<p>Cursive is just a faster way of writing than printing, usually by slurring words together. You can sometimes tell when and where a person learned to write by their handwriting. My aunt learned different forms of some letters than my generation and I combine easier printed letters with cursive ones. Gujarati doesn’t have a cursive form- when my mother in law does her American signature it looks like printing, she never learned cursive and has odd looking forms to some letters (perhaps relating to her Guj. versions of similar symbols). Old German included letters that made s and f too similar to easily read. Son learned different printing than I did- it was close to cursive so connecting letters easily transformed printing into writing. This should be taught- running letters together saves time. Some printed letters transform easily into cursive and some traditional cursive forms should be dropped- A,W, F, G, T definitely and I, Q, S T and Z (all capitals- lower case lends itself to running together) written “properly” are difficult to read while it is easy to dash off quasiprinted versions. I’ll use s and r forms interchangeably in a word- whichever goes faster at the time (and with my cursive trained brain). Then there’s the European (French) adding a slash to a 7 and z. And my elementary school needing to correctly write my s and 5 so they could be distinguished from each other.</p>
<p>Printing does no good if it is microscopic- son could fit it all on the head of a pin! His signature is tiny- but preferable to those of usually girls who have huge loopy ones (including circles for dots).</p>
<p>My vote is for the modern cursive style printing my son learned that students will easily slur together to save time. Paper and pen(cil) can still be useful when there is no cell phone handy.</p>
<p>Joblue, if someone hand wrote you a card, but it wasn’t done in cursive, would you just throw it in the trash and not care about the message? Is there something magical about slanted letters which connect to each other that makes it more from the heart than a person using their own unique printed style?</p>
<p>I’d rather see students taking something along the lines of calligraphy instead of cursive. Teach them about different typefaces and fonts, so then can transfer that idea over to computers and what sorts of fonts to use when (and why we have all those different choices).</p>
<p>This is all coming from someone whose lab books are still kept in cursive.</p>
<p>Maybe cursive goes the way of manners. No longer taught but those who behave ‘old school’ will be considered smarter, more refined and adaptable to more social situations.</p>
<p>Of course not, don’t be silly. These days any card that is hand written (even if it’s not actually written but printed) is to be treasured since so many people don’t bother at all. It would just be odd for an adult to be printing his letters like a child. It’s certainly better to print than it is to think a text or an email is sufficient to thank someone for a wedding present, but a hand written note is a better reflection on the education and maturity of the writer.</p>
<p>Of course, if someone just doesn’t want to learn to write in cursive, printing is better than nothing.</p>
Not a good comparison - everyone eats and almost everyone cooks throughout life but no one needs to write in cursive. Of course, if someone buys all meals or has a cook prepare all their meals then they won’t need to know how to cook but that’s very rare. Regardless, they don’t teach cooking in school to all students and I think in most places there are no cooking courses even offered anymore. They also don’t teach how to change a spare tire. </p>
<p>Not every skill one wants or even needs to have is something that needs to be taught to everyone, including those who’d never use that skill again, in school. Just because it isn’t taught doesn’t prevent one from learning it. Since cursive is a thing of the past and a specific skill as opposed to a general educational item, it’s of little value anymore and not worth wasting valuable classroom hours teaching. The time saved doesn’t have to be used just for teaching STEM, although that wouldn’t be a bad idea, it could also be used to extend the teaching of literature, sentence construction, grammar, history, government, and the like.</p>
<p>
That would only be ‘like a child’ in your mind - not mine or most people I know. I find it very odd that you’d characterize it that way. If I write a thankyou note it’ll be handwritten with with letters, not cursive. I certainly would think any less of someone simply due to how they wrote the note but then I’d give just as much value to the note in email form as a snail mail dead tree and chemically written form. It’s the ‘thought’ that counts and there’s just as much thought in an email as in a written note - it’s just quicker.</p>
<p>You’d be surprised at how many people literally never cook and instead eat out or get some form of takeout every day. It contributes greatly to the obesity epidemic.</p>
<p>I think that dietz199 is correct; writing in cursive will fade away in less educated quarters and end up being a signifier of class and education just as showing one knows the proper etiquette in more formal settings does.</p>
It’s already faded away from both educated and non-educated quarters and I think to identify writing in cursive with some kind of higher level is also out-dated and not realistic. Both rich and poor and highly educated and poorly educated people don’t use cursive. It doesn’t mean anything if someone doesn’t use cursive. It doesn’t even mean they don’t know it or know ‘how’ to use it, it just means there’s little value in using it so they don’t. I’m sure there are people better educated than me and far richer than me (and maybe you) who don’t use cursive. Again, it doesn’t signify anything.</p>
<p>The point is communication. If you can effectively and efficiently communicate in written form, what difference does it make what the form is? Should we elevate form over substance? Isn’t bemoaning the death of cursive writing just nostalgia? We all probably understand “text-ese” pretty well. Maybe someday that will become the new “normal.” People may someday look back nostalgically, “remember when we used to use vowels?” What’s wrong with these kids these days…</p>
<p>It is NOT faster than printing. John Holt tested that way back in the 1960s with entire classrooms. </p>
<p>Cursive is banned in hospitals and most medical offices. It is increasingly banned in law offices (as written notes are subpoened, and then there are fights about what is actually written. </p>
<p>Calligraphy is pretty.</p>
<p>My d. is highly dysgraphic: she can’t even read her own notes or handwriting. She used it to advantage: she learned to memorize absolutely everything a professor ever said (and could quote it back in her/him when needed.) Recently, she has been working with a Venetian manuscript where the writer had even worse handwriting than she does. There are apparently only three people in the world (including her) who can read it - all have dysgraphia.</p>
<p>I’m in the middle on this one. I don’t think the failing Chicago or Detroit public school districts should waste time teaching cursive when a good number of their students have far more profound problems to worry about, so I’m fine with it not being included in the common core. At the same time, in a school district where students are pretty uniformly achieving at a reasonably high level, I think it is worth teaching - especially because, as romani says, I don’t believe it takes all that much time. </p>
<p>Personally, I use cursive regularly because I don’t like grading papers electronically and my printing makes me look about nine years old. My cursive isn’t beautiful, by any means, but it is legible and reasonably mature. I know that is a specific case, but I would imagine there are a number of other professional settings in which writing by hand still at times occurs and will for the foreseeable future. And yes, I do think that not teaching cursive will also make students less likely to be able to read it, which can also be a problem in certain settings.</p>
<p>Some on this thread are saying that everyone is typing everything these days anyhow. That’s most certainly not true. My kids have had several teachers who insisted that they hand write all assignments. This isn’t an elementary school exercise in penmanship. It’s middle and high school teachers trying to reduce the incentive for plagiarism and copying off the web. So, my daughter, who is a pretty fast touch typist, was forced to hand write long outlines for APUSH to the point where her hand was cramping up. This easily added an hour or more per assignment to an already extremely heavy workload.</p>
<p>I wrote a thank you letter in cursive yesterday, Good grief, I never entertained the thought that the recipient might not be able to read it! I do remember my one son telling us that a prof had once indicated that son was the only one in the class to complete an in class essay in cursive. I just had no idea that it was no longer being taught.</p>
<p>I started typing all of my own work product in the late 80’s, soon after graduating from law school. My handwriting (a combination of printing and cursive and god knows what) was bad, but has grown progressively worse. It is so bad now that I have to type a memo to myself immediately after client appointments or I will not even understand what I have written a few days later. I once had to testify in court in a case involving a deceased client’s will. While I was on the witness stand, one of the attorneys handed me two pages of my handwritten notes and asked me if I could read them out loud for the court. I could make out a few words but I had to admit, under penalty of perjury, that it was mostly unintelligible.</p>
<p>I also think that cursive is a skill that time has passed by, like slide rule, Morse code, and semaphore. There may be some people who need to know these things, but not everybody. It’s my experience that when you give up on cursive, you can learn to print quite rapidly, and the result is easier for others to read. I’m also not too impressed by arguments about how cursive has coordination or other benefits–I think those are really post-hoc rationalizations, and even if they aren’t, isn’t there something more useful that would have similar benefits, like drawing, maybe?</p>
<p>A high school teacher of mine required students to turn in any written assignment in cursive. I thought it was kind of funny that she passed out a sheet of paper on the first day of class with what letters of the alphabet look like in cursive. For someone who went to elementary school where cursive/penmanship was taught regularly in both the 2nd and 3rd grades, it was kind of strange being in a different school district where students were barely taught cursive for a week in elementary school.</p>
<p>Eh, there’s a reason cursive was developed… it’s faster than printing. Sure people can learn to print quickly if they have to… but again… there’s a reason cursive developed because it’s easier to write faster! As long as people have to hand-write things on paper that’s NEVER going to change.</p>
<p>As to students taking notes on laptops? I haven’t been in high school for a while but I doubt many high schools allow students to bring laptops to class to take notes. I also highly doubt they want students with laptops in classes like math…I’m sure handwriting of notes and assignments is standard practice and will remain so for quite a while. </p>
<p>There have also been studies that indicate students using laptops in class and even students simply sitting next to students using laptops drop a full half letter grade on their tests! B+ to B-. This likely has a lot to do with readily available distractions like youtube, games, etc. but also there is possibly something about typing on a computer that doesn’t translate to human memory as well as the physical act of writing.</p>