Should kids be taught cursive writing?

off-topic conversation unrelated to Jane's Addiction
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#1 Post by chaos » Mon Mar 06, 2017 8:45 am

I had no idea schools were no longer teaching kids how to write - with a pen!

Today is the day I faced reality: I am very old. :oldtimer: :lol:
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/03/06/c ... ng-script/

Cursive Writing Making A Comeback?

By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press
March 6, 2017 8:02 AM

NEW YORK (AP) — Cursive writing is looping back into style in schools across the country after a generation of students who know only keyboarding, texting and printing out their words longhand.

Alabama and Louisiana passed laws in 2016 mandating cursive proficiency in public schools, the latest of 14 states that require cursive. And last fall, the 1.1 million-student New York City schools, the nation’s largest public school system, encouraged the teaching of cursive to students, generally in the third grade.

“It’s definitely not necessary but I think it’s, like, cool to have it,” said Emily Ma, a 17-year-old senior at New York City’s academically rigorous Stuyvesant High School who was never taught cursive in school and had to learn it on her own.

Penmanship proponents say writing words in an unbroken line of swooshing l’s and three-humped m’s is just a faster, easier way of taking notes. Others say students should be able to understand documents written in cursive, such as, say, a letter from Grandma. And still more say it’s just a good life skill to have, especially when it comes to signing your name.

That was where New York state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis drew the line on the cursive generation gap, when she encountered an 18-year-old at a voter registration event who printed out his name in block letters.

“I said to him, ‘No, you have to sign here,'” Malliotakis said. “And he said, ‘That is my signature. I never learned script.'”

Malliotakis, a Republican from the New York City borough of Staten Island, took her concerns to city education officials and found a receptive audience.

Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina distributed a handbook on teaching cursive writing in September and is encouraging principals to use it. It cites research suggesting that fluent cursive helps students master writing tasks such as spelling and sentence construction because they don’t have to think as much about forming letters.

Malliotakis also noted that students who can’t read cursive will never be able to read historical documents. “If an American student cannot read the Declaration of Independence, that is sad.”

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when cursive writing began to fall out of favor. But cursive instruction was in decline long before 2010, when most states adopted the Common Core curriculum standards, which say nothing about handwriting.

Some script skeptics question the advantage of cursive writing over printing and wonder whether teaching it takes away from other valuable instruction.

Anne Trubek, author of “The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting,” said schools should not require cursive mastery any more than they should require all children to play a musical instrument.

“I think students would all benefit from learning the piano,” she said, “but I don’t think schools should require all students take piano lessons.”

At P.S. 166 in Queens, Principal Jessica Geller said there was never a formal decision over the years to banish the teaching of cursive. “We just got busy with the addition of technology, and we started focusing on computers,” she said.

Third-graders at the school beamed as they prepared for a cursive lesson this past week. The 8-year-olds got their markers out, straightened their posture and flexed their wrists. Then it was “swoosh, curl, swoosh, curl,” as teacher Christine Weltner guided the students in writing linked-together c’s and a’s.

Norzim Lama said he prefers cursive writing to printing “’cause it looks fancy.” Camille Santos said cursive is “actually like doodling a little bit.”

Added Araceli Lazaro: “It’s a really fascinating way to write, and I really think that everybody should learn about writing in script.”

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#2 Post by Hype » Mon Mar 06, 2017 9:40 am

I don't think there's any reason to teach cursive writing. The only thing that should be taught is legible writing, however you want to do that. That cherry-picked example of an 18 year old who "signs" his name with block-letters seems a bit beside the point. You don't need to be taught cursive writing to come up with a signature that is more than capital-letter printing. My signature has nothing to do with cursive writing. In fact, it's more influenced by the way you produce written characters on a touch-screen interface with a stylus, because I like how that looks. Plus, I'm left-handed, and demanding that people write some specific way, aside from legibly, is a relic of Victorian era faux-propriety enforced by faux-normal social conservatives.

MYXYLPLYX
Posts: 690
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:09 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#3 Post by MYXYLPLYX » Mon Mar 06, 2017 12:00 pm

Yeah, I agree with Hype... this is just another pointless "millenials suck" "get off my lawn" issue that doesn't exist for any reason other than to generate clicks.

Cursive doesn't need to be taught because it's no longer a needed life skill. Debatable that it ever was...

Now, teaching critical thinking/logic... THAT needs to be incorporated at every level of schooling or we as a society are fucking doomed.

User avatar
Artemis
Posts: 10344
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm
Location: Toronto

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#4 Post by Artemis » Mon Mar 06, 2017 3:11 pm

I don't think it's necessary anymore either. Maybe it could be something teachers suggest to parents to teach to their kids as a self-study type of thing.

My report cards always had comments about messy handwriting. :lol:

User avatar
Matz
Posts: 3958
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:58 am
Location: Denmark

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#5 Post by Matz » Mon Mar 06, 2017 3:45 pm

my idiot teacher in the 6th grade convinced us that we should start writing like that. I hated how it ended up looking and went back to my old style of handwrting 5-6 years later and I had then forgotten it and had to relearn it and my handwriting today is suffering because of it. I should fuckin sue the guy, completely moronic thing to suggest at that late stage with all that muscle memory completely locked in

MYXYLPLYX
Posts: 690
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:09 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#6 Post by MYXYLPLYX » Mon Mar 06, 2017 4:14 pm

My friends who had drafting classes have the best handwriting (print, of course).

And that's a class with great practical applications.

Cursive is the new calligraphy... a craft/hobby for those folks with free time to burn and the need for an esoteric skill set.

User avatar
Bandit72
Posts: 2963
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:04 am
Location: Birmingham, England

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#7 Post by Bandit72 » Tue Mar 07, 2017 2:23 am

I can see handwriting, not disappearing, but getting progressively worse over the next 20 - 30 years. When was the last time you wrote a letter, or anything else of significance? Would I be wrong in saying teachers and lecturers are probably the last to still 'write' as part of their job?

Obviously kids at school learn to write, and probably write up until they're 16? Then everything is computer/tablet/phone based. I dread to think how much txt spk is used in school essays.

User avatar
SR
Posts: 7838
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:56 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#8 Post by SR » Tue Mar 07, 2017 7:11 am

Couldn't agree more with the thoughts here on the uselessness of cursive writing as a tool to be taught and used, but I mentioned it to my wife who is a second grade teacher. She agreed, but said it is worthwhile for some to be taught how to read it to maintain the ability to study the past.

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#9 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 07, 2017 8:28 am

SR wrote:Couldn't agree more with the thoughts here on the uselessness of cursive writing as a tool to be taught and used, but I mentioned it to my wife who is a second grade teacher. She agreed, but said it is worthwhile for some to be taught how to read it to maintain the ability to study the past.
If this is the best argument for it, then we should really bring back Latin and Greek lessons for all students, so they can read widely from the past 3,000 years of Western Civilization. High school students in the Victorian era needed it... so why don't we?!

But seriously: I think students should be taught how to understand difficult language, period. Legibility is really a secondary concern, since little Billy being able to discern the letters in some handwritten document isn't going to help him understand what the hell this means:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
That's some Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 12+ readability right there...

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#10 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 07, 2017 8:31 am

Bandit72 wrote:I dread to think how much txt spk is used in school essays.
You'd be surprised how well bright students can code-switch. In a pile of 100 essays, I'll see maybe 5 or 10 that lapse into colloquialisms and txt language and can't articulate a coherent thought. That's about right, since I'll also see about 5-10 that are fucking amazing, and the other 80-90 are somewhere in between.

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#11 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 07, 2017 8:45 am

Okay, I'm flooding this thread, but one more point: there has been some resistance to indiscriminate technology use in the classroom, not for arcane reasons like forcing students to learn things we were forced to learn, but because technology can be a huge distraction, even when used in seemingly appropriate ways. In the past decade, it has become clear to me that when students first get to university, they don't know how to take notes, don't really know why they're taking notes, don't know how to distinguish important information from pointless information, and don't really care all that much one way or the other. Some students figure it out, and others don't, but when you put laptops in front of students who are confronted by a difficult lecture, they transcribe the lecture, rather than listen to it, and then they copy and paste the words of the lecture into their essays, and expect to pass because they think the lecture contains "the answers". This can be useful in classes that require heavy memorization, like anatomy, or chemistry (jeez, I still remember the nerves of the face, and I didn't even TAKE anatomy!) but it's completely useless if the point of a course is not to memorize some set of data, but to grapple with difficult thoughts and develop critical thinking.

It's always been this way, of course: even with hand-written notes, some students will struggle, and some will never actually get the point. But there is something to be said for not facilitating evasion of understanding.

I've had really great results banning electronics from the classroom, despite the worries of the students who think they need to write everything down. Once they get comfortable listening, thinking, and sometimes even talking, things go much better.

User avatar
SR
Posts: 7838
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:56 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#12 Post by SR » Tue Mar 07, 2017 9:57 am

Hype wrote:
SR wrote:Couldn't agree more with the thoughts here on the uselessness of cursive writing as a tool to be taught and used, but I mentioned it to my wife who is a second grade teacher. She agreed, but said it is worthwhile for some to be taught how to read it to maintain the ability to study the past.
If this is the best argument for it, then we should really bring back Latin and Greek lessons for all students, so they can read widely from the past 3,000 years of Western Civilization. High school students in the Victorian era needed it... so why don't we?!
I don't think that's a horrible idea....highly impractical, yes. However, language in symbols should not simply be forgotten in academics. Before there is understanding and critical thinking this much is required.

But, I filed for divorce nonetheless. :lol:

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#13 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 07, 2017 11:42 am

I wasn't joking about Latin, but that's mostly because I'm now struggling as an adult to gain academic competence in it. I was able to figure out what those funny looking 'f' shapes were in old manuscripts with much less trouble. :lol:

The question of what children should be taught at any given level of public education is a big one, and I'm aware that demanding understanding without providing a basic framework is crazy. The problem of intelligence being normally distributed also worries me -- we need to determine what we can reasonably expect from the majority of students if they are challenged, without overwhelming them, and without damaging the few on the extreme ends of the spectrum (both of whom can make use of special education).

One thing that has always worried me about education is that it's often those who are skilled at "being a student" who go into teaching, and inadvertently privilege "being a good student" (i.e., obedience) over other important factors like natural inclinations, enthusiasm, interest, etc. I don't think we should be satisfied with this. So many children hate school, even if they eventually discover that they love many of the things that schools say they are promoting.

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#14 Post by chaos » Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:50 pm

I took cursive writing for granted. I hadn't occurred to me that teaching/not teaching cursive writing was an issue. It never came up with any of my students. I was truly shocked when I read the article I posted, especially considering I am somewhat tech savvy. Oh, the bubble I live in :lol: .
Hype wrote: I've had really great results banning electronics from the classroom
I've never done an outright ban. During the course of discussions I think most of the students with laptops are surfing the web, while only a few are taking notes. Initially the note takers panic when I tell them I want them to stop typing and become engaged with the discussion. Occasionally some have asked (in the beginning of a given semester) if they can record the class; I allow it. After a few classes they calm down and realize they don't need to do it. (One day there will be an out of context youtube recording posted and my career will come to an end :lol: )

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#15 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 07, 2017 1:16 pm

chaos wrote:I took cursive writing for granted. I hadn't occurred to me that teaching/not teaching cursive writing was an issue. It never came up with any of my students. I was truly shocked when I read the article I posted, especially considering I am somewhat tech savvy. Oh, the bubble I live in :lol: .
Hype wrote: I've had really great results banning electronics from the classroom
I've never done an outright ban. During the course of discussions I think most of the students with laptops are surfing the web, while only a few are taking notes. Initially the note takers panic when I tell them I want them to stop typing and become engaged with the discussion. Occasionally some have asked (in the beginning of a given semester) if they can record the class; I allow it. After a few classes they calm down and realize they don't need to do it. (One day there will be an out of context youtube recording posted and my career will come to an end :lol: )
The worst thing I have seen is people taking photos of powerpoint slides. There are seriously students who think that powerpoints slides ARE the content that they should go home and study and memorize/use for their essays. I've toyed with not using slides, but I think they're extremely useful for keeping attention focused, for having discussion points/questions/quotations ready to go, rather than wasting time writing them on the board. I also like playing obscure/old music at them via embedded youtube clips.

User avatar
SR
Posts: 7838
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:56 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#16 Post by SR » Tue Mar 07, 2017 1:55 pm

I told my students they could have any digital tools that I created for their use if they brought in a thumb drive. I wouldn't email them. As for using the devices in class, I allowed them but I stopped teaching in '09 so the use of phones and their applications were not so personal, vapid, deviant, self centered, etc. However, when I took Master's classes I would find myself in homicidal rages in class with people taking notes on laptops. I found the incessant thudding on the keys maddening while trying to engage really dense and difficult material. I stopped a class on a dime when I called out a fellow student chomping (open mouthed) on carrots in class.

User avatar
SR
Posts: 7838
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:56 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#17 Post by SR » Tue Mar 07, 2017 1:58 pm

Hype wrote: I also like playing obscure/old music at them via embedded youtube clips.
I used to have Jane's, Rage, NIN, LC, MC5, Bowie and others jamming as class began and roll was taken.

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#18 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 07, 2017 3:57 pm

The White Stripes are old!

MYXYLPLYX
Posts: 690
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:09 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#19 Post by MYXYLPLYX » Tue Mar 07, 2017 5:12 pm

What, Hype, no Simpson's clips?!


I think I mentioned before that I had a torts law professor who used Simpson's clips to illustrate elements of negligence and such.

She won awards for her teaching...

User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Should kids be taught cursive writing?

#20 Post by Hype » Wed Mar 08, 2017 10:29 am

MYXYLPLYX wrote:What, Hype, no Simpson's clips?!


I think I mentioned before that I had a torts law professor who used Simpson's clips to illustrate elements of negligence and such.

She won awards for her teaching...
I realized a few years ago that kids don't really get/know The Simpsons anymore. There will be the odd kid (like me) who knows Monty Python, The Simpsons, whatever... but it's far fewer now than it was even 5 years ago. So, now I use Rick and Morty. :nod:

They really liked this one:

Post Reply