Cursive or Hand Writing? Needed? or Not Now?
Dear Annalie
Some questions about this topic.
Just came across this post of yours from a year ago today on Facebook about Cursive Writing: Pro, Con, Benefits, Value or Not
I read the 4 short articles defending it and only a couple of the COMMENTS that were opposed.
The Benefits of Cursive Go Beyond Writing
Suzanne Baruch Asherson is a occupational therapist at the
Beverly Hills Unified School District in California and a national presenter
for Handwriting Without Tears, an early childhood education company.
UPDATED APRIL 30, 2013, 6:29 PM
Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else,
even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in
cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking,
language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and
synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from
printing and typing.
The College Board found that students who wrote in cursive
for the essay portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed.
As a result, the physical act of writing in cursive leads to
increased comprehension and participation. Interestingly, a few years ago, the
College Board found that students who wrote in cursive for the essay portion of
the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed, which experts believe is
because the speed and efficiency of writing in cursive allowed the students to
focus on the content of their essays.
Some argue that cursive is no longer relevant because it
isn't included in the Common Core State Standards. But these standards only
include those skills that are testable and measurable in the classroom; they
don’t address basic foundation skills, like handwriting or even spelling. That
said, the Common Core emphasizes the importance of expository writing to
demonstrate understanding of key concepts, and fast, legible handwriting is the
technology universally available to students to facilitate content development.
Cursive, therefore, is vital to helping students master the standards of
written expression and critical thinking, life skills that go well beyond the
classroom.
With all this said, does cursive need to be fancy with
slants, loops and curls? Absolutely not! The emphasis should be on simplicity
and function when teaching children cursive.
Regardless of the age we are in or the technological
resources at one’s disposal, success is measured by thought formation, and the
speed and efficiency in which it is communicated. Because of this, students
need a variety of technologies, including cursive handwriting, to succeed.
Should schools require children to learn cursive?
INTRODUCTION
Paul Sakuma/Associated Press
The new Common Core State Standards, a set of national
benchmarks for American public schools, do not require students to learn
cursive. As a result, states and districts are grappling with whether to teach
this skill.
Last week, North Carolina passed a bill making cursive part
of the school curriculum. Is this a step backward, a smart decision or
something else altogether?
Let Cursive Handwriting Die
Morgan Polikoff
Morgan Polikoff is an assistant professor of education at
the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, where he
researches the design and effects of standards, assessment and accountability
policies.
UPDATED MAY 1, 2013, 12:57 PM
Districts and states should not mandate the teaching of
cursive. Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it's already dying, despite
having been taught for decades. Very small proportions of adults use cursive
for their day-to-day writing. Much of our communication is done on a keyboard,
and the rest is done with print.
Educators and policymakers should resist the urge to add
more skills to the Common Core because doing so undermines the strength of the
standards.
Additionally, there is little compelling research to suggest
the teaching of cursive positively affects other student skills enough to merit
its teaching. While both research and common sense indicate students should be
taught some form of penmanship, there is simply no need to teach students both
print and cursive.
The Common Core standards are well constructed and full of
the essential skills students need to succeed in reading and writing. The
architects of the standards certainly weighed the inclusion of cursive and
believed there was no need to include it. Thus, educators and policymakers
should resist the urge to add more skills. Doing so would simply result in a
crowded, less-focused curriculum, undermining the strength of the standards.
Given these realities, teachers would be better off focusing
on the skills and knowledge that will impact student success in the future.
These include printing and typing, but not cursive. As we have done with the
abacus and the slide rule, it is time to retire the teaching of cursive. The
writing is on the wall.
Handwriting Matters; Cursive Doesn’t
Kate Gladstone is the founder of Handwriting
Repair/Handwriting That Works and the director of the World Handwriting Contest.
APRIL 30, 2013
Handwriting matters, but not cursive. The fastest, clearest
handwriters join only some letters: making the easiest joins, skipping others,
using print-like forms of letters whose cursive and printed forms disagree.
Reading cursive matters, but even children can be taught to
read writing that they are not taught to produce. Reading cursive can be taught
in just 30 to 60 minutes -- even to five- or six-year-olds, once they read
ordinary print. Why not teach children to read cursive, along with teaching
other vital skills, including a handwriting style typical of effective
handwriters?
Adults increasingly abandon cursive.
Adults increasingly abandon cursive. In 2012, handwriting
teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of
cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed.
The majority, 55 percent, wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling
print-writing, others resembling cursive. When most handwriting teachers shun
cursive, why mandate it?
Cursive's cheerleaders sometimes allege that cursive makes
you smarter, makes you graceful, or confers other blessings no more prevalent
among cursive users than elsewhere. Some claim research support, citing studies
that consistently prove to have been misquoted or otherwise misrepresented by
the claimant.
What about signatures? In state and federal law, cursive
signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind.
All writing, not just cursive, is individual, just as all
writing involves fine motor skills. That is why, six months into the school
year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from print-writing on
unsigned work) which student produced it.
Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles
mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.
Cursive Handwriting Is a Cultural Tradition Worth Preserving
Jimmy Bryant is the director of archives and special
collections at the University of Central Arkansas.
APRIL 30, 2013
In today’s society, people of all ages use e-mail and
various forms of computer-aided messaging to communicate. The technology
associated with this Computer Age has required adults and children alike to
learn how to utilize various communication devices, to the exclusion of cursive
writing. Ask your friends how long it has been since they’ve written a lengthy
letter in cursive.
As a result, our society is quickly losing its ability to
communicate via cursive writing. It is not taught, or rather it is not
stressed, in American schools as it once was. We are becoming completely
dependent on machines to communicate with others.
E-mail messages are routinely deleted. Letters written in
cursive are saved and cherished.
As an archivist, I see many beautiful letters that were
written in cursive. However, many of those letters are at least 50 years old
and the most beautifully handwritten letters are more than 100 years old. At
one time in our history people took great pains to write a letter utilizing
their best penmanship. In fact, a case could be made that some of the finer examples
of cursive writing are actually a form of art.
We need to teach cursive to school children to preserve this
history. E-mail messages are routinely deleted and not saved for posterity.
Letters written in cursive tend to be saved and cherished. And let's be honest,
receiving a letter written in cursive is much more meaningful than one that is
computer-generated.
Cursive writing is a long-held cultural tradition in this
country and should continue to be taught; not just for the sake of tradition,
but also to preserve the history of our nation.
When I was in Elementary School writing in cursive and creating my own style of cursive, handwriting were a fascination of mine.
Drawing also was my main way of communicating when I was young and going through speech therapy for my cleft palette and hare lip.
"Putting hands to paper"
In High School I took 8 semesters of mechanical drafting
and 2 semesters of art classes.
My father was a mechanical engineer who had near perfect
penmanship, learned while in English schools before coming to the US when he was 16.
One of his brothers also became an engineer graduating from Carnegie-Mellon. He also had beautiful penmanship and lettering.
During the Summer before I started high school I took a class in typing and have typed ever since 1958. Many to most of my jobs required writing which has been done using typewriters until word processing and computers became a way of life.
Yet I worked on 9 degrees and completed 5 of them.
Became a nationally licensed architect in the US and worked in 3 states as an architect over nearly 20 years.
Was it really CURSIVE or HAND WRITING that benefitted me?
Was it really my drawing, my cartooning, my sketching that benefitted me?
Have my intellectual skills or my creative thinking abilities been increased by
my being able to write in cursive, handwriting, lettering in mechanical drafting style
or my abilities as a graphic designer or typeface designer?
I wonder?
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