When I went to school, we learned to print and then learned to write.
It made sense since writing was faster than printing.
But who needs to write anymore. Printing can be almost as fast if you don’t have a computer around.
Wouldn’t it be wise to drop the time and resources required for teachers and students to train in writing and focus more on other areas ?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t print when I sign my name.
Also, reading cursive letters is tricky if you haven’t been taught to recognize them.
I love typing and have a horrible longhand (though I think my signature is awesome), but I’ll weep if they ever take penmanship out of school curricula.
Yeah, take out penmanship and kids will write even worse. Hardly a worthy goal.
Most people learn print, then learn cursive, and write their own hybrid. Do you really want your kids to not know a capital Q sometimes looks like a big 2?
I almost puked when I saw the title of this thread, then I realized the OP was using “writing” to mean cursive or writing script. Whew!
It would be interesting to know how much classroom time is spent on that style. I doubt it’s used very much today, even by adults - but there has to be some value in being able to recognize it.
Someone get the guy a Kleenex, cause its already happened.
My kids are currently aged 15-19, and they got precious little penmanship instruction in school. My eldest did in our old school system, but then we moved when she was in 3d grade and the new school just didn’t think it was all that important. Same argument you can imagine - they won’t need to write, everyone will type everything. Of course, the kicker was that they never taught proper keyboarding skills either.
As a result, my eldest has a beautiful hand. My middle son’s scrawl is barely legible, and my youngest daughter’s combination of cursive and printing looks like a little kid’s. And my eldest says her classmates regularly marvel at her penmanship, suggesting to me that her initial school system was by far the exception, rather than the rule.
I am not sure to what extent this was a component of that whole language debacle of the past decade or so. I remember the schools being fine with “invented spelling” and such. No need to teach correct spelling or grammar, as that might only turn the kiddies off from learning…
That was one of the earliest battles my wife and I lost with the schools.
Not for me, José. Not if you want to get all the little stylistic quirks right the way they taught it. A hybrid version, as has been mentioned, may be faster however. But I never really got into it, except for signing my name. (and my signature is awesome as well)
I see a mod edited my title. Perhaps there might be a cultural disconect here. In Canada you either print or write. Is there any other kind of writing besides cursive in America?
the future of flowing writing was on the wall with the invention of ballpoints. The main reason for connected writing in my view was for fountain pens, not because its inherently more efficient.
With most longer documents also being done on computer as well, its become a relic really. We can expect the usual death of civilisation complaints that we’ve seen with other similar things that have fallen out of use, as it slowly makes its exit.
Otara
When I first saw the thread, I thought you were referring to the ability to communicate through writing - another skill that has been downplayed in American schools. I think cursive might have been distinguished by calling it handwriting.
This was brought up in an earlier post. How do you “sign” your name? Do you print it?
The other writing is printing. When a form says to print responses, I always assumed that meant non-cursive responses.
So: our ven diagram would be a huge circle named ‘Writing’ and two smaller circles called ‘printing’ and ‘cursive’ inside.
“Writing” in American schools generally refers to the skill of communicating clearly using the written word. It’s what an author does to create a book, regardless of whether the words that end up on the paper are cursive or printed. A “writing class” would be a class that teaches written communication skills, not usually the process of forming letters.
We either “print” or “write cursive”. The skill of forming cursive letters is usually called “handwriting”. You might see the word “penmanship” used, but that’s archaic.
I personally agree with you- if everything that you produce that anyone else will have to read is going to be printed or typed, handwriting isn’t as important a skill as it once was. Of course, I have terrible handwriting, and I hate hate hate writing anything by hand (typing, I don’t mind, as long as there’s no fussy lining paper up exactly right in a printer or typewriter to do).
FYI: Many current handwriting curricula have recommended the cursive “Q” be written in “manuscript style” rather than the traditional “2”. The Zaner-Blosser method–which is in many elementary schools in the US–made the change to Q a few years ago IIRC…
“Write” is often used on standardized tests to mean “write in cursive”, usually in the context of “Print, do not write, etc.” I do not like cursive at all; it’s slower and harder to read and write. Most of the people I know write the normal way, with separate letters, and penmanship does not seem to correlate to writing style in any way.
Okay, I’m going to ratchet up the intensity of this debate.
There are 300,000,000 Americans either now or in the future who have been taught to write cursive.
I’m assuming that it takes about 3 months of time for a teacher to train a student in cursive writing.
It has been established that the cost per pupil per year in America is $10,000. That is $1000 per month for 10 months.
Therefore the cost per pupil to train in cursive writing is $3000.
America therefore has invested (3000 x 300,000,000) = 900 billion dollars so everyone can write a signature?
In order for that to be correct, the student would have to spend absolutely no time on any other subject during the 3 months.
Cursive writing is taught from the very start of primary school here in the UK (at least, it is at the school attended by my kids) - it’s taught in a way that tends to discourage the early development of an individual handwriting style, but I think that’s a good thing, because it brings the pupils very early on to a point where they can legibly form letters and this enables spelling, grammar, content and style to be examined and developed without the distraction of having to squint at the page to work out if this particular pupil always writes ‘e’ to look like ‘o’ or some such. Cursive handwriting is an infrastructure skill.
I should add that there is a point at which kids are permitted to experiment and develop their own style and form of handwriting…
…and conclude that my argument, as set forth in post #17 is that even if cursive handwriting is discarded entirely in favour of some other writing method, or typing, or whatever, it still represents a very important and worthwhile foundation upon which other essential (and persistent) aspects of learning are built. So dissecting it out of context and presenting it as the cost to learn to write a signature is doing it a grave injustice.
Let’s see if I can remember back that far. We learned cursive in second grade. After that, in third through sixth, there was a daily practice assignment that took almost no time to do. So it was mostly the time spent in the second grade.
What else are you going to teach second graders that will stay with them so well? More math? More science? More geography? Like that’s going to happen.
It’s a handy thing to have. It’s easy to teach. It develops hand-eye coordination and fine motor control. If you buy the classification, it’s right-brained. If done properly, it isn’t as fatiguing as printing, so you can write longer with less effort.
Unless you can point to something that second graders need to add to their day in its place, I say keep it.