<p>My kids learned cursive. I only recently realized that this was a thing. It shouldn’t be. It’s way too easy to learn to worry about whether we should waste time teaching it. It shouldn’t take long. And for those who say we should teach keyboarding instead I agree with those who say they learn that easily at home. It’s like teaching them to use a microwave. If they want to eat they’ll figure it out.</p>
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No - they can still write with a pen but they do it using the same letter forms they use when using a keyboard - i.e. they ‘print’. They still need to learn the letters and the words in order to both write with a pen and with a keyboard.</p>
<p>The main purpose of cursive is to allow one to write with a pen ‘faster’ by not having to lift the pen from the paper as much or make independent strokes as much. It really was just a technique used for that purpose before keyboards became widely available but we’re now past that point.</p>
<p>People rarely write handwritten ‘letters’ anymore and the younger generation (and even most of us) virtually never write letters, especially in cursive. Instead they send emails, texts, IMs, or simply call the person since almost everyone has a phone within arm’s reach these days.</p>
<p>We don’t need to teach people how to saddle a horse now that they can drive a car, they don’t need to learn how to use a kerosene lantern since people just turn on the light switch, they don’t need to learn to use a record player since they listen to digitally delivered music, and the list goes on.</p>
<p>I understand that it’s hard for some people to come to terms with this idea that something they spent so much time learning when they were younger, even using a lot when they were younger (if they’re of my generation and earlier), is now just a piece of history of little current practical value.</p>
<p>And looking at it from a practical perspective, it’s far easier to read typewritten text followed by printed text than cursive since the cursive is much more prone to ‘individual style’ including variations in forming some of the letters, slants, as well as a great deal of sloppiness and simply isn’t as uniform as printed text.</p>
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Maybe they can but maybe they can improve on it if taught certain techniques and tools in school but even then they may be better off spending the time in other areas. They can learn cursive at home as well but of course they don’t because there’s no actual need to learn it since it has no value anymore.</p>
<p>My oldest D (now 21) wasn’t taught cursive because it isn’t a state requirement. (My youngest D was taught cursive by a 2nd & 3rd grade teacher who moved to Washington State from Alaska and she taught it even though it wasn’t required.) </p>
<p>Since my oldest D doesn’t use cursive, signing her name is still a work in progress. The first time she voted she had to sign the back of the envelope (our county is 100% mail in ballot) and she was called by the elections department because her signature on the envelope didn’t match the signature on file with her voter registration. She had to go in and update her signature. Hopefully she won’t have to do that every few years as her signature continues to evolve.</p>
<p>I’m all for continuing to teach cursive but if it is taught, it needs to be used in classes after the students learn it so they won’t forget it.</p>
<p>When I sign I basically just write my name quickly without picking up the pen. Don’t really need to learn cursive to do it. </p>
<p>I can’t recall the last time I’ve ever had to read anything in cursive but I’d wager to say it’s not been since high school.</p>
<p>I didn’t learn cursive in school and I don’t feel that I missed out. I don’t see any value in teaching it, and don’t think it should be taught.</p>
<p>Yes, it shouldn’t be taught as though it’s this difficult, weird, antiquated, useless way that people used to write before keyboards. It’s not another language and it’s not hard. To hear that kids are frightened by having to do it is just sad.</p>
<p>My kids are 19 and all of their work in high school was handwritten. Maybe, that’s unusual but I didn’t know it. It’s a big school.</p>
<p>Yeah pretty much, my signature is chicken-scratch that very vaguely looks like my name.</p>
<p>I learned cursive in my Catholic school. Only Cs I got until junior year of high school. I got C, after C, after C in “handwriting”. </p>
<p>Cursive is a useful skill. It’s so much faster than printing IMO. No one can read my note-taking cursive other than me, and that’s fine. A lot of handnotes are written in cursive and people need to learn to read it. </p>
<p>I guess maybe because I work with historical documents a lot I see it more than the average bear, but all of my bosses have used cursive as well. I don’t understand how someone can go years without seeing it. </p>
<p>Do I think it needs to be a graded lesson? No, but I think it’s something students need to learn how to at least recognize. People were saying that cursive was useless when I was in elementary school 15-ish years ago. That’s obviously not the case as it’s still widely used. I’m sure they were saying that long before the mid-90s when I was in school, too.</p>
<p>Both my children (hs junior and 5th grader) learned cursive in Montessori school. I think it’s a good thing to learn, of nothing else it gives the child a choice between printing and cursive writing. I find most kids who learned develop a writing style that mixes the two because cursive is faster. I believe there is also something about connecting the letters that affects brain development and learning (I thought I read that somewhere).</p>
<p>Discarding a skill because it is no longer a required item on the core curriculum or because it is “antiquated” seems shortsighted to me. This attitude is more worrisome than whether or not cursive should be taught.</p>
<p>I agree, Slackermom. I think it’s just sad that cursive is no longer taught in many schools. Just because something isn’t used as often doesn’t mean it has no value. Do art and literature have value? What about music? Oh yeah, music isn’t taught in a lot of the elementary schools anymore, either.<br>
If it’s not math, science or technology, it’s not useful because it has no “practical value.” Sad.</p>
<p>This is exactly where we’re headed, however. According to my Dd who works with HS students, even reading books is becoming obsolete.</p>
<p>Yay, common sense has returned to this thread. As to learning things in school that are useless and quickly forgotten. Uhm…</p>
<p>S1 was taught cursive in third grade. His fourth grade teacher required all writing be done in cursive in her class. S1’s cursive was more legible than his printing by the end of the year. Sadly, no other teacher ever required cursive . S1 went back to chicken scratch printing. </p>
<p>S2’s third grade teacher decided to do a crash course in cursive during the last week of school after all the standardized testing was finished. Useless.<br>
S2’s fourth grade teacher didn’t require cursive. She said at a writing workshop she attended they were told to not waste time on cursive because when these kids were adults all they would need to know is how to sign their name. </p>
<p>Their signatures are pretty illegible now but so is DH’s and he was taught cursive back in the olden days.</p>
<p>It’s a dying art. Most kids I know type or print. The professors even ask for printing sometimes.</p>
<p>This is coming from a high school junior. Sorry to encroach on the parent forum. But we actually had a discussion about this in school a little while ago.
Honestly, I think it’s kind of pathetic when we take standardized tests and get set back in time because kids can’t write the honor statement in cursive, or even sign their name. Half of the kids in my English class can’t even read cursive! I write in a mixture of print and cursive (I use the loopy lowercase “L”, but print the capital “l”, etc.) And it’s so annoying to let a friend borrow my notes when they’ve been absent from school, only to be asked “what does this say?” Every ten seconds because they don’t recognize a lowercase “f” in cursive!
I was taught cursive in3/4 grade, and then in 5/6 grade my reading teacher made us use cursive in his class. I’m really glad that I learned it, because I see how other kids my age struggle to even read cursive. I think that kids should learn it at SOME point, so that they can at least RECOGNIZE it, and not act as if it’s some foreign language!
(I do agree that typing should be taught in schools. Not everyone has ready access to typing software, and I know a lot of kids who don’t even have a computer in their homes. Not everyone CAN teach themselves. Kids should at least have the OPPORTUNITY to learn both skills in school, imo.)</p>
<p>Yes, they should learn cursive and I don’t see what the big deal is. My kids learned it in grades 2 and 3. Every week, they had to fill out 2 pages in a handwriting book. It took about 10 minutes. They, like me, prefer to print, but some people do find cursive a useful skill. If anyone thinks the kids will miss out on something important they should have been doing in those 10 minutes per week, consider that those lessons can eventually be combined with spelling lessons, and, as the students progress, with other lessons, such as how to format a letter. In grade 4, the lessons consisted of having to write their other work in cursive, so no actual instructional time was lost. </p>
<p>You can also think of it as a form of phys ed because it helps develop fine motor skills and muscles of the hand. As phys ed, it was far more useful to my girls than the time they were required to spend memorizing the rules of football.</p>
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<p>yeah, that’s pretty much a self fulfilling prophecy isn’t it?</p>
<p>How do kids write the SAT essays AP exam essays without knowing cursive?
How do teachers write notes, comments on student homework papers without knowing cursive?</p>
<p>The question assumes that there is a direct connections between “learning” or “knowing” and “teaching”. The evidence surrounding reading suggests the opposite.</p>
<p>coolweather, they print them. </p>
<p>My kids all learned cursive, but only use it to sign their names on checks, voting cards, etc. </p>
<p>It really ticks me off when posters assume only their side has common sense!</p>
<p>I never learned to use a slide rule because calculators became widely available, and was in the first class in college programming that didn’t have to make punch cards for their programs. Cursive is dying, I say let it go.</p>
<p>Cursive is really just a lazy way of printing if you think about it. To hand print is slower than writing in cursive so rather than lifting the pen and making distinct strokes one just leaves the pen to paper and connects and morphs the letters in a way that allows them to ‘scribble’ something faster even at the expense of legibility regardless of the training one had in cursive writing. Just try to read the cursive of many people from previous generations and it’s apparent it’s not the most legible form of the written word. </p>
<p>I don’t think anyone here made a convincing argument of why they think cursive should continue to be taught - they just think it should because, why not? Sure no one will likely really need it but let’s teach it anyway.</p>
<p>Realistically it’s a specific skill few people will ever have any use for but it actually does take some time to teach and learn because it takes practice to write in cursive in a way legible to others yet still write quickly, the latter of which is the real point to cursive in the first place, and these writing skills will wane if they’re not practiced on a continual basis but since there’s no actual need to write in cursive, and because most people will use other means, the skill diminishes.</p>
<p>I think posters here who support the teaching of cursive in schools, which to do properly would require a fair amount of time be spent on the subject in school, aren’t seeing ‘the handwriting on the wall’ on this subject.</p>
<p>There’s always that one kid in every SAT/AP exam I’ve taken who doesn’t know the first thing about writing cursive, and then the entire classroom has to wait for their slow-arse selves to finish copying that one sentence statement which should take like 30 seconds but for them takes like 10 minutes. </p>
<p>So yes. I would say students should learn (at least the basics of) cursive, if only to avoid looking unintelligent and slow.</p>