Bart: Well, I know hell and damn and bi--
Teacher: No, no! Cursive handwriting! Script!
------The Simpsons, "You Only Move Twice"
Those who answered were split between two factions: those who said that it could die, being a form of communicating developed around the needs of a quill and ink pot, and long since past its best-before date; and then there were those who felt that it was worth keeping around as a relic of a more dignified time. Like pocket-watches, rotary phones, and customer service.
I disagree with both factions, in that I feel that cursive should not die, but also in that it I feel it's still very pertinent and worth teaching to our kids (*). Pertinent: that is relevant, not that it's quaint and reminds us of Grandpa.
The reason I'm not willing to bury writing with your letters touching as yet another victim of the almighty Digital Age (sigh, that old chestnut), is because it can be faster and is more convenient than anything else we've got going right now. You may note (hopefully in longhand) that most young people text or type faster than they print (PRINT, mind), due to practice They're just gangbusters on them devices. However, there will never, ever be a time where we don't use a pen and paper for some tasks, and writing is simply faster and more convenient. You device-aholics can practice, train, and preach, but you'll never win out in practicality.
Balzac, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy all used cursive because they wrote so much, so fast, that it was the best way for them to get their thoughts on paper fast enough. Ideas just poured out, to the detriment of thousands of geese rendered naked. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck were religious about their interaction with their work through a pencil first, for them it was just purer. Even your humble blogger scrawls most of his entries in a spidery black ink that would make a doctor proud for its sometime-illegibility before committing them to the Web.
Now, as far as the pedagogical discussion asterixed above. Why do some kids learn it today and yet some do not? Because the curriculum is packed. Have you seen these kids type? The time to teach them how to do that--and how to make a PowerPoint, avoid cyber-stalkers, Google--has to come from somewhere. Are teachers just supposed to eliminate fractions? Handwriting should be a teaching priority, yes, but more importantly it needs to be a priority of the kids. Parents should never comment on what a teacher is implementing unless the parent knows the curriculum intimately, or unless they feel their child is being neglected. The first rule of education is that non-educators know very little about education but think they know lots. Point is, I want my children to learn cursive. I'll try to enforce it at home, and I don't intend to quit myself, but to demand it of an overtaxed school system is a bit much.
In my own classroom, it's frustrating because as adept as the kids are at printing, they can't say as much in their fastest printing--or typing--as I can in my handwriting. On exams, essays, assignments, notes, they just can't churn as much out. Less content means the greater likelihood of less quality = lower marks.
Probably you'll tell me that I'm not doing enough to embrace technology. My kids probably would do better on laptops or handheld devices. Nope. And besides, there's a balance. Kids will learn how to text just fine on their own. We need to help them for those times when you won't have any sort of device--yes, really--and when having the ability to write will be helpful, even vital. And no, this will not require a zombie apocalypse.
Last--and I'll admit this is a bit philosophical, but the research and practical evidence support it--the more kids write, the better they read. Getting accustomed to the language, familiar with it, learning its subtleties and rules, its tricks and delights, through your own hand rather than through a keyboard or touch screen will make you a better reader. Yes, it will. And no one thinks reading is going anywhere, despite dropping literacy rates.
Keep 'em writing.
I very much agree with this post. I don't want E to learn cursive as a relic, but because I think it's important for her future. My mother teaches at a university occasionally, and I've seen the reports turned in by her students. Printed. On ripped-out spiral paper. In my mind, the current slope of technology we are on, this demand for "simplicity" is causing a regression, a laziness, in my generation in particular.
ReplyDeleteAs far as expectations of the school system, E's first-grade teacher is over-worked, underpaid, and her classroom underfunded. I believe it is my responsibility as a parent to continue the education at home, as an extension of the classroom. A case in point would be the way E is learning to print. The letters aren't being made consistently, and she's having trouble keeping them neat. But you set her down to work over the principles she learned in the class, ensuring she's sitting straight and remembering where to start and finish her letters, and her whole hand straightens up.