Thread: Should Cursive Writing be Dropped?

Full article: Dropping cursive isn't a capital idea - JSOnline

I know it can be agitating clicking on links to read entire articles. I would just post an excerpt of the first paragraph but there are a few other interesting points in the article that those that may not read the full article would miss. So, I'll post excerpts of several.

Speaking personally, my own signature and cursive writing has deteriorated greatly over the years from lack of writing in cursive. And cursive does seem to becoming obsolete. I'm not sure I really have an opinion or at least not a conclusion as to whether to drop cursive writing in schools or not.

Drop it or no?

There's a debate brewing - mostly via keyboards - about whether schools still need to teach cursive writing to classrooms of digitally wired kids.

I'd be a better defender of beautifully flowing handwriting if my own hadn't deteriorated over the years to a hybrid of cursive, printing, squiggles and shorthand. My wife nudges me out of the way every time we step up to sign a guest book. My lame defense is that I'm left-handed.

Wisconsin is one of more than 40 states that don't require cursive in their core curriculum standards, though the state Department of Public Instruction doesn't have any data on schools or districts that have actually dropped it in favor of spending more time on other subjects. Cursive may indeed fade away, but who wants to jump first?

What's most important, said DPI spokesman Patrick Gasper, is learning the various types of writing - persuasive, storytelling, speeches and so forth - and not whether it's written, printed or typed.

An informal poll last week on JSOnline.com found 73% support teaching cursive in schools. As of Friday, more than 2,700 people had responded. Plenty of readers left comments.

Rac96 wrote: "Our child, in fourth grade, told us that cursive is done during free time. The students receive a packet and work on it whenever they feel like it."

Maripat823 wrote: "I worry about a generation that's taught to sidestep the basics with parental approval."

Many wondered how people would sign their names in the future. I know my own signature bears only the slightest resemblance to cursive. It won't be long before eyeball-scanning or something else high-tech takes its place.

Tuskenraider wrote: "Cursive writing is archaic and should end."

Shark414 wrote: "Teach kids how to be good writers, not pretty writers."

The prettiest cursive I found when I hit the streets and asked total strangers for writing samples belongs to Tamika White. At age 33, she hasn't been in grade school in a while, but she said she writes daily. Her penmanship is neat and slanted just right.

Not one person, even Tamika, made the capital Q correctly, you know that funky shape that looks like a 2. Now there's a cursive letter that's on life-support. Same with the capital Z. A lot of us print it Zorro-style and then revert to cursive with the next letter of the word. Once you're out of school, there's no teacher around to yell at you about this.

Everyone I asked, young and old, was able to produce reasonably accurate cursive on demand. Yet Beloit College, in its annual Mindset List of life's realities for incoming freshmen, all but declared cursive dead and said last year that few in the Class of 2014 know how to communicate that way. I'd be surprised if that's true, but it may well happen in the decade or two to come.

Hm? Seems a bit silly to drop cursive before, (if), we drop handwriting altogether. The whole point of cursive is that it speeds handwriting up, and removes the need to constantly lift your pen from the paper. The vast majority of school work is still done with handwriting, and any sort of electronic device beyond a calculator is banned from the exam room, (so, again, handwriting). If classes don't know how to write with cursive then they'd end up learning and getting through much less work, because they'd simply be too slow. And come exam time, they'd run out of time and end up with half the questions left blank.

Cursive shouldn't be dropped until handwriting is.

No - I had a supplier who sent me quotes in copperplate script, they were a joy to read. There is neither art nor character in keyboard work.

Keep cursive.

Drop math. We all have calculators and spreadsheets to do that for us anyway.

Drop history. I mean, who doesn't have a smartphone, right? Sixty seconds with Wikipedia and you can see who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of the Bulge.

Speaking of the Battle of the Bulge, drop Phys. Ed., too.

Originally Posted by moderan

drop Phys. Ed., too.

No. That's the one that had given me my only A.

My kids are six and eight. We home school -- and each moved right from printing to cursive without a lot of effort. They had it down in a few weeks. It just didn't seem like that big of a deal. Now they mostly write in cursive, but can print just as well. But as they do more work on the computer, it will be interesting to see if and how they keep it up.

We should definitely keep cursive and handwriting. Not everything we do is on a keyboard (with printer). Common sense.

So, before weighing in I committed to writing solely in cursive for the last couple days. It was pretty fast, just as legible as my print, and this is after a serious amount of disuse.

I like cursive, despite not having to use it a lot. It's good to have when you need to write fast, and prettier.

Plus, maybe it will help kids think about what they're trying to say if they can't just blurt it out at 70wpm, with the ability to erase it just as fast.

Is it necessary to know cursive to function as an adult? No.
Is it necessary to know who Vasco De Gama or Eric the Red are to function as an adult? No.
Is it necessary to have read Shakespeare to function as an adult? No.
Is it necessary to know how to say "je t'aime"/"te amo"/"ich liebe dich"/"jeg elsker deg" to function as an adult? No.

Should we take all these things out of the classroom? No. While cursive may be archaic, it's a lot easier to learn when you're young, just like language itself is. That part of our brains simply functions better while we're still children. It may not be completely relevant to life as an adult, but it's still a skill worth learning. Half of education, particularly higher education, is about being well-rounded, and I would hate to have to think of taking cursive as an elective in college when it would have been much easier to learn at age seven.

Actually, decent writing is a vital tool in adulthood, even if it's only image. There's many people who'll judge your intelligence based on your writing style. Is it fair? No, but that's reality; even in these modern times.

With all of the cuts currently being made to education, I think it's time to replace cursive writing with the keyboard in the classroom. Teach kids how to sign their name in cursive and be done with it. It's 2012.

I was forced to learn cursive for twelve years until I moved north a few miles, and since then I've never met another person who joins up their handwriting. It's a pain, the letters are smudged even more by my left-handedness, lots of letters are awkward, and now my writing is semi-cursive. Granted, it looks nicer when done by somebody who has good handwriting irrespective of their style, but mine looks simply awful.

Offer it as a club, or extra-curricular, because it is a skill that I appreciate when does well. But I'd hate to have my children taught it compulsorily.

What on earth is this "hand-writing" you speak of?

Is it a new app? Can I get it on my i-phone?

I agree with Brock, just teach kids to sign an acceptable . Of course handwriting should be kept, but I don't believe cursive is necessary; having nice, flow-y handwriting isn't going to make you more "well-rounded". It doesn't do anything for them. I'm not saying that good penmanship should not be enforced, but cursive is pointless. And I have to add that I agree with "Shark414" that they should be "taught to write well, not pretty".