Cursive Writing Is a Fading Skill — Does It Matter? 857
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.'"
doesnt matter to me (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont care to read it, and i hated writing with it. i could probably manage to use it, more or less, if i had to, but its been many, many years since i had to.
As someone who can write cursive. (Score:4, Interesting)
cursive doesn't matter but handwriting does (Score:3, Interesting)
cursive vs print ? (Score:5, Interesting)
"But cursive is favored by fewer college-bound students. In 2005, the SAT began including a written essay portion, and a 2007 report by the College Board found that about 15 percent of test-takers chose to write in cursive, while the others wrote in print. "
I don't really understand. There seem to be two kind of handwriting competing for the written part, but I have never seen that in classes. Writing in print is writing each letter like the printer does, without linking them ? How can you write an essay like that ? It must take ages ? In France we learn it and then quickly forget it to only write cursive.
Make diagrams, schematic, timelines, maps, ... (Score:3, Interesting)
For the 21st century, I would replace cursive with diagrams, schematics, timelines, maps, hierarchies, document structuring, concept maps, graphs, and charts.
I would start students on simple systems that they understand well: Diagram how characters interact in their favorite stories, how the timeline works, the places in the stories, and so on.
With time, I would develop it into articulations of the conceptual structure of essays and movies. I would create more and more detailed maps as times went by. Near the end, I'd have students make complex presentations of scientific and technological objects that put enormous relevant detail into compact spaces (like in mechanical blueprints, software diagrams, scientific explanations, and so on.)
Traditionally we've taught outlines and charting, but I'd step that up way more.
Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
Pen to Paper (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh no! (Score:5, Interesting)
Smoke signalling is a dead art. No one remembers the old smoke signals used by native american tribes - not even native americans! Should we worry?
It's called progress. Those grade school teachers who insist on continuing to preach arcane methods would probably find a more efficient use of their time if they taught their students to type right after teaching them basic writing skills. I don't know many people who can spout out cursive at over 80 words per minute.
Re:EMP? Impending poverty? (Score:4, Interesting)
so what will signatures look like in 20-30 years? Printed out? "Print name" and "Sign here" will look identical?
Re:Oh no! (Score:3, Interesting)
At least smoke signals were probably only used by people who understood how to use them properly, you can't say the same about cursive hand writing. That is why it is often banned from being used to sign your name on documents. People are expected to have good penmanship and frankly most people's cursive is atrocious.
Cursive writing long abandoned in Australia (Score:2, Interesting)
Or at least in the state of New South Wales, where the Foundation Style is the script that has been taught in schools for at least 15 years.
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/parents/k6writing.html [nsw.edu.au]
Foundation script was introduced to ensure that students produced a readable handwritten script and in the expectation that most future "writing" would be done at a keyboard. (Although I have spoken to Board of Studies people who deprecate keyboard skills, saying that we have to anticipate true speech recognition in a few years time).
Re:Jesus, cut the cord already (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cursive is important for two important reasons (Score:2, Interesting)
Handwriting science is about pressures applied through the stroke of the letter and the directions those strokes come from as a person moves their hand and holds a writing implement a certain way. The shape of a signature is easily copied and has been used by school children to forge absent notes from their parents since forever, how the signature is written is something largely unique to the individual's hand.
If one wishes a "cursive-style" signature there is no formal education required to form a few letters without lifting your pen. For your purposes of producing a unique mark, it's arguably better for a person to do this with no prior training, as they will not conform to the same guidelines as everyone else does. What seems like a natural joining stroke to you may be odd to me and vice versa.
Speed of cursive vs printing is arguable, and handwriting (mine anyway) is always more legible afterwards if I print. Taking notes down fast is useless if you can't read them afterwards.
Re:Penmenship matters (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with cursive print is that it's an artifact from a by-gone era. Modern pens and pencils don't smudge and ink doesn't spill out of ink bottles anymore.
There's a purported speed gain from cursive, but that fails compared to the readability of block print letters compared to cursive.
(this is also being said of a person who worked at a survey research group that scanned survey data from forms filled in by pen. OCR works so much easier when letters are a more uniform size and shape.)
Re:EMP? Impending poverty? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Jesus, cut the cord already (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually had an 8th grade metal shop class where we had a forge and were taught how to make hammers, horseshoes and various blades. It was a blast. A very popular class back in...mmmmm...about the early 1980s.
Re:doesnt matter to me (Score:3, Interesting)
Nor does he do any work worth any legal standing; if he did, he'd know the use of a bound logbook.
My work will require a written source until I've been dead for 6 years. What computer format will still be in use in the 2070s?
Re:EMP? Impending poverty? (Score:2, Interesting)
Cursive writing is no more a requirement to literacy than knowing how to operate a printing press.
Now, "any form of writing at all" is important. But curisive?
The advantage of cursive, surely, is its speed. Being able to take hand-written notes is still important in many disciplines (the sciences, for example) and if kids can't take notes efficiently, accurately and still maintain legibility to others then they'll fall behind. (I couldn't do my job, for example, if I couldn't keep a legible, detailed, handwritten lab book.)
Even outside of the workplace, it's often faster to take a note by hand on a piece of scrap paper than to fire up a PDA or phone and cumbersomely tap out a note that way. If you remove a kid's ability to write cursively, then you just slow them down.
And besides, what are emo kids going to do if they can't send a pretty hand-written love sonnet to their sweetheart??
Thinking/learning tool vs shallow thinking? (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt that cursive writing will go away anymore than concept sketching will go away. The neuro-motor connection is valuable in enhancing learning and understanding. People will still write in notebooks and journals that don't need electricity. The people who can't write in the future will be the same people who can't write now; the neglected, the mentally impaired, the lazy, and those who depended on the public school system to give them the essential skills.
Especially important is the need for learning and understanding. According to John Medina in his book, "Brain Rules", concepts are learned better and more thoroughly if there is a little more effort put into the learning process. Motor memory is apparently a good adjunct to learning, especially in complex relationships.
The ability to communicate, on the other hand, is being lost at a tremendous rate. People who can't spell are trying to write about complex problems. People with bad grammar are trying to discuss important political, social and scientific issues. People who can't do basic arithmetic are trying to make sense out of figures that are twisted, distorted and under-represented in the daily media. People who can't think are still trying to vote intelligently and failing. (And,look at what happens daily on /. !)
I can use a number of computer drafting and drawing tools pretty well, but if I want to really understand something, I draw it by hand. (There is also something satisfying about the order that comes from drawing my pencil across my straight-edge, but that's something different.) I spent many hours learning to create legible printed text to COMMUNICATE ideas to others, but my own thinking is usually accompanied by either quick notes that look like shorthand, or complete notes in cursive so I can understand them later. Sometimes my slide rule is more valuable to understanding something than a calculator. Short notes and memos are still more easily written than typed, printed and delivered.
A few months ago a lawyer friend of mine mentioned that her son couldn't read an analog watch. He wears one, but it doesn't tell him the time. There is a whole level of understanding about the world that came from learning to tell time. I seemed to have a connection with the turning of the earth. I could find true North if I was lost in the woods. I could calculate height and distance without a tape measure. I could go sailing and be pretty sure I would end up where I wanted. The ability to read, write and calculate helped mankind overcome basic limitations by enhancing basic metal abilities. I am afraid the serfs of the future will be those that have been removed from the basic skills by layers of technology they use without the underlying knowledge to support it. (In my field, I have already been all but replaced by people who are called programmers, but can't do Boolean Algebra or Assembly language. A bunch of "cookbook" programmers who seem to think that writing code is more important than solving a problem. They rely, as they should, on solutions painstakingly solved by the programmers of my generation which have been combined into large complex systems and placed in books and repositories. But they couldn't reproduce the solutions if they had to start from scratch.)
As you may have guessed, I'm worried that the loss of the ability to write will diminish our ability to think and communicate. Cursive writing is only part of this process, so the loss of manual writing ability does not depend on a specific style. Cursive penmanship did give us a common ground for understanding the ideas of other people. Linguists tell us that the actual understanding of written communication is tremendously difficult, even if the communication is simple and clearly presented.
15 years earlier... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Font (Score:4, Interesting)
That is a funny and in a way, prescient thought. I for one believe that not only is cursive on the outs, but our current form of expression of text as well; though on a somewhat longer time scale. We may be headed full circle back towards some form of iconographic means of communication, indeed like a system of hieroglyphics.
Hasn't the internet seen a proliferation of images and video and a transition from long texts to bloggable and twitterable "bits" of text? Are we headed in the "Western World" toward a different symbology? Consider Chinese Script or Japanese or some of the other Asian scripts which are, after a fashion, more wholly iconographic.
"A 'picture' is worth a thousand words"
Is it feasible that we are heading toward a new style of the consolidation of information? When was the last time you read a 1000 page book? Are Universities graduating more Literature majors or more Graphic Designers? Just a thought...
--
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.
-Edgar Allen Poe
Re:EMP? Impending poverty? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:cursive vs print ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Writing in print is writing each letter like the printer does, without linking them ? How can you write an essay like that ? It must take ages ? In France we learn it and then quickly forget it to only write cursive.
Writing in cursive beats writing in print only when you're using a quill or fountain pen with an inkwell, to reduce ink-splash. Writing in print is faster, more legible, environmentally friendly, and more economical.
Re:doesnt matter to me (Score:2, Interesting)
... Somehow I doubt that historical material will ever be written sourced from emails and instant messaging....
I think that this has more to do with the fact that paper and ink or even pencil are far more durable than any digital media. I still have some love letters that are recorded on 8 inch floppies that are no longer readable, that I wrote a long time ago and sent in printed form to the woman who has been my faithful wife all these years. She did not have a computer and wrote her replies on paper written in cursive handwriting. The printouts and her writing are still available to us. Because we moved at the beginning of the year we came across these personal historical documents which brought forth smiles and both of us.
You're right, in that correspondence by e-mail tends to be cryptic, fleeting short messages flying back and forth in cyberspace, rather than longer descriptive writings of earlier times. Historians a few hundred years from now will have slim pickings of our doings and history.
What does it matter - kids will all have carpel... (Score:2, Interesting)
What does it matter - kids will all have carpel tunnel or other related wrist/hand injuries from typing for 20 years and be unable to hold a pen when they mature. This happened to me, I learned cursive writing at the end of a bamboo stick 50 years ago, and now after 30 years of solid typing day in and day out, i am lucky to be able to print anything legible, cursive or otherwise. Folks should be more concerned about long term keyboard use then use of the pen...
Non-negotiable! (Score:3, Interesting)
Some form of handwriting is necessary, and always will be. I view this as non-negotiable.
I don't care if it's any particular form, as long as it's readable by others. Mine is a "joined-together printing" style, I abandoned traditional cursive writing in my teens, but what I write is readable and gets the job done. If Cursive is dying, let it die. Carolingian Minuscule died centuries ago and nobody misses it.
The one thing I would change is the tendency to "illiterate" handwriting. You know the type. There has to be a better way.
...laura
Re:doesnt matter to me (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a C&R FFL that requires a bound logbook. I also have a private pilots license which I use a paper logbook for as well.
I've not written a bit of cursive in either. Print works fine in them. To tell the truth, aside from my signature, I haven't written a word of cursive since they stopped requiring students write in it (which was around the 7th grade or so - about 15 years ago).
Re:doesnt matter to me (Score:3, Interesting)
>> My work will require a written source until I've been dead for 6 years. What computer format will still be in use in the 2070s?
> ASCII Plain Text.
It's probably the safest bet for English-speaking countries. But you should mention ASCII is not complete or even usable outside of English-speaking countries.
It definitely matters (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a teenager, lo so many years ago, I had a female friend who had really nice handwriting. On those rare occasions that my friends and I skipped school, she was always the one who'd write our "excuse" notes because her writing made for a believable note from mom. So tell me - if cursive writing is lost, who is going to write the mom notes for those poor children of the future?
Re:cursive vs print ? (Score:1, Interesting)
I must admit, as a poster from the UK, to be just as confused as this French guy.
Printing is incredibly slow compared to cursive. Our primary school children learn to print and then move on to cursive by middle school age..i.e around 10!
I see something written in print and I can't stop myself assuming that it has been written by a primary school child.
"And who composes an essay so fast that the limiting factor is the physical act of writing?"
Er, anyone who has ever answered an essay question hoping for decent marks? You are never given enough time to fully convey a well conceived, well written and well argued essay within the time limit.
When I was in school, the few people in class insisting in writing in print would simply find their work rejected by the teachers.
And people here are saying that they 'haven't written in decades'? For those who went to Uni - how did you take notes during lectures? I very much doubt that you had a laptop in the 80's or 90's. I might believe that you could have had one in the early 00's, but Manchester University banned them in lecture theatres and, afaik, many other English univerisities did too.
Re:Illegible Cursive going away? Oh Noez! (Score:3, Interesting)
cyn1c77 wrote:
Even non-calligraphy print can become art. An example is in comic books. Even though much of the creation process is assisted by computers, it still boils down to a creative team working by hand, including the letterer (the person who prints text in the speech, thought, and comment ballons). In a related point, although Comic Sans is based on comic book lettering, to me it doesn't bare much resemblance any comic book lettering I've seen.
One of the best letterers I've ever seen is Bob Lappan, the man who did the lettering on the late-1980s Justice League comics (a series noted for being one of the funniest comics of its time). Although most of his lettering is in block form (all capitals), by the use of letter size, italics, white space, and other techniques he is able to shape the words in a way that you can almost hear the characters speaking. His work added so much to each issue, and greatly enhanced the humor. For me, it was true art.
Re:doesnt matter to me (Score:3, Interesting)
Cursive was invented because printing is wasteful of space. Cursive is much more compact (when done correctly). It is also faster to produce. To me, these are the only arguments that matter in handwriting - am I wasting time and other resources for no gain?
Print serves a purpose, and is valuable, but only a fool wastes on the theory that there's always plenty. Space and time are always premium. It may be harder to read bad cursive, but then why produce bad cursive?
Mathematical sequences are inherently symbolic, so naturally you use self-contained symbols for them. It's a different animal. (Speaking of Animal, I wonder if muppets use cursive...)
da Vinci for lefties (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm left-handed. In school, I found that my writing tended to become illegible rather quickly, because of having to `push' rather than `pull' across the paper.
One day, I was browsing in a bookshop when I noticed a facsimile of some of Leonardo da Vinci's notes. Now, everyone knows that he wrote his personal notes backwards, and writing backwards is often a sign of left-handedness. And since da Vinci hacked on just about everything else going in Renaissance Italy, I wondered whether he might have hacked his own handwriting for ease of use. And he must have had to write to other people occasionally --- he couldn't ALWAYS have written backwards.
So I bought the book and with a mirror and a magnifying-glass figured out how he formed his letters. And I found that actually, his handwriting is very easy when writing left-to-right. I think that most of the ease comes from replacing difficult `pushed' curves with straight lines wherever possible. For example, using a small capital N rather than n, using a small captial A rather than a, forming g like a modern cursive z, and so on. Other improvements appear to have been made for speed, such as not dotting i or j. Other decisions appear to have been made to slow the hand down briefly but regularly; for example, writing capitals large, and with curves.
So I adopted his ways of forming letters, and found that I could write quicker, more fluidly, and without much of the hand-cramp from which I used to suffer. A decade later, I still use his handwriting.
Re:doesnt matter to me (Score:3, Interesting)
You're a co-dependent who can't meet your own needs, and can't use the skills they've mastered to serve yourself, but only to serve others. You're a slave riding the tiger, and one day it will eat you.
Re:legal signature? or a computer generated sig.? (Score:3, Interesting)
I laughed...then considered what my sig looks like after working in a school where I had to pump out dozens of signatures a day. It started as my name, then became two initials with scribbles after them, then, as you said, a series of scrawled loops.
I think the next step in its evolution is to get rid of the pesky loops, and just go with a squiggly line.
It's not the students (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure the students would argue that they don't need to learn algebra or even calculus. Why spend years learning mathematics when you can just have Maxima or Mathematica give you the answer....
No, this change is coming directly from the administration. Probably from people who don't know how to write themselves.