Where Do You Stand on the Subject of Cursive Writing?

By | May 14, 2017

That’s cursive not cursing, although some people are doing a bit of cursing about the demise of cursive writing.

 When I taught third grade, I enjoyed teaching cursive. Each day we spent about 20 minutes working on it. We worked from the most basic hand movements (i, l, e, t ) into more elaborate ones (k, g, q, x  ) Yes, some kids had their tongues sticking out as they concentrated. Yes, some had difficulty with some letters and connection, but by spring all could read and write basic cursive.

For my class it was a true change of pace. Early on we hummed specific kids songs like ‘Are You Sleeping’, and ‘Three  Blind Mice’ to create the flow of the letters. Later on the kids wrote their own creative, often crazy, sentences trying to start every word in their sentences with one letter of the alphabet. For example:

          A: Alice attacked an apple airplane.

A few random facts that support my POV:

     Brains scans light up when students print or use cursive but not when using keypads.

     Cursive allows some dyslexic students to integrate their hand movements.

     Cursive is faster than printing.

    Handwritten composition produce different results than keyboard produced writings.

The argument goes that we currently need the time spent on cursive for the additional subject matter in our curriculums. Since people use electronic and computers more than handwriting, why do they need cursive? Don’t keyboard-produced writings look neater, more legible and might they not receive better grades/acceptance in class? Do we need distinct, identifiable signatures or not?  Can legal documents be signed with printed signatures? And… What would the founding father say?