I do hope you all have had a fabulous and productive week. Surprisingly we only have about three to four weeks left of this semester so let's make them count.
This week I thought we would talk about cursive handwriting. I found an interesting article about if it's really important to teach cursive writing to students. The article basically stated that cursive writing is not a valued way of writing due to the use of computers and e-mail. All of this makes sense, but as an individual who was taught cursive handwriting in elementary I wish it was not a "fading art". The article continues to quote opinions of other educators and administrators from early childhood to college professors. Some individuals agree that cursive is not necessarily important while others say that cursive is important and will help students in the long run.
For the most part though, the decision to teach cursive is left up to the state, district, school, and/or the teacher. One part of the article talks about cursive writing helping students with dyslexia because it reduces the chance of them mixing the letters up since every letter is connected. Another issue that is causing cursive to diminish from the curriculum is that teacher's do not have the "time needed" for proper cursive instruction. These are all valid points as to why cursive is slowly fading out of the classroom, but I'm still a firm believer that cursive should be taught to our students.
There are benefits of cursive writing one of the most widely known reasons is "it's fancy" or "looks pretty" but those are not the only benefits. Students who know how to both read and write cursive normally score higher in reading and math classes. Also, students with dyslexia are better able to understand what they are reading and writing. So, I guess my question of the week is how do you feel about cursive leaving the schools? Do you think it's still important for teachers, schools, districts, and/or states to include cursive as part of the curriculum? As a future educator would you mind taking the time to teach your students proper cursive handwriting? Put some thought into it and let me know your opinions.
Until next time darlings,
April N. Avery
Interesting that cursive could be an intervention for students with certain learning disabilities. Maybe we need a cursive unit in SPED 3003?
ReplyDeleteI also have heard teachers say that cursive isn't tested, and it's easier for graders to read printing on TAKS and STAAR writing exams!
Every so often, we folks in English get a call from someone who wants, at age 20 or so, to learn cursive. My youngest kids don't have a signature, per se, because they never learned cursive--they always print their names, which has to be easier to forge?!
As an adult with dyslexia, who eventually became a handwriting instruction/remediation professional, I'd like to comment on the claim made in the above article: that cursive writing is somehow so helpful for us.
ReplyDeleteFor a great number of us with dyslexia (children teens, and adults), cursive worsens the problems
Like many dyslexics (and quite a few other folks), I have bitter memories of being told that this could not possibly be happening because a theory said that cursive would help.
Why was all that even necessary? Today, research shows that the fastest, most legible handwriters join some letters, not all: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, using print-like shapes for letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. (Citations below.)
What about reading cursive? This definitely matters. However, cursive's cheerleaders forget
that we can be taught to read a style without being taught to produce it. (Look at historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Parts of those documents are not even in cursive, but are in an elaborate "Olde Englishe" Blackletter — the Constitution's "We the People," for example. If we had to write a style to read it, we could not read the Declaration or the Constitution unless we all became calligraphers ... even worse, we would have to learn to read and write all over again whenever somebody invented a new font.
So it should be no surprise that most adults no longer use cursive.
In 2012, a survey of handwriting teachers attending a conference sponsored by Zaner-Bloser — a well-known handwriting publisher which strongly advocates for cursive — revealed that only 37% of those surveyed actually used cursive for their own handwriting; another 8% wrote in print. The majority — 55% — wrote a hybrid: som elements of print-writing, some elements of cursive writing. Given this, and given our knowledge of how the clearest and most rapid handwriters produce their writing, how sane or practical is it for prioritize cursive?
As far as I have been able to find, no research has established that any of the benefits of handwriting are limited to a cursive style of handwriting.
What about signatures? Is cursive needed there? Questioned document examiners inform me that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest. Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls: the rest, if they follow cursive rule-making at all, are fairly complicated: these make a forger's life easy.
The individuality of writing in print (or in other non-cursive styles) writings is further shown by this: six months into the school year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from the writing on an unsigned assignment) which of her 25 or 30 students wrote it.
Further: whatever your schoolteachers may have been told by their schoolteachers, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over signatures written in any other way. (Hard to believe? Don't take my word: ask any attorney.)
In short, neither common sense, nor fact, nor legal necessity, supports the idolatry of cursive.
Sources:
Handwriting research on speed and legibility:
/1/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May - June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf
/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September - October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf
Zaner-Bloser handwriting survey: Results on-line at http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H2937N_post_event_stats.pdf
Kate Gladstone
http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
For an inside look at a legislative debate about cursive in education:
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You learn something new everyday, that is neat how it can be an intervention for special education students. As a child i thought my scribble was considered cursive....
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