Week 48: Cursive originally uploaded by Greg Williams
This morning I came across this article in Inside Higher Ed, a site I’ve been following since my days working at Century College long ago. While I no longer work in higher ed and as of the day before yesterday I no longer have any more schoolwork to do until The Rooster and The Koala bring it home, I just haven’t yet removed the feed from my soon to be dead RSS reader (RIP Google Reader). The topic of the article was on how college professors should object to schools no longer teaching cursive writing and why.
From the article:
Many public schools no longer teach cursive writing; 46 states no longer mandate that districts must teach cursive in their language arts core curriculum. This comes from the mistaken logic that our keyboard-happy society has made cursive a relic of the past that students no longer need. Numerous public schools now teach only printing, and some don’t even bother with lower and upper case – just block letters. Roman Catholic schools still demand cursive, and good for them. For the foreseeable future, kids who don’t have cursive will be at a competitive disadvantage. I’m surprised parents aren’t on the pitchfork-and-torch brigade over this, but I’d like to suggest that college professors should be (especially if they have kids).
The author’s reasoning comes down to a few major points:
- 1. Handwritten note-taking and essay testing is faster in cursive and the argument that typing is faster is negated by the Blue Book essays.
2. Technological failures.
3. Good listening skills are negated by using technology.
4. The claim that writing is MUCH faster than typing.
5. Technology is a classroom distraction.
As someone who has learned cursive, is a big tech person, and who can type well in excess of 100 WPM, I take great offense to this entire article. Not because I don’t agree with many of the author’s assertions in a vacuum but when looked at overall, it’s a bunch of hooey:
- 1. What’s the difference if writing now takes longer? Split the essay test up over two days. I had tests like that all the time in Undergrad History courses.
2. People lose pens, paper, etc all the time. Technology failure is not limited to devices that plug in.
3. Doodling, drooling over the opposite sex, sleeping, and simple daydreaming all do the same exact thing.
4. You can probably write faster than I can type but I have some big added benefits such as the writing being legible and it being easily transferrable and stored.
5. See #3.
When I was in school learning about the contents of cells, my father noted to me that when he was in school they learned of the nucleus and the cell well, that’s it. By the time I was in school there were like 30 different things we needed to memorize. This is just one example but it shows the amount of learning required of students in school. Do we really have time to waste with them learning an antiquated and basically useless handwriting scheme just because historians won’t be able to easily read the cursive of old in archives? Personally, as a previous student and a parent of soon-to-be students, I say let cursive die the death it’s meant to die–one with just as little dignity as I had with Mrs. Reade yelling at me for not tracking the dotted lines on her purple smeared mimeographed sheets.
What do you think about this one? Do you pine for cursive lessons in school and believes students of the future would feel the same way? Can you type faster than you can write especially over longer times? Is this really the death of society or just another bump in the road as we move on and leave relics of the past behind? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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March 14th, 2013 at 8:16 am
What is important is that we teach communication. Communication skills that allow our kids to be good workers, as well as communication skills that allow our kids to be valuable members of society.
I believe having a written language is important. But that doesn’t have to be cursive. I think that today the argument could be better for teaching emoticons in school vs teaching cursive.
Personally, my cursive handwriting has always been atrocious. I always wanted to take some time and really focus on cleaning it up. Mostly for when I write to my grandmother. But then she got a Netpliance iOpener and had e-mail and some basic internet access. Never wrote another letter.
Is there value to teaching cursive? Only if it helps kids to understand words and langue better. Otherwise their time could be spent better on actually learning how to understand words and language better.
March 14th, 2013 at 8:44 am
I’m curious on how people sign leases, contracts, etc. if they don’t write cursive.
Is a printed name legal as a signature?
Do they sign it “X-my mark” then?
March 14th, 2013 at 8:45 am
I am all for teaching cursive. It is how I write and I do find value in it. It was taught early, 2nd grade, while we were still developing our writing. It was built into other valuable spelling and English lessons, so it really didn’t waste time.
However, it pisses me off when people act as if losing cursive will bring on the end of civilization. The world will go on.
March 14th, 2013 at 9:11 am
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March 14th, 2013 at 9:13 am
N52,
My signature is a wavy line that resembles something like a W and an R together. Why? Because I think it’s a stupid way to do things and no one pays any attention to it anyway.
March 14th, 2013 at 12:09 pm
I agree with O.B.B. that not knowing cursive is not the end of the world.
Cursive tends to be more stylish than printing. By that I mean, one person’s cursive can be much different than another person’s, often making it harder to read. I used to work with a guy who took copious notes in meetings, and you could barely read his handwriting. But he could. He always referred to it as his form of encryption.
There is one thing about writing longhand (whether it be cursive or printing) versus typing. You see fewer “typos” with longhand. For instance, in the last paragraph of Bill’s blog:
“Do you pine for cursive lessons in school and believes
students of the future would feel the same way?”
“believes” should be “believe”. If this had been handwritten, it is very unlikely that a typo like that would have occurred.
And Bill – I’m not trying to be critical of your writing and I don’t really mean to single you out for that, because I see this type of thing ALL THE TIME when reading on-line posts, and I know I do it myself.
March 14th, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Mole,
Interesting, I’m far more likely to misspell words when I am not typing because I don’t have built in spell check underlining my incorrectly spelled words.
March 14th, 2013 at 8:11 pm
I’m hoping that someone will chime in here (dm, is this an area of expertise for you?) regarding whether there are particular neural connections or hand-eye coordination things that are positively affected by learning cursive. It is a discipline that engages the brain in many ways, I would guess.
NW Rochester Guy, I agree that art and music in elementary school are stupid, but not because they exist, it’s because it’s been dumbed down and defunded to the point of silliness. If we do art and music, we should do it well.
One of my first thoughts was the one about signatures, as well. Maybe we will soon be having our irises scanned rather than writing our names….
The “believes” typo point occurred to me as well when reading Bill’s post. I almost think that spelling/grammar are becoming a lost art, as well. The two “big city” newspapers here embarrass me.
There are mistakes generously littered throughout the interwebs, despite electronic spelling and grammar checking; heck, I’ve argued loudly with the suggested grammar in my typing machine many times. That said, I’ve come to depend upon it as much as anyone else.
My son is 24, intelligent, and well-educated. He can’t read my mother’s precise cursive. It already happened; you could say that he really wasn’t taught cursive except in a cursory fashion.
I think I’m done.
March 14th, 2013 at 10:51 pm
I do a drawing every month at a meeting I run and I have to read people’s handwriting. I’ve asked time and time again for people to print, but no. One woman lost out this month when I tried to call her name, but I was way off. I didn’t recognize her upper case cursive G.
Part of the problem with cursive is that it is different depending when and where you learned it. I have a really, really difficult time with cursive that is written by much older people and people from India. I rarely have problem reading printed names.
As for the question of signatures, working in the welfare office we would take whatever they put in the signature box. And sometimes it was literally an X. Or a drawing. Or thumbprint.
March 15th, 2013 at 1:20 pm
“If this had been handwritten, it is very unlikely that a typo like that would have occurred.”
I disagree. If you make a grammatical error, you typed it as you thought it was correct or you let your checker change it for you without reviewing what it was changing. I don’t have independent brains that inform me differently of grammar skills when handwriting versus when typing, thus any grammar error in my typing would also be in my handwriting. Grammar is not the same as cursive, handwriting, nor typing. Grammar should be a course (or series of courses) in itself.
I do agree that typing reduces my spelling errors and these errors are typically easier to fix than handwriting errors. Additionally, these errors look cleaner after repair when typing. I recall a few occasions growing up where I would be writing something, and halfway through a substantial project end up making an error. Sometimes these could be easily erased, other times in erasing I ripped the page and had to start over.
I don’t see the arts being less important nor more detrimental than learning cursive. Learning musical skills has proven benefits in other areas of learning (such as http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9159802/Music-helps-children-learn-maths.html). Considering how much I use cursive today, it was not worth the time nor effort I expended. For these reasons, if I had to pick a course to cut, I would pick cutting cursive rather than the arts.
This said, I still think students should learn to sign their name. Signatures are still required in certain scenarios, so having the very focused skill of cursively writing your name seems worthwhile.
March 15th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Cursive isn’t freaking rocket science. It takes a couple days to learn, and then you move on. They spend very little time on it in schools that teach it. It has enough credible reasoning to keep doing it, so of all things, why are people quibbling about this?
And why am I not surprised NW Rochester Guy can’t grasp the educational benefit of art and music.
March 15th, 2013 at 6:12 pm
Alan – I think there is a difference between the “believes” error and a grammatical error. Adding the “s” to the end of the word is most likely a plain and simple typo. It’s doubtful that Bill really felt that was correct grammar.
I agree that if a person thinks it is correct, there longhand would offer no benefit, and in fact the tech solutions available today would help.
But – this part of the conversation is really off the topic of cursive vs printing.
March 15th, 2013 at 6:27 pm
Oh hello their Irony, I just noticed you entered the room.
March 15th, 2013 at 7:31 pm
Cursive will be a lost art and really isn’t a needed life skill for today. However,when it’s done well it conveys a tone of civility and decorum; two traits we could sorely use here in society today. I wished I had kept one of my husband’s grandmother’s letters for a keepsake, her handwriting could be described as pure copperplate. She taught normal school in the 1920s and 30s. Kids don’t need to learn cursive, they need grammar lessons. I was amazed to learn that neither of my boys were ever taught how to diagram a sentence. How can one hope to use there, they’re and their properly when you don’t know your parts of speech! Indeed my own usage of proper grammar has declined sharply over the years …I believe it was on this site I was correctly called out over the use of “boughten” in a post!
March 15th, 2013 at 7:49 pm
Ronalee,
While I have learned to diagram a sentence and spent an entire miserable year doing so poorly, I must admit I don’t remember anything about it and can’t say I find it terribly useful.
March 15th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
But . . . if we a sentence to diagram don’t know how, soon we all talking like Yoda will be.
March 15th, 2013 at 11:04 pm
Bill, But you have done so and I would argue that you construct better sentences as a result. When they were in middle school I’ve gave them simple sentences such as “The dog ate my homework” and asked them what’s the subject, the verb and the predicate. They had no idea.
March 16th, 2013 at 12:08 am
Well that’s a problem only for the SAT ;-)
March 16th, 2013 at 11:53 pm
I think it’s important for kids to learn penmanship. We were taught cursive, but my handwriting is nothing like what I was taught in school. However, it is legible, which is half the battle if you ask me. I took longhand notes all the way through grad school because I find I remember something better if I hand write it over typing it out. IMO, learning things like penmanship, art, music (even diagramming sentences) teaches us discipline and perseverance, life skills that are useful, even if the ways you attained them may not be.
March 17th, 2013 at 9:53 am
1. I have a degree in music and I have never worked at Starbucks.
2. This is not an area of expertise for me (sorry Sandy)
3. Cursive is much harder to read than printing. As a teacher, I prefer my students write in print, their cursive handwriting is awful. And before someone says “That’s because they weren’t taught it!” They were. Also, my husband has horrid cursive handwriting and he was taught it, in a Catholic school.
4. No one actually writes with cursive. If this were the case, everyone would have the exact same handwriting. Most people write in a way that works for them. Some letters are connected and some are not. Their handwriting evolves. How many teenaged girls spend hours creating a “cute” handwriting? Lots.
March 17th, 2013 at 3:09 pm
“3. Cursive is much harder to read than printing. As a teacher, I prefer my students write in print, their cursive handwriting is awful.”
If you were my sons teacher you may actually not make that statement. His printing is horrible and his cursive is actually better.
March 17th, 2013 at 7:21 pm
dsw, that may be true, but it’s definitely the exception, not the rule in my experience. (also, son’s :])