Do we need to teach joined-up handwriting?

[Michelle]

Biological and Psychology Benefits of Learning Cursive

In response to a growing trend where public schools are dropping the teaching of cursive, I wrote a blog post defending the value of learning cursive.¹ The new Common Core standards, adopted by 45 states, no longer require the teaching of cursive. But homeschoolers are being encouraged to teach cursive.² My post lamenting this backward move by the educational professionals drew a huge amount of commentary, 89 posts thus far, some negative, some positive.

I now realize the case for cursive needs to be made more explicitly. First, I want to avoid the distractions over the definition of “cursive” or arguments over the respective merits of different schools of penmanship. I don’t think these things matter much in terms of cognitivedevelopment, as long as we are talking about handwriting that is not printing and in which many of the letters are connected.

A few of the benefits of learning cursive may happen with learning to hand print, but here is my summary of the special benefits of cursive:

cont...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201308/biological-and-psychology-benefits-learning-cursive

[+DieChecker]

Even typing is becoming a lost art, since so many people interact only by way of their cell phone. They cut and paste, and thumb type on their phone, but have to hunt and peck on a keyboard.

I like to be typing an email, or whatnot, at work while looking and listening to a co-worker. They almost uniformly are impressed that what I am typing is actually making sense, but I'm not looking at the keyboard, and sometimes am carrying on a conversation at the same time. 

[travelnjones]

Personally i would prefer if we taught the drafting style block text and completely cut our variation.  Uniform Legibility.

[Podo]

I'm 27 and I was not taught handwriting (what some people call cursive) in school. My grade 3 teacher sorta tried, but nobody cared about it, and it wasn't a required part of the curriculum so I never had any other grade go for it. I can sign my name in handwriting, sorta, but I mainly just scrawl my initials together in a loopy way.

That being said, I can write just fine. I print letters, by hand, and always carry a notebook around to write notes, lists, ideas, etc. In university, while studying Old English and Middle English, I had to learn how to read loopy handwriting since that's what people used to use. I can read it just fine, but I have a hard time writing it.

I don't think it's necessary for the modern world. Reading it might be useful, but reading it is much easier than writing it. If a person wants to learn it, that's cool. But, there's no reason for it to be included as mandatory part of a curriculum, especially since there are so many more important and relevant skills that kids should be taught.

Edited November 17, 2017 by Podo

[.ZZ.]

On 11/13/2017 at 7:36 PM, Michelle said:

Biological and Psychology Benefits of Learning Cursive

In response to a growing trend where public schools are dropping the teaching of cursive, I wrote a blog post defending the value of learning cursive.¹ The new Common Core standards, adopted by 45 states, no longer require the teaching of cursive. But homeschoolers are being encouraged to teach cursive.² My post lamenting this backward move by the educational professionals drew a huge amount of commentary, 89 posts thus far, some negative, some positive.

I now realize the case for cursive needs to be made more explicitly. First, I want to avoid the distractions over the definition of “cursive” or arguments over the respective merits of different schools of penmanship. I don’t think these things matter much in terms of cognitivedevelopment, as long as we are talking about handwriting that is not printing and in which many of the letters are connected.

A few of the benefits of learning cursive may happen with learning to hand print, but here is my summary of the special benefits of cursive:

cont...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201308/biological-and-psychology-benefits-learning-cursive

I couldn't believe it when I heard that kids weren't taught cursive these days!

Must be too much work for them.