Cursive Writing: To Teach or Not to Teach
Posted by PLB Blogger · 4 Comments
The Common Core Standards do not include cursive writing. This issue has caused a lot of debate within the teaching community. As teachers consider whether or not we should take time to teach students cursive writing, we need to think about what cursive writing helps us achieve. It is so important to remember that learning to write in cursive helps accomplish much more than just a style of writing. For starters, recognizing letters written in cursive helps children to differentiate and learn to read different types of text and fonts that they come across with ease. Writing in cursive helps build stronger pathways in the brain for visual perception, a skill that impacts the ability to draw, construct and visualize 3 dimensional structures.
At the same time, I understand the group of teachers who say that this skill is no more relevant in today’s culture. As a teacher with a strong understanding of keyboarding pedagogy, my biggest concern is that keyboarding doesn’t require the same visual skills and eye-hand coordination that cursive writing does. So if we are going to remove cursive writing from our curriculum, we need to ensure that we provide sufficient alternate opportunities to develop these skills.
The 21st century curriculum needs to cater to the digital world in which we live. And at the same time, we must remember that it is skills like cursive writing which helped the engineers and scientists of today build their foundations for construction and design.
What are your thoughts about this and in more general, reshaping the curriculum to fit the needs of the 21st century?
I think all students should be required to learn cursive writing. It’s a lost art. I believe it does help students to learn to read better and to recognize letters. The high school students that I teach have poor hand writing period. Some of it is so tiny you can’t make out the letters without asking what they’re trying to say.
Hi! I use to teach cursive writing when I taught for 34 years. I found it a quieting activity after the kids came in from recess. There’s something to putting pencil to paper. It does take dexterity. It does take practice. Even beginning to teach the strokes to making O’s over and over again was beneficial. It calmed kids. Even those who were ADHD. I spent time with them and showed them to go slowly and reach success. Then we’d move on to another shape of a cursive formation like the curve up and curve down strokes. Those strokes would be part of a h’s, l’s, u’s, j’s, etc. Doing things in small steps gradually led to actually creating the letter and on to a word.
I am a believer in maintaining cursive writing. It’s beautiful, creative (with all the different writers out there), memorable, (I remember my grandmother’s writing and my parents’ script.) I was even complimented by our staff when I had left something written on the board and we used the room for a staff meeting. I was very proud it was mine! Practice makes perfect they say. Everything takes time and practice to improve.
I can’t imagine the Declaration of Independence being signed (actually printed) with names. “Put your Thomas Jefferson here” indicates handwriting/script, not printing. Just because something takes more time, is not a reason to forget about it. Teachers need time to teach it and send it home for homework. There’s too much else put on the teachers today to achieve standards. Are there standard for cursive writing anymore? (I believe there are, but the state doesn’t publish scores for handwriting. Only Math and Reading. Pretty sad, I’d say. I’d like to see a balance put on other subjects. All of them have value…even penmanship value. Here’s to signing one’s signature!
My 15 year old step son had to sign his water safety course application. He didn’t know how to “sign” his name. It was an interesting problem to have. My husband “wrote” his name and made him practice writing it in cursive so he could sign it. In addition to the fine motor and spacial awareness cursive helps with, here’s another issue with children NOT being taught cursive.
I think being able for these kids to write an be able to read cursive writing is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. How are they going to read a note from a boss or higher up if they get handwritten reports on anything. There is times when places want cursive signatures. I just really think this is a shame to stop teaching these kids this.