Some of the replies in this thread are bizarre. treis claims that he’s never seen cursive writing in five years - are you serious? Has cursive writing really fallen that far out of use in the US? Are you not drilled in it at Primary School anymore? As a Brit, it looks like you’re only half educated if you print everything all the time!
There’s another possibility, though- it was once put in the curriculum as the end result of careful consideration, etc. But now it’s not as useful as it was when that was done, and it stays in the curriculum basically as a result of tradition and inertia. I can’t imagine the designers of school curricula going over everything in the curriculum every year, and deciding what should stay and what is obsolete. In my experience, large organizations just don’t work that way.
Not only that but various things stay in curricula longer than necessary because of the political uproar that would result from removing it, its not only educators that decide what stays or goes in education settings.
Otara
Heck, except from the odd letter from my grandmother (whose writing is so spidery I have a hard time reading it), I would pretty much agree with treis. My college classes sometimes used PowerPoint (meaning there was basically nothing even written on the board) or they generally weren’t the kind of classes with a lot of actual sentences. Some were discussion classes, but a lot were chemistry classes (with the appropriate related classes like calculus and physics), all of which have a language of their own. There might have been a type of script used in my German classes, but at this point I don’t remember. All my papers were typed, most of the tests I had were either multiple choice or not in English (again, math, chemistry, and so on) with maybe a sentence or two of explanation as needed, and I saw far more sheet music than I ever did any script. The bosses I’ve had in various jobs leave notes in print or maybe what I’ve seen referred to as italic. I personally use a hybrid style that sometimes has problems with legibility, but it’s more legible than when I actually try to use cursive.
Reading this has made me feel like working on my script. Occasionally, at work, I write in cursive, or write, versus print, just so I don’t lose the ability.
Look how gorgeous this is.
No one is saying that. Kids will still be taught to print. And, kids could also be taught a signature also, rather than the idiot idea of just getting them used to one style of writing then dropping that to teach what really is calligraphy.
Sure, cursive is a bit faster. But shorthand is 10’s of times faster. Why not shorthand? That’d at least be usefull, what with all the texting going on.
Hey, cursive is just calligraphy lite. It should be taught as an art elective, not at the exact wrong time to change the way a kid writes and READS stuff. Reading is hwaaaaay more important that fucking low-level calligraphy. Our kids aren’t very good readers- even another 1/3 year could be critical.
The way I learned to write in school was thus: first, we learned to print. Then, we were taught to add some “squiggles” before and after writing each letter, in preparation for learning to join letters together. Then, we were told to join those letters, giving a cursive script. What I’ve learned wasn’t a very ornate script, though, just a regular, efficient handwriting style. My parents, though, learned a very specific script that’s more complicated, and I believe the teachers were more strict about it back then too.
A few years ago, I developed a hybrid style that mixes some joined and some disjoined letters. I find this just as fast as my completely joined handwriting, and the result looks better too.
One thing I’ve never learned, though, is how to do capital letters in cursive. I always print my capital letters, even in my signature. It’s not a big loss, except when I’m writing mathematical symbols: cursive capitals are commonly used symbols. Now I’ve figured how to do a decent cursive L.
As for teaching cursive writing in school, I think it’s a good idea, but let’s not teach any overly complicated style, and let the students develop their own style pretty soon. Efficiency in handwriting is what we’re looking for.
Because shorthand is 1) time-consuming to learn - why do you think there were entire courses on it? - and 2) not useful during the next several years of school during which one must write quickly while being graded on proper orthography.
No, it isn’t – or maybe it was back in the day when the point was to learn beautiful copperplate handwriting, but now the point is to write more rapidly than printing but still legibly. Again, cursive = currere, to run. And no, a seven-year-old working on those things that look like musical staves is not writing particularly quickly, but it’s a skill that will come with fine motor control and the other skills associated with writing.
After not writing cursive for a long time, I rediscovered it in my midteens – not coincidentally, when I started having to take serious notes in class. And I would never have been able to take the reams of notes I had to in high school, college, and university if I had had to print every character rather than being able to write in cursive.
I’m astonished you could look on this simple basic skill I use essentially every day for purely practical, not aesthetic, reasons as some sort of fancy-dancy art elective.
I think there may be a communication problem here. Certain comments in this thread make me suspect that for some people, the term “cursive” indicates a specific style of script, specifically, the (ugly) curlicued one traditionally taught in American schools. This isn’t the case. I think most of us who are advocating continuing teaching of “cursive” (or more properly, script) writing are not talking about teaching some kind of handwritten script that allows for some degree of linked letters to facilitate speed.
And I also suspect that for those people who are saying “Everyone around here just prints,” they are calling something “printing” when it looks kind of like block letters, but it really something more fluid.
So, too narrow a definition of “cursive” and too broad a definition of “print.”
When I say that I think that script handwriting should be taught, I’m talking about something simple, such as in Tristan’s link. And, the ball-and-sticks “print” style should be omitted altogether. Beyond that, kids should be free to develop their own styles.
Savannah, that is a fine-looking script, but I don’t think it makes sense to teach that to kids in school; it wasn’t designed for day-to-day notetaking.
Oh, I agree. I couldn’t produce something like even if I took all of Sunday afternoon. But it is a remnant of past craftmanship that I admire!
I don’t know if you’re being sardonic here or not. I went to elementary school in the late fifties/early sixties, and I was taught to do long division of Roman numerals. Not converting Roman numerals to Arabic, doing the division, followed by converting back, which was faster, as I demonstrated in the fourth grade. We were taught, and forced to divide numbers like MMCCCXII by CLVI using some esoteric technique whose details are thankfully forgotten. This was not in some “enriched” program, but in regular classes.
Why were we taught this? Because professionals in the field as the end result of careful consideration and thorough analysis put it in the curriculum. I’m hopeful, but not certain, that this is not still taught, but I’m also certain that things equally or more useless are taught today. You could swallow an encyclopedia and puke a better curriculum than some schools are using.
That being said, cursive writing is obsolete, and the time utilized for teaching it is best spent teaching something else. If you want to teach cursive writing, put it in art class where it belongs.
And here’s where I disagree, and, as I suggested before, it might be because of differences in the way we are thinking of the scope of “cursive writing.” To me, what needs to be taught is handwriting – a script designed for speed of use by the human hand (not by a machine) that can be rendered and read easily and allows for individual variation in form.
In other words, I believe that kids will need to know how to communicate in writing by manipulating a pen regardless of what line of work they’re going into – either for purely personal purposes like making notes or for informal communication with others. And the script they taught should be one designed for the human hand, like the simple italic illustrated above, and not one that merely apes a typeface designed for machines to print.
I actually uttered my disgust aloud when I read that. I mean, the whole point why we adopted positional number systems in the first place was to make it easier to do mathematical operations. Why go back in time to less efficient methods? The only place I could see for this kind of knowledge would be as an example in a history of mathematics class, designed to show how horrible it must have been to do mathematics before position systems were introduced to the West.
The script in Tristan’s link is fine, but I think the capital letters are still a little too complicated. I might teach them anyway, but I wouldn’t mind if the students didn’t draw them exactly like they are in this example.
Disclaimer: These are the rantings of a handwriting enthusiast and amateur calligrapher raised by the U.S. public school system. This is also my very first GD reply (please go easy on me). Many thanks to The Flying Dutchman for posting a thread that interests me more than discussions about general politics or religion.
Let me start by being slightly pedantic. ascenray brings up a great point:
“Cursive”, as it taught by most teachers in the U.S., is a horrible, inefficient, uncomfortable, potentially crippling form of writing known as Palmer. Here’s an example. Because I had messy handwriting, my parents and teachers gave me a Palmer template book for me to take home. I had to trace dozens of words. Luckily, I loved the visual arts as a child, so the experience wasn’t as scarring as it could have been. In fact, my extra writing practice ironically fueled my interest in calligraphy.
Most adults in the U.S., including my friends and coworkers, hate Palmer with a passion. They mostly write in print letters–probably due to the huge amount of forms with boxes we have to fill out (PLEASE PRINT NEATLY OR TYPE IN BLACK OR BLUE INK is ingrained in our heads the same way MIND THE GAP is for Brits, I bet). Only school teachers from a previous generation still write cursive. I’m probably one of their favorite students because I still write cards to them in cursive (but not Palmer; more on that later).
If by “cursive” we mean Palmer handwriting, then by all means, please outlaw this travesty. Why? Handwriting experts agree that Palmer forces the writer to push and pull the pen in awkward positions (I read this in library books years ago, and I can’t find an online site. Sorry). To wit, Palmer has two awkward movements the writer must learn: the “boat” and all-inclusive ligatures. The first refers to the recursive movement found in the capital B, G, I, and S. Drawing boat-shaped endings hampers the momentum one wants when putting thoughts on paper. The second challenge refers to joining everysingleletter together no matter what. This can cramp your wrist if you’re writing long words that contain both “boats” and loops of various sizes (try “Brille”).
By the way, Palmer is a relatively recent invention. The example offered by Savannah looks more like Copperplate or Spencerian, which was taught two or three generations back when students were still using fountain pens instead of ballpoints. Palmer is also, thankfully, limited to the USA (to my knowledge). My immigrant friends and family from various parts of Europe and Asia write a different form of cursive that is easier to learn because contains more angular movements and inverse curves (think “u” shaped rather than “n” shaped).
This is the sort of post where I wish I could just draw some alphabets in front of you guys as a visual demonstration. In the meantime, try these examples of German and Italian. Note that not every letter has to be joined, and that the fancy flourishes are optional. If you got rid of the fancy loops, you can have an efficient, speedy, hand. Even French handwriting, while retaining the awkward Palmer loops for lower-case letters, ignores the “2” shaped Q and boat-shaped “s” ligature for a tight-loop instead.
My parents and relatives all learned the same style of handwriting. It can be fancy, efficient, and versatile all at once. I wish I could offer some scans, but here’s a random example I found from someone’s flickr account: Vietnamese writing on a menu. If you are ever in a small Vietnamese restaurant, look on the walls for their daily specials written on colored paper. Chances are, you’ll see a form of cursive that is still being learned today. Definitely preferable to Palmer.
If I had my druthers, I would replace Palmer instruction with a version of modern Italic cursive. Here are some sentences written in that form. It’s both elegant and legible.
One last point: writing is like playing an instrument. There are many styles, and students should be encouraged to experiment and vary their writing styles as appropriate. My biggest objection to Palmer was that teachers saw it as a gold standard and did not tolerate deviation from that style. As all calligraphers/calligraphists know, there is No One True Way. In my experience, most students have developed motor skills for fancy handwriting by the eighth grade. By that time or just a few years before, teachers should encourage a cursive-print hybrid seen in business memos like here and here . (Note: the samples are from a graphology/handwriting analysis site; for the record, I am skeptical of graphology, although I admit to it being entertaining bedtime reading.)
So, to summarize: eliminate Palmer. Teach a modern Italic cursive. Encourage hybridization. Cursive writing is still useful in that when applied properly, it is faster than plain printing–a good thing, since we think faster than we write and we don’t want to lose our train of thought.
(Not to hijack too much, but we should also teach typing skills at a young age. My progressive teacher taught us two things: to type on a manual typewriter and to write calligraphy with a chisel-pen…when we were eleven years old. I’ll always be grateful to her for that.)
I agree about teaching typing- we could do that instead of teaching cursive. The tiny gain in speed while using cursive isn’t worth it, given the number of times we use it. However, you bring up one side benefit of eliminating cursive- no more of this mystic-mumbo-jumbo-crap of “handwriting analysis” being used for job hiring and even determining guilt or innocence inner-company-wise.
And matt_mcl "Because shorthand is 1) time-consuming to learn - why do you think there were entire courses on it? - and 2) not useful during the next several years of school during which one must write quickly *while being graded on proper orthography. * "- the whole point is that one wouldn’t be "graded in what’s now considered “proper” orthography, as it’s nigh useless. One woudl be graded on legible writing, not pretty handwriting. Shorthand does take a bit longer to teach, but it’s 10X faster.
There’s just no reason for cursive or even calligraphy. It’s pretty and sure, why not teach it as an art elective. But if you claim it’s faster- then your argument falls before shorthand.
Twopiecesofeight, thanks for an interesting post! (I do wonder whether Germans are still using that style of handwriting; the Germans I’ve known use something that is similar but more modern and ‘normal’ to my eyes).
I have liked the Italic handwriting for some time, and have seen courses for children in it. My question is, if an ordinary child has been taught the usual stick-and-ball printing, would it be easy to switch to an Italic cursive, or should a teacher teach Italic printing first? Is it easy to switch halfway through?
And, FTR, I’m firmly on the “keep cursive” side.
“Orthography” refers to the combinations of letters used to spell words. If orthography is nigh useless, then why do you bother using standard spelling? “Shorthand” does not use letters. That’s the point. It uses symbols to substitute for phonemic elements and letter combinations.
Again, the point is, when you’re writing in shorthand, you’re effectively not writing in English. You’re writing in a specialized code. That’s the difference. If you want to write in code for certain specialized purposes, that’s fine. But the purpose of teaching handwriting to kids is to offer them a more widely useful skill.
I don’t think one person here is advocating the preservation of the Palmer script or so-called “pretty” handwriting. (It seems from this thread that penmanship classes and the Palmer script have resulted in a considerable degree of childhood trauma.) 
) We’re advocating preservation of “handwriting,” period, in a plain but pleasing utilitarian style, like modern italic. And a block print style is not ideally suitable for the human hand.
And I suspect that most of the people who claim to “print” everything have enough variation in their styles so that it really can be classified as printing in a pure sense.
They don’t have to go over it every year, unless the argument here is that cursive handwriting has suddenly gone from being apprently useful to obviously utterly obsolete in the space of the last 12 months (I think that would be a phenomenon worthy of interest).