Does he want to learn cursive? I can count the number of times I’m written in cursive since 3rd grade one hand. If it’s something that is of interest to him, by all means learn it. But if he doesn’t care, find a better use of your time.
The things you learn on this message board. It wasn’t until I was reading here in other threads about cursive “going out of style” that I had any clue that students got through school without being taught and learning how to “write” (as opposed to print). The first thread on this subject made me go :eek:
He’s going to be involved in after school activities (soccer and band) in addition to a really seriously academic course load. I don’t want to add anything I don’t have to.
I guess I just feel weird with him not knowing this, like he really missed something. He can read cursive just fine. But it seems most of you think cursive is dying, so maybe his time would be better used ramping up his keyboarding skills.
I vote yes. Most people can write cursive a lot faster than they can print, and handwritten exams haven’t gone out of style yet. It’ll give him a significant advantage when he has to take, say, the AP English exam and write three essays in two hours.
I think if you go back and count, it sounds like more people said Learn It!
One thing that really breaks my heart is when I see a man’s handwriting, and it is obvious he never advanced past third grade. He drops in my estimation of his intelligence. Please have your son learn cursive. It doesn’t have to suck down hours and hours of his time or interfere with his busy schedule. Tell him he can get out of doing home chores while he practices…
It’s not dying the way someone with terminal cancer is dying - it’s dying because nobody wants to bother learning it anymore. The same way other things are dying, like woodworking or being able to fix your own car or do small repairs in your own house without calling in a division of specialists who’ll charge you your left nut for something you should know how to do yourself. Cursive can be “revived” if people would just care enough about handwriting to learn it. Don’t let keyboards take over and the hand-written word become extinct.
Now more than ever, you should teach him cursive.
My daughter (going into sixth grade) learned cursive in school, but she was never required to write that way in any of her other classes, so she doesn’t. She prints exclusively, except for her signature (which she writes slowly and carefully and is very beautiful).
She is also left-handed, but I don’t have any idea if that is why she prefers to print. Her teachers have not seemed to care so far–we’ll see what middle school brings.
Why? I’m not saying that to be argumentative, I really don’t get it. Any situation in which he needs to write quickly, like taking notes, he can either record on MP3 or bring a laptop to class. Any situation which requires him to write, like filling out a form, he can - has to - print neatly. The GRE doesn’t require cursive anymore; I don’t know about the SAT, but if it requires it this year, it won’t in 5, because it’s been out of many curricula for several years now.
I can understand and agree with the arguments for teaching him how to *read *cursive, at least for this last generation on the cusp of the tradition. Yet, to be honest, I read and write modern cursive, but all bets are already off when it comes to cursive more than 2 generations back. I never would have deciphered the “s” in the linked German cursive font set, for example.
I just haven’t seen a logical reason to teach him how to write it other than (completely understandable) sadness that something we once knew how to do won’t continue. It’s okay, really it is. Most kids don’t know how to dial a rotary phone, either. I bet most adults couldn’t thresh wheat with a gun to their head or tan a hide if their kids’ lives were at stake. The world changes, and with it the skill set a person needs.
Please do not teach him to write in cursive. The sooner we can convert reading and writing in cursive as a foreign, rare and, most importantly to me, marketable skill, the sooner I’ll start raking in the big bucks.
Millions I tell ya.
You clearly haven’t seen my printing.
Legibility, folks. Cursive is (from what I can tell) a better way to, for example, take notes on the fly that can actually be read. I regret that my circumstances caused me to miss it, and pit the educators and others who didn’t think it worth bothering to teach.
I switched to taking notes in printed letters in eighth grade, since it was faster: my printed handwriting was legible at about 1/3 the height (and therefore about 1/9 the overall size) of my cursive handwriting. I could take notes a lot faster by virtue of not having to move my pen nearly as far.
About the only thing I’ve written in cursive in the past 40 years has been my signature. But even there, the need for cursive will probably be supplanted by thumbprints and retina scans.
Cursive is a beautiful art, though. Being able to write well in it is a real talent, and it’s carrying on a great old tradition that’s in danger of dying out.
I realize that I’m in a very small minority here and I already take a lot of flak for having the values of a 78 year old man, at 22. I think there used to be a time when things had some craftsmanship to them, and if they weren’t lovingly crafted, they at least tried to make them look as if they were. Now, everything is mass-produced and made of cheap, slick plastic, and it shows, aesthetically. You can’t even get a TV set with woodgrain trim around it anymore so it won’t clash with all of your wooden furniture - you have to settle for ugly fake-chrome silver-gray or high-gloss black, even on TVs that cost thousands of dollars. Alarm clocks, toasters, all appliances in general, look like some second-rate designer’s idea of what the equipment on a sci-fi space ship would look like.
It used to be that everyone knew how to sing, or at least sing okay. Why? Because everyone sung in church. Even if you weren’t Elvis Presley, the average older person seems to be able to carry a tune better than an average younger person.
I go to a birthday party of younger people (20 to 40) and everyone sings Happy Birthday completely off-key, a dissonant cacophony that makes the ears bleed. I go to birthday parties where there’s an older crowd, and everyone sings Happy Birthday relatively in-tune.
It used to be that the average person could do small home-improvement jobs and basic carpentry. This meant that peoples’ houses had an individualized touch to them. Old guys who had been living in the same place for decades, made little personal touches to the interior and exterior of the home that gave it some soul. Nowadays everything is prepackaged, sterilized, and uniform. There’s no soul to it.
Being able to write with good handwriting is one of those old skills that, while it might not be necessary, it’s nice to have.
But I also agree that it’s easier to take shorthand notes in cursive because the letters, ideally, flow into each other with one uninterrupted line.
I second the thought that he needs to learn how to read cursive even if he can’t write it. But if he already can read it, then don’t bother teaching him how to write it; it takes years to develop one’s own handwriting (which keeps evolving with use - or lack thereof).
I find it weird that in the US most people don’t learn cursive. Where I come from (somewhere on the Mediterranean), we only learn cursive in school. We never learned how to print. I find it painstaking now that I’m in the US to submit hand printed homework because the teacher cannot read cursive; especially that cursive is so much faster because you don’t have to lift your pen from the paper. So if your son might end up having to read text handwritten by people educated in certain parts of the world, he will need to be able to read cursive.
I meant that the only form of writing we learn in school is cursive. I don’t think my primary and middle school teachers even knew how to print.
I’m 26 by the way.
Having nice handwriting is certainly a neat thing to have, but it’s not necessary. My writing, which is some weird sloppy cursive-like mess (as in, I don’t take my hand off the page, but the writing is not like anything that was taught to me) is completely illegible because I have carpal tunnel syndrome and can’t control the pen very well, and while I wish I could write neatly in cards and stuff, it’s not massively crippling.
I was taught Cursive in Primary school and haven’t used it since. I can type much, much faster than I can write, and my handwriting has often been compared to a cross between Ancient Hieroglyphics and Martian, which is a further disincentive to try handwriting anything more than personal notes. 
Being able to read Cursive, however, is a very valuable skill- I use it a lot when referring to historic texts and things from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Big stupid waste of time.
Another vote for an important and necessary skill. Typewriters and computers aren’t always available. What’s he going to do when faced with an essay exam? What’s he going to do in the middle of the jungle or desert or wherever? Or anywhere where he has to take notes rapidly and there’s no computer available?
He can learn fine motor skills from video games as well.
Yes, there is an use in him learning cursive, but at this point I take all my notes on my laptop. I cannot keep up in a lecture class writing, but I can Dope and type at the same time. 