the cursive proponents thought it was a good idea. I guess I was lucky – I never had to deal with anything like that. I can see a value to learning to write cursive, but not to doing this. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2016, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/74 "2016-03-26T01:21:30Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Typing on a manual typewriter is a completely different skill from computer keyboarding. I found it quite useful with a computer keyboard. One of my teachers in grad school, a math guy who was very good at programming, hunted and pecked. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/75 "2016-03-26T01:41:06Z")
I, too, know an algorithm for doing arithmetic with Roman numerals. The first step of that algorithm is to convert them all to place value numerals, and the last step is to convert them back. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2016, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/76 "2016-03-26T02:06:45Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I, too, know an algorithm for doing arithmetic with Roman numerals. The first step of that algorithm is to convert them all to place value numerals, and the last step is to convert them back. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2016, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/77 "2016-03-26T02:09:04Z")
My friend is a huge proponent of cursive because without it “kids won’t be able to read historical documents when they get older.” I find this argument tenuous for many reasons: [ul] [li] Reading cursive isn’t that difficult, and stylized cursive fonts will remain (e.g. for fancy restaurant logos) so they won’t be entirely foreign.[/li][li] Plenty of languages have gone through more drastic spelling or writing reforms and people can either read old documents, or at least if they want to it’s nowhere near learning a whole new language (with some exceptions for really old documents, it takes some effort to learn to read **really, really** old Japanese phonetically regardless of your background). [/li][li] Professional historians aren’t going to disappear, and those specializing in Anglo countries will learn how to read it.[/li][li] The vast majority of old documents will be or have been translated to a typed-up format anyway. This is only really an issue if someone discovers, say, old letters in their grandma’s attic. And even then, see the other points.[/li][li] The biggest problem with reading old texts is always going to be contemporary quirks of language (slang, ways of wording things, references to then-current events), not the penmanship or font. Well, that or the texts being partially missing or destroyed.[/li][li] Regardless of the other points, optical character recognition is very good and quickly becoming better, if we’re not there we’re probably not far off from having computers able to transliterate it to a font close enough for humans to read even if there are some minor errors.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2016, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/78 "2016-03-26T19:41:45Z")
I hated taking cursive in school. I had remedial handwriting in 7th grade! But now I use it every day to write in my diary and also to write my parents once a week. I can’t find a link, but I read a newspaper article weeks ago about a city council somewhere (New York, maybe?) which was upset to discover that cursive wasn’t taught in that city’s schools anymore. (The headline was something like “City’s Schools Not Teaching Writing!”) One council member stood and threatened to teach his kids cursive at home. That’ll show those teachers! ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2016, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/79 "2016-03-26T20:47:23Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > Your post would make more sense if you could point to a school where handwriting was taught instead of algebra. Maybe my school was unusual. We learned handwriting AND algebra. The handwriting was much earlier than the algebra. Handwriting i.e. cursive started in 2nd grade. Algebra, as a discrete subject, wasn’t until jr. high school by which time handwriting wasn’t a subject at all. It was just a joke reference to our [most recent algebra thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=785782&highlight=algebra). Nevertheless, time spent on cursive is time not spent on something else. Having justification for teaching cursive is not enough. The justification has to be better than all the other things that might have been taught. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2016, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071/80 "2016-03-26T21:23:08Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > If students are no longer taught cursive, how do they sign their names? The same way I do: With print letters (and some squiggles representing strings of illegible print letters). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-teaching-cursive/750071.md?page=5)