I phoned a local grammar school the other day to ask about cursive. The woman said it’s up to the teacher and it’s taught but not emphasized because it’s not on the Core Curriculum — the subjects that are tested on all of the standardized tests they take nowadays.
I’m glad they at least teach it, and I hope the students have some writing to do so they can see for themselves how much easier it is to write in cursive than to print things out. I don’t think we should go back to the very old days where we had to practice our penmanship and were graded on it, but the students shouldn’t be cheated either.
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 Benefits of Cursive Go Beyond Writing
What do you think?
November 27, 2018
there are so many changes now coming so fast. I don’t know what I think anymore about anything. if we ever lose the grid that keeps all the computers alive we will be like the cavemen… starting all over again!
I feel like we will have lost an art form if we let cursive go the way of the dinosaurs.
my mother of course had to take penmanship. she wrote in the most beautiful Spencerian Script. it wasn’t overly flowery. just elegant. my father also wrote beautifully.
when there are no longer teachers old enough to remember actually WRITING with a pen… that’s when it will end. and it will be sad.
what will they all do when they have to sign their names? or won’t they?
I’d love to be a future fly on the wall!
When we had to sign something for a refund at Smith’s the middle-aged fellow watched Andy carefully signing his name and said kids don’t know how to write cursive anymore. Kaitlin knows how to write cursive, but her signature is illegible. She just scribbles it, and I have to admit, it’s a lot quicker than our signatures. LOL!
Three of the grands go to private Catholic school and all have learned cursive. They are not required to use it. They do a lot of their work on tablets now so there isn’t as much actual writing. But their mother makes them write thank you notes in cursive. The other three are all in public schools (two different states) and have not been taught cursive. Mom tries to tell them that cursive is faster than printing, but they don’t seem to agree.
Woos – Lightning, Misty, and Timber
Thank you for the information! Yes, cursive is quicker than printing once you learn it, but there is a steep learning curve. Good for the mother requiring them to write their thank you notes in cursive. That means they have the experience if they ever choose to use it.
although I can’t do now well, cursive also taught you how to work on lined paper – so that the lower part of your sentence didn’t get jumbled up with any other sentence line.
when I started to see a type of printing, I thought it was weird, then they bought in joined up printing and that just seemed to make it worse. They may as well made proper oldfashioned writing.
I remember going onto to write with a fountain pen, the type you dipped into an inkwell and sucked the ink into the pen; then later a type of refillable cartridge…
I can write reasonably well, when my mind/hand is co-ordinated but some times I just can read the finished prose well as my hand instability does magical rearrangements 🙂
absolutely “left out words” hope you understand that mess above, maybe having a computer to do the work is the problem…
I agree that it should be taught but not necessarily made compulsory. It should be up to the individual to decide what kind of writing they prefer. Some people can actually write in print-style as quickly as in cursive. My father for one.
I agree. I’m sure writing print-style is as good for the brain and motor skills as cursive is. The main criterion should be legibility.
I believe third grade I learn curvise. But I didn’t know these other benifits on learning it.
Coffee is on
I can’t remember when I first learned it. I do remember handwriting practice at some time.
We were taught cursive but my husband’s cursive is mostly printing. I write in cursive but my letter “r” is an old fashioned one that many people don’t recognize. (In 7th grade I thought different was cool and it’s too hard to change now.) I actually had a boss at one time who thought his signature was too legible; he practiced making it a scribble.
Apparently a lot of people agree with your boss. Scribbling a signature is certainly is faster than writing it!
I vividly recall ink pens, lusting after an Esterbrook I finally received one Christmas. Longed for some of the really expensive brands. Then they made cartridges for the ink pens. I also recall when ballpoint pens came out and how I collected any I could get, but few in number. Some leaked in shirt pockets in the beginning.
As for cursive, of course new synapses would be created learning it — since this occurs in our brain with new activities. Hard for me to imagine not learning how to write cursive, but remember nothing about the process when I learned as a child. I do know penmanship was not strongly emphasized and as an young adult I always envied those with “pretty writing”. I made some effort with repetitive practice on certain letters to have a more attractive signature.
My older bro, also my husband in older years said they had pretty much forgotten how to write cursive. In their work with extensive writing they had both resorted to printing for clarity to others. I recall transcribing handwritten cursive of some people that was barely legible many others couldn’t even read in one job I had.
I’m sure printing is as good for the brain as writing in cursive is, I just find cursive easier to write. As I mentioned above, I had a friend in college who took notes but couldn’t read them. 🙂
We had a lot of penmanship practice when I was in grammar school, but I don’t think modern kids should have to do that.