Cursive and the Educational Standards
If you haven’t been in the field of education . . . there are educational standards—things that should be taught at the various grade levels. Currently, those standards are called Common Core, and they are national, although states have the right to not adopt them. Prior to that, states had their own standards. One thing is for certain: the standards change, or at least change in name every few years or so. I suspect it is because many people’s jobs are at stake: those who develop the standards.
Common Core is silent on cursive, but it prioritizes computer use and keyboarding skills because its tests are taken on computers. However, even beginning in the 1990s, cursive writing got less and less instructional time. Currently, at least 41 states do not require public schools to teach cursive reading or writing.
Since 2010, 45 states have adopted the Common Core standards, which do not require cursive instruction but leave it up to the individual states and districts to decide whether they want to teach it. So what are the pros and cons of cursive?
Pros and Cons of Teaching Cursive
The obvious “con” is that cursive is outdated. Computers have taken over, and most people use them to write. Otherwise, people can print. Who needs to learn cursive? It is not a “21st century skill.”
Here are some of the pros:
- Experts have said cursive training helps small children develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and other brain and memory functions. Such skills could be important for children who might become surgeons, painters, or other occupations requiring laser-like precision with their hands.
- Some teachers say that students like cursive writing because it is artistic and restful to practice.
- A second grade teacher said that for some students being able to write like grown-ups is a rite of passage. And, she adds, “It promotes perseverance.”
- Advocates for learning cursive argue that “more areas of the human brain are engaged when children use cursive handwriting than when they keyboard.”
- An academic therapist said cursive writing helps students who have dyslexia. “Because all letters in cursive start on a base line, and because the pen moves fluidly from left to right, cursive is easier to learn for dyslexic students who have trouble forming words correctly.”
- Some experts say that nice handwriting can lead to better grades in school. An education professor at Florida International University recently conducted a study that found that children with neater handwriting developed better reading and math skills than their chicken-scratch peers.
- According to a 2006 College Board report, SAT essays written in cursive received a slightly higher score than those with block print. But only 15 percent of the essays were written in cursive.
- And what about the time when a keyboard is not available (is there ever such a time????)? It is faster to take notes in cursive than by printing letters.
Some parents have been surprised at the lack of cursive training. Some are teaching it at home. Some schools are teaching it more as art than as a straight academic subject. So, in this case, cursive is a tradition, and, for some, a more personal way to communicate.
And then there are the arguments:
- Cursive improves eye-hand coordination . . .But there are other ways to build good eye-hand coordination other than writing in cursive.
- The Constitution is written in cursive . . . But you can certainly find printed versions of it to study!
- You won’t be able to read Grandma’s letters . . . But Grandma’s letters probably aren’t even written in cursive any longer. She is probably using e-mail or Skype to communicate. (maybe)
An online poll by Harris Interactive showed 79 percent of adult respondents and 68 percent of kids ages 8-18 think cursive should still be taught. Nearly 49 percent of adults and 35 percent of youth say practicing reading and writing in cursive improves literacy. Okay, the survey was paid for by a pencil maker (really).
When asked what they assume about people who can’t read or write cursive, 30 percent of adults polled and 25 percent of children judged the person as less literate, and 7 percent of adults and 11 percent of children assumed they are “just not smart.”
Kids gave a couple of good reasons why cursive is important:
- “It’s cool and fancy. It’s faster because you write all the letters together.”
- “If you’re going to be a famous soccer player, you need a signature for autographs.”
A couple of problems arise with teaching cursive. (1) If people are not learning it, teachers will no longer be able to teach it. Already, newer teachers have less experience with cursive and teaching it. (2) With more and more to be taught, increasing technology, and more time taken for standardized testing, cursive is one of the easiest things to eliminate from the curriculum because it is deemed not necessary for today’s world. (3) Cursive needs to be taught, but it also needs to be used and practiced lest it be forgotten. In some school districts, it is taught in third grade and never touched again.
What Are the States Doing About It?
Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia are now trying to keep cursive in the curriculum.
A few Washington, D.C. traditional public and charter schools offer cursive; most others don’t.
Bills have been introduced in state legislatures in North and South Carolina, Indiana, and Idaho mandating cursive instruction. (In some cases, the bills were supported by companies that sell writing materials.)
Catholic schools, long known for emphasizing penmanship, are still teaching it, but are devoting less time to it.
The Virginia Department of Education mandates that third-graders should be able to read and write legibly in cursive. However, it is not always taught.
Georgia has laws mandating cursive instruction.
Responding to parent complaints, some states are revising the national standards and adopting their own rules. Arkansas lawmakers made cursive writing instruction mandatory in the state’s public elementary schools beginning in the 2015-2016 school year.
Tennessee passed a similar bill last summer. The Florida Department of Education approved updates to Common Core last year, adding cursive writing as part of fourth- and fifth-grade standards.
What I Think
I was an English teacher in middle school until 2015. Cursive was on the way out, and my entire department was very pro-cursive. We could teach it, students could use it . . . however, we were no longer permitted to require it.
Now I wonder about its actual value, apart from it being part of our writing tradition,an additional skill (it is faster than printing), and an art. I notice that many of the states (not California and Massachusetts) that are trying to bring back cursive are conservative states, states where traditional values are important. I don’t fit in with these beliefs generally. I am all for progress. But maybe cursive isn’t exactly the same as a progressive political agenda. I just somehow wonder when I see the states that are trying to keep cursive in the curriculum. Are they just trying to keep the “good ole days” around? I haven’t come to a conclusion about that. But here is what I do believe:
Printing is the first type of writing children learn. It is important. Keyboarding is also important in this world: actually it is crucial. Cursive is good for brain development and coordination; it is also faster than printing and it looks lovely if done right.
Back when I went to school, we learned to print. Then, in second grade, we learned cursive, which we kept learning and using all the way through high school. I never took typing in high school (I did teach myself), but lots of students did. So they learned all three modes of written communication. Why can’t kids do that now? Too few days of school? Too much time taken up for disciplining unruly students? Too much time taken for standardized testing? Fundraisers?
Someone has said, “In the 21st century, you teach kids to be multilingual by hand.” I agree.
Thank you to the following websites for helping me put this piece together.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/12/is-cursives-day-in-classroom-done/2642071
http://www.eonline.com/news/481596/cursive-handwriting-will-no-longer-be-taught-in-schools-because-it-s-a-big-old-waste-of-time
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/cursive-handwriting-disappearing-from-public-schools/2013/04/04/215862e0-7d23-11e2-a044-676856536b40_story.html
http://www.today.com/parents/cursive-comeback-handwriting-lessons-return-some-schools-t41081
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1114/Cursive-handwriting-Seven-states-fight-for-cursive-writing-in-school-video
Grammar Diva News
My newest book, The Best Little Grammar Workbook Ever! is now available on Amazon, all other online retailers, Kindle, and soon all other e-readers.
My next book, The Best Little Dictionary of Confused Words and Malapropisms, will be out within the next two or so months.
I will be participating in NaNoWriMo this November (National Novel Writing Month), writing a sequel to my first novel. Yup, I do have a novel for those of you who didn’t know I tried writing fiction! I am going to change the title and author of my fiction book, getting rid of my pseudonym and making the book the first in a series. Here it is on Amazon. The new title will be Trashy Novel Book One: Four College Girls and a Purple Boa. The one I am about to begin will be the first sequel, Trashy Novel Book Two: Cybil. I have an undeveloped Facebook page for my novels, and will probably develop a new website for novels. My pseudonym, JoJoBaker, will be changed to A. Miller.
As Grammar Diva, once again, I will be participating in the first annual West Sonoma Book Faire at the Sebastopol Grange on Thursday, November 10, from 6 to 9 p.m. Free to the public.
I will also be participating in the Writer’s World Vendor Faire, sponsored by the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association at the Next Key Center in Novato on Saturday, November 12, from noon to 3 p.m. Free to the public.
cursive is no more relevant than Latin (and much less interesting too), and it amounts to the inflection of severe pain on many people. I have had an actual root canal, and it hurt significantly less then writing cursive. just to provide a disclaimer on this, any perceived attack on cursive is meant to hurt mandatory cursive, not cursive per say.
CURSIVE SHOULD BE AN ELECTIVE ONLY. there are just not enough good reasons for it to be compulsory, but there more then enough for it to be offered, on the understanding and acceptance of the fact that many people will say no, but the interested will say yes. of course, I am a believer in the principle of a society that values freedom, so my default position on everything is that people are allowed to do something if they want to, but under no circumstance should they be mandated to do it; I require significant evidence to sway from that position, indeed if that is not how you are, there is no place for you in a society that values freedom. but anyway, Cursive has no role in modern life, and by the time anyone who is in school now is old enough to be employed, it will have even less of one
my arguments against cursive include:
I. cursive takes forever to master, and some never will no matter hard they try
II. cursive is impossible to write good enough (and I define something as being written ‘good enough’ when it has been written correctly point where the letters are recognizable, though written imperfectly), cursive has to be perfected before it can be written legibly even to those who can read it, bad cursive may as well be doodles, and many people will never get good at cursive
III. some cursive letters look so different from what people see in books, on the internet, or in handwritten print; that I think that Greek or Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet letters are more obviously some type of letter then cursive is; this is true of even well written cursive; poorly written cursive (I. E. what most people who learn cursive because of education mandates wind up with) is indistinguishable from scribbles
IV. to many people; myself included, even attempting cursive amounts to the gratuitous inflection of severe physical pain; I have experienced an actual root canal, and it hurt a lot less then trying to write cursive; I am 100% serious when I say that I would rather be waterboarded then write cursive. the possibility of inflicting serious physical pain would be not much of a problem if it was only done voluntarily, but when something is mandated in the education system, you have people who do not want to do it being forced to.
V. too many cursive letters look like each other, making them hard to distinguish; which is of course harmful to anyone trying to read anything. this is the case even when written “correctly”. what does it say of a writting style when the letter combinations “be” and “li” look almost identical and require several minutes of staring to make out. this is when they are written as they are supposed to be, when written improperly, they are even worse
VI. cursive only has advantages if your preferred writing instrument is a feather dipped in ink. I doubt the biggest cursive proponent has ever written with a feather and ink, and certainly does not do so regularly. not lifting the pen may be an advantage with feather and ink because those are hard to lift, can break easily, and can splatter ink all over; but no modern writing instrument has those properties. not lifting the pen slows you down because of the friction from the paper, and also having to go the same distances, and sometimes trace it. cursive became obsolete when the ballpoint pen was invented, that was in the late 1880s if you are wondering. you wanna talk about outdated?
VI. cursive makes it so that you get tiered so much quicker
VII. even most people who learn cursive abandon it the second it stops being required; which suggests there are a lot of better uses for everyone’s time
VIX. cursive makes dyslexia far far worse, in part because you can no longer make out the distinct letters. I think cursive set me back months in literacy.
X. cursive is slower, harder and less legible then print. print letter shapes are undeniably simpler, which makes them faster, easier and more legible, as well as requiring fewer strokes to write.
XI. handwriting is less necessary in the modern age in general, though to be honest I find this less compelling the above arguments, but why are we teaching 2 forms of something when it is debatable if we even need one? though I would say that if you want to save handwriting you should insist it become all print, but if you want to kill handwriting you should push cursive.
these are just some of the reasons cursive sucks. cursive proponents have no real arguments, but what passes for the most common ones can be refuted as follows:
1. the general benefits argument: its benefits are wholly unproven, no study has even proven benefits of cursive specifically, the closest is demonstrating that handwriting generally has some benefits, but no distinction between cursive and print; I have read dozens of studies about the issue, and none back up cursive when you read what they actually say. most people who claim “brain benefits” will not articulate what they even think those benefits are, and usually will not dive into the question of if any verifiable facts support those benefits. every study cursive proponents quote turns out to be either misquoted, taken out of context, overtly lied about, or cites a source that engages in this behavior. often they do not cite the anything at all. rarely do they articulate what benefits they think cursive has. *Ipse dixit statements just don’t work for convincing me of the benefits of something.
2. the speed argument: this one is based on a flat out distortion of fact if not full blown lies, and it doesn’t pass the smell test of truth either; I have found even illegible cursive to be incredibly slow, much more so then print. you want me to believe that adding a bunch of elaborate, frilly, pretentious, ornate, intricate, and gratuitous loops, curls, tails, flourishes, swirls and curlicues to letterforms speeds up writing? how could anyone have so little common sense so as to think that? this one is exceptionally stupid, but to be sure, I checked the research, and there are studies that show that cursive can, for some people, but not others, be faster only if legibility is not a concern at all, but those same studies find that legible cursive is significantly slower then legible print, which shouldn’t be a surprise given all those ornate loops and curls cursive letterforms have; cursive is much slower compared to print of equal legibility. also I happen to find illegible cursive to be significantly slower then legible print, or even illegible print. did I mention that cursive cannot be written “close enough” (or good enough that you can read the letterforms though they are imperfect), whereas print can, cursive has to be perfected before it can be used
3. the historical documents argument: this one is especially ridiculous when you think about it, and let me explain why:
A. it is possible to know how to read something without being able to write it yourself (for example I can read blackletter and Gaelic Script [which is not even typically used for writing English, though it can be used for that, outside of rare decorative inscriptions in Ireland, and a single house decoration my grandma owned; it never is, and never was; Irish Gaelic, by some accounts an endangered language is what is typically written in Gaelic script], but I will never be able to write either of them myself, in both cases my ability to read them is in fact better than I can read cursive; which I was years ago forced to waste excessive amounts of time learning to write, but no one ever bothered teaching us how to read); indeed many courses in dead languages like Latin focus on being able to understand what is already written in the language, not on being able to speak it or write it yourself
B. there are thousands of places you can find print versions of America’s founding documents, both hard copy and digital; some of the hard copies are from that era, those versions actually being what most people read, not the “originals”; and changing the font in which words are written does not change the meaning of them; if anyone asks I can show you some of those locations
C. the cursive versions of those documents are not in ‘modern’ (palmer style) cursive; but instead an older form known as “copperplate”, which is very different; also, the spelling is not the same as is typical today (for instance the constitution contains the words “chuse”, “Pensylvania”, “controul” and “defence” [that is how the document actually spells them]; among others); and they documents use the long s (an archaic form of a letter that cursive classes never mention even exists); add to that the fact that I have seen the originals of them for myself, and the writing is faded to the point of being barely legible; I could also add that the original version of the constitution capitalizes the first letters of common nouns, something that has vanished from English today, but should seem familiar if you have learned German as a foreign language like I have, but I think the point is clear even without that
D. reading the originals requires a trip to a specific room in Washington DC, which only a few people are able to do. and also, even if you can read cursive, you cannot read them in whole, as the displays they are on are permanently exposed to the first page only; so good luck with your impression of Nicholas Cage in the movie “National Treasure”; as that is the only way you will have the chance to read more than the 1st page of the originals; which you will be able to enjoy your new knowledge of them from prison, as stealing the original copies of the constitution or the declaration of independence is one of the most serious forms of theft from the US government possible, so expect to be on the FBI wanted list, for life, even if you somehow avoid jail; anyone dedicated enough to do all that will have certainly studied reading cursive enough to read it even if cursive is not taught in schools
E. even if this is a skill that is taught, it is so niche that it should be AN ELECTIVE ONLY, some will choose to take it, some will not; if there are still historians, archeologists, and linguistics scholars who can read Hieroglyphics, Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, and Cuneiform, we can be sure a few will take that class
in short, cursive is both not needed, and not enough to read those documents in the original; and should be consigned to an elective like Latin. there is a distinction between skills vital enough that everyone should have them, and those that a few specialists need (and can learn without forcing the rest of us to spend hours learning it)
4. the what if digital devices are unavailable/ fail argument: if that happens, we can use print handwriting, which is easier to read, easier to write, faster to write period in my opinion, and undeniably faster to write legibly, looks like what we see in books and on those digital devices; and which no one is seriously proposing getting rid of; many proponents of cursive seem to be conflating handwriting with cursive, when cursive is a single exceptionally difficult and pompous looking variety of handwriting; don’t confuse a single exceptionally ornate and outdated form of a concept with the whole of the concept. indeed if we just need handwriting and any handwriting will do, in the absence of a particular reason otherwise, it makes sense to use the easiest form of handwriting
5. the dyslexia argument: this one is simply false, I am mildly dyslexic myself, and cursive didn’t help me at all with spelling or writing, and in some ways made it worse. Cursive has more letters that look like each other then print does.
6. the signature argument: legally signatures do not have to be in cursive; they don’t even have to resemble your name. signatures can be printed, x marks, black letter, letters of the Russian alphabet, Chinese characters, a stick figure drawing of a cartoon character, a form of cursive other then palmer method (such as copperplate, Spenserian or Getty-Dubay) random squiggles, or something else; all that matters is that it is distinctive. most cursive signatures degenerate into squiggles anyway.
7. the letters from grandma argument: honestly, I find it unrealistic in several ways; for one I have never seen my grandparents write in cursive, ever. also, someone else can transliterate them. as mentioned previously, learning to read something does not absolutely require being able to write it yourself. also, I think grandma has a problem if she is sending people letters in a form of handwriting they cannot read, surely the burden should be on the person sending the letters to make them legible to the recipient. If they are addressed to someone else, then maybe its not our business to read them
8. the beauty argument is ridiculous for several reasons. For one, there is much better out there, if you want beautiful looking letters, try Bengali as a foreign language. The letters of Bengali (especially, but not limited to “kô” the first letter in their equivalent of alphabetical order) blow even the best looking written English out of the water. if you have seen what Bengali looks like, you can’t possibly tell me that ‘b’s that look like ‘l’s, ‘n’s that sometimes look like ‘m’s, ‘q’s that look like 2s or z’s that look like a cut open human heart (or at least that is the closest describable thing they look like to me), or similar forms are better looking than Bengali kô, and you don’t have to be able to read or speak Bengali to think those letters are good looking. I included links to a galleries of bengali letters at the end of this comment in case you have never seen them (the first one is kô, the second is a gallery of the base consonants, the third is a gallery of the vowels in independent form [I. E. the way they are written when they occur at the start of a word], the fourth is what “kô” looks like with the markers to indicate vowel sounds besides ô attached, the fifth is a gallery of the conjunct consonants which are much more complex). if we want everyone’s writing to look pretty, we should learn Bengali, not cursive; but off that tangent. Two, most people’s cursive is truly ugly and awful, only a few people can write cursive in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Three, beauty is a subjective opinion, and mandates that apply to all should not be based on subjective opinions unique to some; I find the form of cursive taught in schools to be very ugly with the sole exception of the letters s and c (the former only when lowercase). Four, there is pretty looking print as well, for instance try Gaelic Type, I find it much prettier and more legible then cursive. Five, aesthetic concerns are not a good reason to mandate that all people put a lot of hard work into something. It would be different if only people who voluntarily chose too put the work in though, but cursive as an elective would meet that criteria, mandatory cursive does not.
9. the “creativity” argument: this one is absurd; you want me to believe a highly regimented and standardized process that is extremely difficult improves creativity? creativity is doing things in you own way, not conforming to a standardized model.
10. the “individuality” argument: this is the last argument, just phrased in an even more absurd manner. Individuality comes from doing things your own way, as you see fit, without regard to how others do them. A highly regimented and standardized modal that everyone has to conform to (and make no mistake, that is how cursive is taught), is the opposite of that. To argue otherwise is to define the meaning out of the English language and say “up is down”, “large is small”, “black is white”, “life is death”, and “hot is cold”. Individuality can also never be forced, forcing someone to be an individual with mandates is a logical contradiction in terms. Mandates and requirements can only destroy individuality, never create it.
11. the “not hard argument”: this one is flat out false, at least for some of us; cursive in fact often takes a long time, some people may get it immediately, but others make take over a year of tedious practice for several hours a day, and still never get the hang of it. Cursive is in fact very hard, and takes forever to master. Print letter shapes are simpler, more constantly reinforced by seeing them in books, etc; and can be written “close enough”. Additionally even 15 minutes a day every weekday adds up to a lot of time, over the course of a month it already amounts to 5 hours.
12. the “knowledge” argument: this one could be used to justify a lot of things it is not used for. The language of Irish Gaelic is “knowledge”, should we mandate everyone in America learn that? Not bad mouthing Gaelic, I am doing a self-paced online course for learning it right now, and enjoying it; but that does not mean I think all the schools in America should require everyone to learn it. Reading hieroglyphs is also “knowledge”. So is knowing how to use an abacus, or shoe a horse. This has other applications, for instance it is in fact knowledge to know how to burp exceptionally loudly. All the above forms of knowledge should be available for those who want them to obtain, but we should not spend 5 minutes a century requiring every single person to master them, which is what cursive in the elementary school classroom does. In fact there are so many forms of knowledge that if we required everyone to learn absolutely everything, no one would ever graduate, and the schools would last several times the human life span at least, and there would be no freedom anywhere. You don’t want that do you? When it comes to the knowledge we require everyone to have, we must be choosy. In my view only the essential stuff should be mandatory, the burden must be on proponents of something to prove why it is essential. Cursive supporters have not done that.
13. the “abstraction and exposure” argument: the purported benefit, while I have no clue if it is even true (I really don’t) can also be done with any other writing system too. the best way to get that advantage, based on the general logic underlying your idea, is probably to try learning a language with a different writing system. something like Russian, Greek or Hindi or Bengali or Hebrew as just a couple examples. learning to read those languages introduces a much greater degree of abstraction then cursive as there is not even a one-to-one letter correspondence with English, and you can actually use them to communicate with people from other countries, unlike cursive. it will also be easier to retain the knowledge by reading things in the script, as you can actually find written material in languages that use different scripts, unlike in cursive (seriously, there are zero books in cursive as far as I know, it is easier to find books in Latin, a foreign dead language that has not had any native speakers in over 1000 years then it is to find them in cursive.) I have read that Russian and Greek are in particular good first steps for someone who wants to be able to ready anything besides the roman script, because they are still alphabets just with different letters and sounds. but if you wanted to really abstract things and encourage “thinking differently”, maybe using a language written with an abjad, an abugida, a syllabary, or logograms would take it even further. that is in addition to the good look of Bengali as I mentioned above. anyway, those options would also have that advantage, and several additional ones.
if you have any that are not subsets of those, tell me so I can knock it down.
I will concede that cursive does have the “advantage” of looking more pompous.
on the other hand, the case against cursive included among other things, the freedom argument (that the default position is you are not required to, but can if you want to), but also the fact that we cannot teach everything to everyone, so the things we mandate everyone learn should be limited to things with clear benefits. additionally, there are hundred of more relevant things that time could be used for. also, for many people (including myself, but others to an even greater degree) cursive is awful, they just cannot write it, and even trying causes significant pain. to people who struggle with long handwriting anyway, cursive is pure torture. It is an open question whether I would rather be water boarded or write cursive, I would have to think hard. and I know of people who have worse experiences with cursive then I did! I would prioritize peoples freedom from serious physical pain over what nostalgic luddites who don’t know what century they live in think looks good, at least when it comes to what people are required to do, even if you think it looks nice, it is grossly selfish not to in that situation. I am not necessarily calling for an end to cursive, I am calling for an end to compulsory cursive.
there are things that are and should be desire dependent, those who want them should have them, but no other people should. to disagree with that is to accept the principle underlying totalitarianism. all the actual facts in the modern era place cursive in that category. Cursive should be TAUGHT AS AN ELECTIVE ONLY. it is no more essential then Latin, and in my subjective opinion, less interesting. I am very confident that a substantial minority would take the elective. the people who are specifically interested, and no one else, should learn cursive. LET CURSIVE SURVIVE AS AN ELECTIVE!!!!!
it is a great thing that many schools are getting rid of cursive; and any backlash is pure nostalgia, not rational argument. being able to speak a dead language has more use then cursive, so why mandate cursive? for that reason, cursive is in fact pointless.
*Ipse dixit is a phrase that refers to something that is asserted without any proof, or reason the thing is the case, or explanation of how the thing is the case. a statement of that type is dogmatically asserted and then one tries to opt out of logical argument all together. the term from a Latin phrase that translates as “he said it himself”, Cicero used the phrase to describe things simply dogmatically asserted; which is generally what cursive proponents are doing about why it should be taught. please note that most of these individual paragraphs contain far more detailed reasons as to why my opinion is the case then cursive mandate proponents have offered
links to places to search for more information on things I mentioned above:
Gaelic script (https://omniglot.com/writing/clogaelach.htm)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperplate_script#%2Fmedia%2FFile%3ABickham-letter-detail.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter#%2Fmedia%2FFile%3AOld_English_typeface.svg
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A6%95#%2Fmedia%2FFile%3ABengali_Letter_Ka.svg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bengali_letters#%2Fmedia%2FFile%3A%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%82%E0%A6%B2%E0%A6%BE_%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%A3%E0%A6%AE%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B2%E0%A6%BE.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_alphabet#%2Fmedia%2FFile%3A%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%82%E0%A6%B2%E0%A6%BE_%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%AE%E0%A7%82%E0%A6%B9.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_consonant_clusters#%2Fmedia%2FFile%3ABangla_consonant_conjuncts.svg
Fascinating discussion. I learned cursive early on and used it throughout school and college. I also, thank goodness, took typing in high school and had the great good fortune of being forced to practice on a typewriter with blank keys. I, too, now type nearly everything except notes or shopping lists, and I’ve noticed my handwriting has deteriorated quite a bit.
I’ve recently discussed this issue with a friend who hand writes a great deal in notebooks–it’s how she thinks best when writing creatively. This is completely foreign to my brain: I definitely prefer to type. I don’t think this difference is a result of our training–we’re about the same age–but, rather, a difference in the way our brains work. She pointed out that kids whose brains work like hers in this may never know if they are not taught cursive in the first place!
So I’m gradually changing my point of view from thinking that it’s not necessary to thinking it should be taught and then remain as an option for those who want to use it. Thanks for a thoughtful article on the question that doesn’t come firmly down on one side or the other.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful comment. I never took typing, but taught myself, and of course I do write my books on the computer. However, my datebook is still a black book I write in. All my lists are on paper, not on my phone. I guess sometimes I print and sometimes I use cursive – when I am writing a lot and want to be faster. So I use them all, and appreciate that I can write in cursive.
I am a former high school English teacher and I fully agree with you both on the importance of children being at least taught cursive writing.. for them to have it as a choice, but perhaps more importantly as a way of expanding their brain-power scientifically and artistically, perhaps even spiritually in the serenity that can be achieved through calligraphy.
I learned and wrote in cursive until halfway through university when I developed a blend of print and cursive that was actually faster for me and which I still use, changing only slightly over the 40 or so years since. I’ve always been fascinated by calligraphy and handwriting in general. Although nowadays I mostly apply my fingers to a keyboard and my thumbs to a phone (!) to communicate, I take pleasure in writing messages on cards (and even in writing mundane things like shopping and ‘to-do’ lists), and I think I owe at least some of that pleasure to the concentration I was years ago made to put on learning cursive writing.
I agree completely. I think knowing cursive, in addition to improving the brain, gives us an additional communication skills — and like you, we can develop our own form of perhaps a printing/cursive combo, or whatever serves us in our writing. But you don’t have that flexibility if you don’t know cursive.
Thank you for the missive/rant/opinion….I didn’t have the time to read it all, but I get the message. I completely disagree. Cursive is indeed faster than printing, and connecting letters is good for the brain. If you don’t like cursive, however, you don’t have to use it. I don’t teach any longer so it is not terribly relevant to me, but I do hope my granddaughter-to-be is able to have the choice of writing in cursive printing. I am the secretary of two boards, and I take notes. I have to take them quickly, and if I printed them instead of writing in cursive, I would be twenty minutes behind the conversation. If I typed them, they would be terribly inaccurate.
I am not from the USA. First things first. I live and was born in Argentina, a country you might consider not highly developed. I am an English teacher in my country, basically in high schools. One thing we have to bear in mind is that many people in the whole world do not have computers in their classrooms. Many people in the whole world find it hard even to get an education. I think we should consider the things that experts say about learning cursive; they should know. Not teaching cursive because it is not a 21st century skill is like not teaching basic math calculations because there are calculators. Or not teaching history any more because you have Google. I am all for cursive, of course, in the first years of primary school. Thanks for sharing.
You make some great points! Some of us forget that computers are not in homes and schools everywhere, even in the United States! And computers crash and are not always available wherever we are. I love your point about not teaching basic calculations because we have calculators or history because we have Google. You are so right! Basic skills ARE 21st skills!
I learned cursive (or “script,” as we always called it) in the third grade (in the mid 1960s), and was required to use it for a grade or two, at which point it became optional and I went back to printing. I’m not sure that cursive is necessarily faster than the “semi-connected printing” that I do, in which I connect certain letters that flow naturally together (like “th” and “wh” and “ri”). But, since I basically stopped using cursive (outside of signing my name) when I was in elementary school, my cursive still looks like a child’s handwriting.
I took a mandatory typing class in seventh grade and did miserably at it then, because we were using old manual typewriters and my pinkies weren’t strong enough to hit the keys assigned to them (and “a” is a pretty important letter!). But I was grateful to have learned how to touch typing from that class because later, when I graduated to electric typewriters and computer keyboards, I was able to touch type effectively. My typing gained a lot of speed in the late 70s/early 80s, partly from typing a plethora of college papers, but mostly when I started doing live chatting via the Arpanet on the computer terminal we had in our apartment, thanks to my boyfriend being a computer science major. Nothing motivates quick typing speed more than participating in live-time communication with someone!
In the mid 1980s, I taught a combination 3rd/4th grade class for a couple of years, and cursive was part of that curriculum. Fortunately, I had a classroom aide (a woman considerably older than I) who loved to teach cursive and, since I was barely qualified to do that myself (and definitely not interested), I happily turned that part of the teaching over to her, much to the benefit of my students.
So, do I think cursive should still be a part of the curriculum, even though I, myself, don’t use it? Yes, I do, for the same reason that I believe that art and music are important parts of the curriculum, even though I’m neither an artist nor a musician now. It’s another activity the promotes good brain development and, besides, everyone needs to learn how to sign his/her name! But I also think it should be optional after a couple of years…not everyone is going to take to it, just as I didn’t.
I completely agree with you. The school that is teaching cursive as more of an art might have the right idea. I think it should be taught for a couple or years and then should be optional as to whether students wish to use it; at least they will have that option o if they learn it. And if they continue to use it, they will know it. Then perhaps it could be taught as an elective, maybe even with calligraphy.
As always I am amazed at the way you combine erudition with immediacy. I have been meditating for forty years on the Psalmist’s “My tongue is like the pen of a swiftly writing scribe.” (I’m in good company, Saint Jerome and the Venerable Bede found much to ponder in those words.) It’s very Zen. Surely no scribe writes as fast as a tongue shapes voice.
But if he does, you know he’s writing cursive–the speed-writing of the days before print. Cursive is often distinguished from so-called book hands, the more slowly formed letters of formal literary production. In my grad school days I worked on a never-ending, if not quite monumental, catalog of all the then still uncatalogued Latin manuscripts in the world’s libraries. You’d be amazed how many of them were cursive student notes from University lectures; oh yes, and how many were book hand commentaries on the Apocalypse.
Thank you so much for the comment. Interesting project with the Latin manuscripts! One could have a college course on manuscript alone!
I learned handwriting in second grade. We never called it cursive. I got As for my handwriting.
I took a typing class in summer school in 7th grade. I couldn’t stand that class (or was it the teacher?). I passed with a C and typed 40 words per minute. I still look at my hands most of the time when typing, but it is faster than handwriting or printing for me. Besides, it’s easier on my arthritic fingers.
When writing, I always print , but use handwriting for my signature. It’s too bad, because my handwriting was beautiful.
I don’t think we ever called it cursive either. I had really nice handwriting at one time. Maybe I could still do it if I tried. I taught myself to type and was good enough at one time to earn a living transcribing medical reports However, I was never accurate, and now m typing is a mess. I also look at my fingers. And I bang really hard on the keyboard as if I am playing a concerto on a piano – a loud one!
The curse of cursive…
1. My father had beautiful handwriting — he’d studied it using “the Palmer Method” during his schooling. In contrast, my mother’s handwriting was nearly illegible, and strangely was extremely tiny. My father wrote out his Bar Exam (he was a lawyer) by hand when he took the tests, back in the 1930s.
2. I was given “The Palmer Method” workbook(s) during my early schooling (back in the Ancient 1950s). I was never able to master cursive in the Palmer style, much to my father’s displeasure. (Many a Saturday was spent grinding out Palmer exercises…)
3. When I reached 9th grade, I enrolled in a drafting class (I eventually took drafting for 4 years in high school). The first thing we were taught was “hand lettering.” Hand lettering is commonly called “printing” (though that is not really the correct term, as printing is done with a printing press). Our hand lettering exercises showed that we could become quite fast at hand lettering. (Faster than you might think.) The hand lettering managed to merge itself into my pathetic Palmer Method hand writing. Most of my high school papers were hand written in this style — no teachers ever complained about legibility. Some term papers and other longer assignments were typed (we had a full size typewriter and a “portable” typewriter at home).
4. When I first had to sign various “legal documents” (as I approached adulthood), I discovered that “hand lettering” was NOT an acceptable signature. (Is that still true?) I eventually developed a “handwritten” signature both for my legal name (that I rarely use outside of legal documents) and for my commonly used name. Interestingly, hand writing “analysis” gives different results for my two signatures. (They also appear to have only the remotest relationship to one another.)
5. The most useful class I ever took in high school or at the college level was TYPING. I took a “personal typing” class during a summer session after 9th grade. That got me up to 30-35 words per minute. I then took the full high school typing class during my junior year. Frankly, learning to type has been the one skill I have used daily for most of the last 55 years. Note: the typing class was using manual (non-electric) typewriters — and I qualified at nearly 80 words per minute on the high school typewriter. (The important aspect is that I can type about as fast as I think… )
6. The hand lettering ruined my hand writing. The combined Palmer Method and hand lettering has ended up looking rather more like my mother’s handwriting — and my handwriting is now as illegible has hers ever was. I hardly ever “hand write” anything other than shopping lists and brief notes. (My wife can’t read my hand writing — sigh.)
I’m not at all certain that cursive handwriting is truly necessary as a mastered skill. But it is useful to be able to read handwritten material, thus teaching the comprehension of hand writing is a good idea. (I note that among the approximately 18,000 typefaces in my type collection that a significant number of those typefaces mimic cursive hand writing.)
Pete – Thanks so much for the story about cursive and you! It brought back a memory. Back in Massachusetts we learned cursive in second grade. My handwriting was OK, but nothing of beauty. Then, for some reason, in fifth grade, I decided to change it. My teacher posted my before and after cursive on the bulletin board! Now, my cursive is barely legible! I guess I don’t use it often enough. It is , however, probably still better than my typing!
I started first grade in 1940. We learned the printed alphabet, but for writing, we started right off with cursive and never did anything else. We did various pencil exercises – push-pulls and ovals – to develop a smooth, fluid style in cursive writing. We never printed; it was never taught or required. The only problem that I personally had was equating the cursive that we used in writing with the printing that was in our books, but that was soon overcome. Years later, I became a high school math teacher and only used cursive in writing on the chalkboard or overhead projector. I once got an exchange student from Australia who objected that she could not read cursive. I tried switching to printing, but that slowed my presentations down so much that I had to go back to cursive and work individually with that student.
When I taught, I always printed on the board. Every year, I would have about two or three students who always wrote cursive. At first I would require cursive, and when I did, many of the students (and they had learned cursive at some point), would complain how they couldn’t write in cursive or I wouldn’t be able to read it. Usually, it was more readable than their printing and they all could indeed do it! One of our teachers would write on the board only in cursive, so if you couldn’t read it, too bad! In the last couple of years of my teaching – a few years ago- we could no longer require that they write in cursive.