<p>Here is an article describing some reasons why cursive is still an important skill for kids to learn. Beyond its impact on the SAT I essay, the ability to write in cursive seems to be linked to cognitive development and more complex compositions.</p>
<p>I’ll settle for the neurological process that works through fingers and a keyboard.</p>
<p>I think handwritten essays are ridiculous. The thought process – having to plan everything in your mind before you write and having little or no opportunity to revise after the draft is written – is very different from the way people write in the real world. If school is supposed to prepare kids for life, they should be doing their writing on computers, even during exams.</p>
<p>My son is a junior at the University of Maryland at College Park, where all juniors have to take an upper-level writing course. He recently told me that his course, which focuses on technical writing, is taught in a computer lab, where each student has a computer in front of him. In-class writing assignments are typed on the computer – just like real work in a real workplace. My respect for this university’s way of doing things has just increased enormously.</p>
<p>^The little no-name college I work at also teaches all comp courses in a computer lab. There’s so much more they can do with editing, and it’s so much easier for me to sort through their writing issues when I can read it :).</p>
<p>I can’t imagine having to write anything longhand anymore – I am more expressive using a word processing program that allows me to cut, paste and move things around. But I find the connection between cognitive development and handwriting in children to be interesting.
I just wonder if the ways schools rush to keyboards means that kids are missing a developmental step that was better addressed through learning cursive.</p>
<p>I can see the whole cognitive development thing, but I’m not seeing why it has to be cursive. Just because the letters are connected doesn’t mean there’s a distinct step going on, does it? Can you tell I always print?</p>
<p>This is a huge issue for my son. He never had great fine-motor skills, and his ability to write improved exponentially when he learned to type. When I read something he has had to write longhand, I can see how at a subconscious level he’s thinking “How can I answer this question with the fewest penstrokes possible?”, while at a keyboard he’s expansive and stylish. He also has terrible penmanship – very difficult to read if you’re not used to it – and he can’t write cursive at all. No one ever taught him.</p>
<p>He did fine on the SAT Writing test, but I suspect his writing hurt him on at least one AP. As a practical matter, the only times he has to write without a keyboard are in-class tests in school and standardized tests.</p>
<p>Neither of my boys write in cursive, though D. does. She is also the only one of 3 that is artistic–I always thought maybe that had something to do with it. My younger son always has problems with writing papers, particularly with getting an idea to flow. His English prof this semester suggested to try not using the computer at first–begin by getting thoughts down with paper and pencil. To his surprise it has worked well for him. I’m not sure what the rationale is behind this, but if it works, I’m not knocking it!</p>
<p>Read the Post article. Other than our signatures does anyone ever use cursive? Another random dudeling: it’s been awhile since music composition 101, but how much music scoring is now done by hand, and how much is done by electronic means?</p>
<p>I write in cursive. I also can’t type a lick. Two fingers and little speed. I do see value in writing cursive, without spell-check or grammar prompts from Word. I’ll have to ask D what they are doing at college but I doubt they are writing longhand in Composition class (or any other class except for essay questions on tests). </p>
<p>My longhand voice is substantially different than my keyboard voice and I prefer it. I do recognize that someone growing up keyboarding might feel exactly opposite. Writing with pen and paper I feel more expressive, more personal , more intimate with both the subject and the reader. I can’t imagine writing poetry on a keyboard. </p>
<p>I do believe this generation of students will be the last to have such issues. For better or worse, the pen is on the way out. I think it may be a mistake. I think there is value in structuring your mind in such a way that thoughts flow intelligibly and literately to the page the first time, without re-writes, and edits (other than the occasional erasure). </p>
<p>Now penmanship? That is where they lose me. ;)</p>
<p>This is my son. ADD, left handed writer, cross-dominance. His school teaches cursive (grades it A-F) and his has improved remarkably over the years. I think the reason that neurological development is more stimulated by cursive than printing has to do with flow. Cursive letters are formed differently, depending on the letter that follows. This forces the writer to think ahead & plan for the next letter. Just a thought…I have zero expertise in the field.</p>
<p>Thank God we’ve moved past the days where he’d have to use spelling words in a sentence & he’d try to come up with sentences with only three words. Once the fine-motor kicked in (and practicing cursive helped this tremendously) his writing began to flow & he’d enjoy (sometimes) the creative process. It reminds me of kids who stutter. They may have brilliant, well-formed thoughts that they want to express, but the handicap keeps them silent.</p>
<p>I stopped writing cursive about 34 years ago when I took my first engineering courses. We all had to take a technical drawing course and writing precise block lettering was a requirement. I now print about 98% of the time when I’m not on the keyboard. About the only things I do in cursive are checks and my signature.</p>
<p>My Ds junior Language Arts teacher is requiring cursive (unless the assignment is typed). I have offered to fight this one – there is no state standard related to handwriting for high school language arts – but D prefers I stay out of it. I think it is silly at this point to require anything other than legibility. I use a combination of cursive, printing, and the italic I learned in a college calligraphy class.</p>
<p>'Mudge, I think you’re on to something about hand-written being more personal and intimate. Hand-written love notes are sweet but in IM’s they just tend to look tawdry, you know what I mean?</p>
<p>Cursive is just torture for many kids (and adults.) For some kids, writing – especially cursive – impedes learning.</p>
<p>Dr. Mel Levine, of the All Kinds of Minds Institute, (<a href=“http://www.allkindsofminds.org%5B/url%5D”>http://www.allkindsofminds.org</a>) talks a lot about graphomotor skills and states that that graphomotor dysfunctions are one of the most common reasons a child is referred to him. He discusses, specifically, cursive writing in “A Mind at a Time”. </p>
<p>He notes that motor memory guides writing, and that students vary in how they can recover the motor sequences from memory. He states that “students who have trouble visualizing the letters seem to arrive at one very consistent conclusion: they discover and insist they prefer printing to cursive writing.” </p>
<p>Another issue is assigning the right muscles to letter making responsibilities. Some muscle groups are for vert. movement, some for horiz. movement and some for rotary movement. Kids with difficulty assigning the right muscles have awkward pen grips, exert too much pressue, write with fistlike grasp, or keep the pen perpendicular to the writing surface. </p>
<p>It would be interesting if studies referenced in the article also compared the writing of kids who had the same amount of time devoted to keyboarding lessons as those with handwriting lessons. …to see if either could improve writing skills.</p>
<p>By the way Curmudgeon…the writing you do on this site is quite good and very entertaining…your longhand voice must be spectacular!</p>
<p>Ugh, StickerShock, you reminded me of the trials of being a left-handed kid trying to learn cursive. I never thought it was fair that I got graded down just because I couldn’t make my letters slope nicely to the right like all the right-handed students.</p>
You both are giving me far too much credit. My live act is pretty sketchy at best. </p>
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Yeah, TheDad, I agree and I know exactly the IM’s you mean, too. (As you knew I would.) “Dirty talk” looks kind of sordid in pica or elite and just plain goofy in Times New Roman. ;)</p>
<p>Edit: I’ve done some looking, and Foley should have used “Vivaldi”.</p>