Thread: Should Cursive Writing be Dropped?

Originally Posted by felix

I'm afraid I simply can't agree with you. The necessity of signing a few documents is not comparable to somebody being forced into an unhelpful system of education for many years. Inconsequential details aside, it sounds as if your job is fairly untroubled, and enjoyable. And I'm fairly sure that you don't wake up during the night grating your teeth over those documents...but young people wake up all the time wondering why they don't have a greater freedom to pursue their interests.

BTW – you’re making a lot of assumptions -- which is never a good idea. Some of the things I mentioned about my job are hardly about a little paper work. Budgeting takes a whole lot of time and if you get it wrong or go over it can mean losing tens of thousands of dollars, clients -- or both. Dealing with difficult clients is also extremely time consuming and huge source of anxiety. Believe me – I’ve lost a fair amount of sleep over these “inconsequential details.”

I meant no disrespect. However, the two aren't comparable because they operate on different scales. It seems that these details are inconveniences in a largely enjoyable profession, one that you've chosen, which isn't the same as being made to do something which you have utterly no interest in, as there is very little return on such a thing.

Originally Posted by felix

@Capulet:

- I'm assuming that by 'foundational education' you mean an education which provides the means by which to further your knowledge in a field of your choosing without restriction. If so, I'm not debating the usefulness of such a thing. But (I'm using the English education system here) A-level/Undergraduate level content isn't sufficiently advanced to warrant a decade of lessons in order to prepare you for them. (I've been trying to get that sentence into a better wording, but it's not happening. For example: I took an A-level in Mathematics. The content of that course, although more advanced than the content of something like GCSE's, wasn't so advanced that I needed an entire decade of pre-requisite knowledge in order to get to grips with it.)

I'll just sum up what I think are our key differences, and we'll have to agreee to disagree.

I think we're stuck in that I believe that the wider the education one has, the better one is at everything and anything they do. I also think children aren't qualified to make educational decisions until they are much more mature, and then only qualified if they've had a diverse exposure to what's actually available. If you are only presented with vanilla and chocolate as flavours, you might be content with vanilla being your favourite. If you've tasted all 32 flavours at Baskin Robbins, the accuracy of your pick of "true favourite" increases dramatically.

For foundational means more than just preparing to be good at a single career, it means being prepared to be the best human being you can. This calls for an understanding of the past, civics, ethics, mathematics, languages, science, arts, and most anything you get crammed in there. There really is so much synergy across disciplines it's mind-boggling. As a content strategist I have read just as much cognitive psychology as I have information architecture.

Frankly, you should really just watch this video of Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005 - YouTube

That pretty much sums it up.

I've never felt that being diverse in your education makes you more 'well rounded', seeing as so few adults are remotely so.

Agree to disagree it is. I think you're right, those are the key differences. Good talk though, that video was food for thought.

In defense of my failure to go with the programme and learn cursive, let me say now that I did not say then, 'I will not learn it'. The effort was there. I neglected some other work to try and convert my connected script to cursive, and the more I tried, the worse the result. The cliché 'hen scratch' sums up the result of more than a week trying really hard. I don't give up lightly, but finally I gave up that struggle.

I started school knowing three ways of writing: block capitals which I had learned years earlier, mixed case printing my grandfather taught me and which I continue to use, and a connected script based on the mixed case printing. All were legible. Even the teacher admitted that. Trying to write cursive was awkward. My hand felt clumsy and refused to co-operate. A great deal of time had to be spent forming each letter just so, leaning the wrong way. The end result was not legible.

Later in raising my son I applied something I'd heard somewhere. In raising children, it is important to pick your battles. That is an idea my infant-one teacher did not understand. I could read on at least a standard one level (U.S. third grade) and I could write a page that anyone could read. Why waste time over whether my handwriting fit so narrow a pattern? It seemed stupid when I was six years old, and it seems stupid now, 65 years later.

Activities, such as handwriting, help develop hand eye coordination and fine motorskills. These skills are very necessary to perform most daily activities and those with poor skills often avoid tasks that require them. If nothing else, handwriting is important for those reasons.

nerot - So the fact that I already had a good, legible, handwriting counted for nothing, is that what you are saying? That was the teacher's attitude. I'd not learned handwriting her way, so it was of no value.

edit - Interesting to note that once I was out of infant one, the subject never came up. No subsequent teacher complained about my style of writing. They all seemed quite happy to have a kid in class whose handwriting was clean and clear.

At around age 12 I began printing the notes I made for myself. For work to be handed in I used connected script. When I started writing for the local newspapers at 14 I printed my field notes, then typed the copy to be submitted. My avatar is a page from notes I made covering a meeting of the Sugar Control Board earlier this year. It looks exactly the same as notes I made when I was in high school stringing for the local papers.

So I see no point whatever in forcing everyone to use exactly the same narrowly defined style of handwriting. My handwriting has its own personality, but is perfectly legible and draws no complaint.

My answer to the original post is that cursive should be there for those who want to use it, but it should not be the only style of handwriting allowed. Again, legibility should be what counts, not the exact angle at which letters are sloped or the exact shape of the tail of the g.

So the fact that I already had a good, legible, handwriting counted for nothing, is that what you are saying? That was the teacher's attitude. I'd not learned handwriting her way, so it was of no value.

My reply was brief as I didn’t have much more to add to what has already been said.
Actually, I am simply saying that handwriting is a developmental tool and should be taught and practiced. It is like learning to color within the outlines of a coloring book; an exercise in learning control. That is just a point I wanted to add to the overall discussion.

My son had the same experience as you when he was the same age. The old nun who taught first grade was just as focused and obstinate about handwriting as the teacher you write about was. At the end of the school year my son got an award for the most improved handwriting, and he could not read at grade level. I pulled him out of the school and put him in public school. In two weeks he was reading beyond his grade level. It wasn’t that he couldn’t read at grade level in the Catholic school, he just wouldn’t because he was rebelling against the teacher he did not agree with. He had figured out that if he pretended to be unable to read he could be uncooperative without getting in trouble. (He was reading at college level by third grade and his handwriting still sucks.)

Legibility in handwriting should be the goal. I agree that the teacher you speak of had misplaced priorities. Beautiful script is something to be admired that a few people can, or are willing, to produce. To demand it is unrealistic. Handwriting is as unique as the individual who puts pen to paper. We can’t all write alike just as we can’t all sound alike. It is futile to spend an inordinate amount of time on it. In my opinion, by about third grade, an individual’s handwriting is basically what it is going to be for the rest of their life. Hebrew is my second language. In spite of the fact that it is written from right to left and that the script is very different from Latin script; were you to put my cursive English handwriting next to my Hebrew handwriting there is no doubt that they are written by the same writer. Try as I might, I could no more change my handwriting than I could change my fingerprints.

I hope this brings a little more clarity to my position on handwriting.

An award for beautiful handwriting, and could not read at grade level... The priorities of that teacher were badly misplaced. That you did right in moving him to another school is obvious from the results.

When at a book signing, as I'm sure many of us have been, would you prefer the author write you a short personal note in cursive or an avery label printed in Helvetica with the author's name at the bottom in bold type crookedly slapped on the end paper. How soon we forget.

If he writes the note by hand I don't care what particular style of handwriting he uses. He can even print if he wants to and I'll not be offended.

My bank requires that I print my name on withdrawal slips, then write my name out in longhand for comparison with what is on record. No one at the bank has ever taken me aside and told me I must change my longhand style, which has no name so far as I know, to cursive. I don't think they care, and neither do I.

My fiance has weighed in:

Treasure maps used cursive writing, and what will the next generation do if they can't read cursive writing? How will they find the treasure?