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Should Schools Bring Back Cursive Handwriting?

being someone of the younger age group on the forum my view is it’s a wast of time you could just write what you mean or you could make it look fancey and really you archiving the same task with less effort by doing it normally I learnt cursive in school but I’m an Aussie so it may differ. my hand writing is horrible hence why I just write what I mean instead of making it look fancey
 
What IS handwriting?
Exactly.

To be fair, no matter what anyone “feels,” though writing in cursive does enhance cognitive development, and though for the 1 in 9 students who have some form of dyslexia, it has huge benefits... it’s antiquated and of limited value in the aggregate. There’s a ton of things, new and old, that education is being asked to teach - something has to give.

Grade five kids are expected to hand in typed reports. Need to teach typing then too. Otherwise schools are called out as antiquated. So which one is it? lol
 
Exactly.

To be fair, no matter what anyone “feels,” though writing in cursive does enhance cognitive development, and though for the 1 in 9 students who have some form of dyslexia, it has huge benefits... it’s antiquated and of limited value in the aggregate. There’s a ton of things, new and old, that education is being asked to teach - something has to give.

Grade five kids are expected to hand in typed reports. Need to teach typing then too. Otherwise schools are called out as antiquated. So which one is it? lol

Interesting. I recall in junior high and early high school I would write out my reports in cursive, and give them to the retired typist across the street to be typed up. I did some sort of errands for her in return. I took our school's typing class (manual typewriters) when I was a sophomore, I think.

Cursive is a useful and practical way to write, but in order to be a useful way to communicate with others, it has to be nearly universal. It doesn't need to be elegant, or even very good, but it does need to reach some minimum standard of legibility; the people one wants to communicate with need practice in reading it, and in allowing for the individual quirks of others.

As I hinted in a previous post, I'm more concerned with the quality of the writing itself. If children learn to organize their thoughts, and to write clearly, grammatically, and with correct spelling, that's more important than learning to form letters in a particular way. I just don't think these goals should be mutually exclusive.
 
The beauty of cursive is that it allows you to write much faster and is much less fatiguing than printing. It also allows one letter to flow into the next without breaking the train of thought which then encourages beginning readers to see words rather than letters and promotes fluency. Hence, cursive promotes better reading. So, yes teach cursive as many schools are once again doing.
That being said, we really need to teach keyboarding, too.
 
An additional note about cursive: When using a flowing ink (like a nibbed pen), cursive writing uses less ink. In today's scale of production, this is not an important factor. However, if you are using a dip pen as opposed to a fountain pen, the number of trips to the inkwell decreases dramatically when writing in cursive as opposed to block (print) text. This also affects a person using more absorbent paper - bleed-through or ghosting will be less prevalent with cursive than block print. Every time the nib is lifted from the paper, surface tension puls a little extra ink from the nib, and this ink flows back up the line just drawn a short distance, or on some papers causes the end of letters to have more "fuzz" if the paper is absorbent. On less absorbent papers, this creates longer drying times and/or more blotting being required in order to move on to the next page. I rarely have to wait for more than a second or two when writing in script, and never for anything other than the last letter of one or two words to dry before moving on, but with printed letters, the wait time is multiplied across several letters of an entire word or more.
 
Your cursive isn't gonna help you type your Doctoral dissertation...

True, but you may never get your dissertation approved if you cannot read the original sources in cursive to the extent they exist in that form in your field such that your proposal is DOA for lack of sources.

FWIW
 
Your cursive isn't gonna help you type your Doctoral dissertation...

True, but you may never get your dissertation approved if you cannot read the original sources in cursive to the extent they exist in that form in your field such that your proposal is DOA for lack of sources.

FWIW
That is a gold point. Let's see what happens in 20 years.
 
Cursive writing. Closely associated with nuns whacking knuckles using anodized aluminum rulers in the late 50s, early 60s. This is the stuff nightmares are made of😱.
Useless in modern society. Has been so for decades.
 
Cursive writing. Closely associated with nuns whacking knuckles using anodized aluminum rulers in the late 50s, early 60s. This is the stuff nightmares are made of😱.
Useless in modern society. Has been so for decades.

Hmm. Not having been taught by nuns, or by any teachers who used the knuckle whacking method, I don't have those associations. They have nothing to do with the usefulness of cursive, though, or anything else for that matter.:001_unsur
 
Mona Lisa

Bauhaus design

Zaner-Bloser

There is art, and then there is....well, I doubt many would call Zaner-Bloser an artistic venture. But-“Ars Gratia Artis” I guess
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I was tormented by teachers in 8th grade for my hand-writing. I think it was because I destroyed both classes in the spelling-bee when I first moved in and they had it in for me ever since. I was the new guy that year having transferred in from another school. It was 1989 and this small catholic school was hell bent on making all their students hand-writing experts, no programming or finance classes, hand-writing. They even kept mentioning some guy, one Dr. Toufoueah (unsure of spelling) and all they did was rag on my hand-writing. They even went as far as to call me a loser and a good-for-nothing for not working on my hand-writing skills.

Oddly enough, every time I sign my name or write a quick note for whatever reason someone will usually comment "boy this is some nice hand-writing" :D:D:D

I'd rather see hand-writing than tweeting but have a bit of a sore spot towards the former for obvious reasons.....
 
No. I say, good riddance. I learned cursive in the US and also in the UK. The UK cursive made more sense and was more legible, what I was taught in the US was just barbaric.
 
Every skill one has is an asset (that was a generalization).
A relative was able to make a car sale 'because' he spoke German.
One never knows when something will come in handy.

One cannot learn everything....there are not enough hours in the day.
I will re-iterate, one should in my opinion, be able to read cursive. Cursive is not that antiquated yet.
Jody
 
Much like shaving with a de or straight razor, cursive writing is a skill that most people do not need in the modern world. Like traditional wet shaving, this skill was once common in our society and is now dying out. Few would disagree with these statements. If it has been replaced with anything better is up for debate.

Personally I am big fan of cursive. I had little exposure to it at school but the beautiful squiggles on old manuscripts, family heirlooms and historical documents always fascinated me. I could read them but not very easily.

When I got my first fountain pen a few years ago I decided to give it a crack. My first attempt was very poor. For fun I decided to buy an old book called the Palmer Method of Business Writting. It is an old text book and a lot of the language is quite funny to the modern reader. Nevertheless, I worked through the book and practice a little most days. I’m starting to get very good now.

Is cursive required? No.
Have I found it useful? Not really.

Do I enjoy it? Absolutely. Learning a new skill is fun. Having a connection with the past keeps you grounded. Having a random interest or skill is never a bad thing. At the very least it makes you more interesting. If your time learning would have only been spent watching TV, you have not defiantly not wasted your time.

In my view school should be more about opening your horizons than it is about turning you into a work ready drone for the 1%. Teach cursive as a subject. Give the kids a general understanding and move onto something else they may take an interest in like music, language, chess, sport, science, maths etc. Don’t force them to learn an old skill they may never use for years on end at the expense of maths and science but do at least give them a chance to try it.

To me cursive and wet shaving have a lot in common. They are old skills that most don’t bother to learn. People that have learned them often consider them superior to the new and ‘improved’ alternative. They provide rare opportunities for personal flow time which is relaxing and therapeutic fir the soul. Mastery of these skills helps to make you more presentable in society. They mark you as a person of learning and help you make the best possible first impression. Without a good first impression you may never get the chance to present your content.
 
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