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Cursive Writing Is a Fading Skill — Does It Matter?
antdude sends along an AP piece on the decline of the teaching of cursive writing in schools — ramifications of which we've discussed a few times before. "The decline of cursive is happening as students are doing more and more work on computers, including writing. In 2011, the writing test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress will require 8th and 11th graders to compose on computers, with 4th graders following in 2019. ... Handwriting is increasingly something people do only when they need to make a note to themselves rather than communicate with others, [an educator] said. Students accustomed to using computers to write at home have a hard time seeing the relevance of hours of practicing cursive handwriting. 'I am not sure students have a sense of any reason why they should vest their time and effort in writing a message out manually when it can be sent electronically in seconds.'"
Wasn't there a very similar story linked to about a month ago called the death of handwriting?
You can use cursive writing on a computer, you just have to pick the right font.
Cursive writing is no more a useful skill than illuminating manuscripts. Certainly, one should be able to write with a pen or pencil; but cursive letterforms are of dubious advantage with modern writing implements.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Learning and practicing Cursive writing has as much to do with the underlying skills of literacy, as proper Abacus operation and extensive practice solving problems with roman numerals has to do with the underlying skills of mathematics.
Why would it take ages? I abandoned cursive writing as soon as I could, in seventh or eighth grade, since printing was faster. If nothing else, with printing one can write smaller letterforms more legibly, and smaller forms require less hand travel, thus making for faster writing.
And who composes an essay so fast that the limiting factor is the physical act of writing?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
A signature doesn't need to be anything readable, it just needs to be something you can duplicate yourself but is hard for others to duplicate. My signature is completely non-legible. But it looks pretty similar to other instances of my signature, and a handwriting expert could verify that, while pointing out how a forgery is different.
It doesn't matter if you're scrawling "Mickey Mouse", as long it's your signature.
And yes, the only thing we need to teach kids as far as cursive goes is their signature, however they want to write it (legible or not).
This is nothing new; you can go back centuries and look at historical peoples' signatures, and see that many of them are not very legible. You might make out the first character or so in each name, and the rest is just a scribble.
Cursive deserves to die -- it often results in illegible scrawl.
Drawing tends to result in stick figures, painting often causes people to apply paint outside the lines, playing an instrument results in dissonance, and dancing, well, that just makes people look silly.
If that's your argument, I'd suggest you re-examine your view of the arts. To be fair, though, I suspect you've never seen beautiful handwriting, or its effect on the addressee.
I learned standard cursive in grade school. Typing I learned in high school. Classes in architecture and engineering taught me the value of "printing". In later years, I took up calligraphy (all forms) and modified my own handwriting, moving from "cursive" to an italic.
Throughout all those years, I never questioned the value or the utility of what I was learning, or the work required to master it, typing included. Does that mean I can stick to using a keyboard for all forms of communication? Sure. But I but don't. Life is much richer (for everyone involved) when you don't opt for the lowest common denominator. In that sense, it's a lot like like music. Why learn to play when you can just buy it and have your computer play it?
A handwritten note or letter, irrespective of whether it's to a girlfriend you're looking to woo, a boss you want to thank, an interviewer you want to impress, or to a family member with whom you want to share something personal, is far more effective (and meaningful) than a piece of paper spit out of a laserjet printer.
I spent most of my youth writing in cursive, because it was supposedly faster.
It isn't faster, it's easier. They may not have called it anything more than "writer's cramp", but RSI existed much longer than the common medical term of today. Remember that it wasn't the speed with which they wrote that was the problem, but - having fewer alternatives - a clerical job meant you were writing for bloody ever, day after day.
Here's an experiment someone could try if they wanted. Take a day's work, steady writing by hand, and copy it out using printed block style hand print. Do the same thing (after a good rest, or whatever other controls you can add) using cursive writing, connected ascenders and descenders and all. Track each effort with a wristband (or IR thermography, whatever works best) that measures the amount of heat your fingers, wrist and forearm generate over the same amount of time. Add this to subjective feelings - which was easier on you, at the end of the day? Cursive, every time. That's what it evolved for.
However, it's also quite clear that things that evolved from purely utilitarian uses become cultural artifacts, and very beautiful. Check BoingBoing or DarkRoastedBlend sites for some recent photos of restored or old rusted equipment. With the right perspective it becomes art.
I'm a calligrapher sometimes.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear