Mourning the death of cursive handwriting
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1912419,00.html
This article in time magazine is looking at the “death of cursive handwriting”. Its an interesting article not because it sits an bemoans the fact that cursive handwriting is now an obsolete skill, rather its looks with some realism that things are changing.
I suspect that for most people reading a blog this is an obvious statement. From my perspective teaching teaching students to writing is important and vital, but as the flowing cursive style is obsolete and redundant, hard to read and impractical. The need to teach our students hand writing is matched equally with the drive for digital literacy as a minimum and fluency as a goal.
I do not mourn the loss of cursive hand writing as a skill any more than the progression beyond sliderules and slates. If I want a flowing script for a reason I select a suitable one from my writing tool of choice my laptop, pda, or tablet.
Is the time of hand writing in general also reaching a point of obselecence? This is an interesting question. After school and university, where we teach our students to use computers and examine them using hand written papers. What was the last meaningful and significent product or document you wrote by hand? do you?
- hand write legal documents?
- hand write reports?
- hand write student assignment tasks? and distribute these to the students?
- hand write professional letters and communications?
- Send hand written letters home to parents?
- Hand write your morgage agreement, bank loans etc?
Hand writing is important, but I suspect decreasingly so in our forseeable future.
July 29th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
I still slog away teaching handwriting (neat printing in reality) but I was never ever very keen on the joined up stuff. I think it is still important to be able to do the quick jottings on the back of my hand to remind myself of important chores to be done before the day’s end.
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andrewch Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
It is absolutely important for our students to be able to write and equally important for them to be just as literate and fluent in the digital mediums as well.
I do make frequent use of my palm pilot too, the back of my hand is often littered with comments and notes.
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July 30th, 2009 at 1:52 am
Not only are schools no longer teaching cursive writing, they’re not teaching children how to print either. I have spent countless hours over the summer reteaching my son how to generally form letters. I don’t mind the loss of cursive, but I do think students should be taught how to print at least.
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August 11th, 2009 at 6:14 am
I’m pleased to say that cursive writing is still actively being taught in the UK. The benefit of cursive writing over print is that children know where each letter begins and ends ( as a result of the lead in pen stroke with cursive script). We also find that in dictation exercises and in long writing exercises the children are able to get all of their thoughts down faster than children who are not joining their script. On my blog spot we are going to be posting fun activities to keep children writing over the summer break – first one tomorrow! http://letterlayers.blogspot.com/ why not join us!?
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