Cursive in school: Should it still be taught to 3rd and 4th graders?

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: Citrix
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_4322113 <<Click me for story



Who here still uses cursive to write? Many schools in the Denver Public School system are teaching cursive as cursory and not grading students on the loop of the L or the curly on the Q... The reason is because of computers and schools (high school) wanting assignments typed rather than wrote.

So what say you, is cursive dead? I hardly never write in cursive, when I do put pen to paper its just more natural for me to print.

So you write in cursive all the time?

My handwriting is atrocious regardless of how I write. People hate it. However, the upside is that I can read just about anyone's handwriting.

 

[Itchrelief]

Unless you really work at it, cursive is either not that much faster or an illegible jumble of loops.

I say, if it works for your own purposes, do whatever, but if your cursive handwriting is the latter mass of loops and randomly dotted I's and crossed T's (or the other extreme like in a lot of signatures, the nearly straight line with random indentations and bumps that are supposed to signify some unknown sequence of letters), please don't use cursive when you need someone else to read it.

 

[Extelleron]

Not something I think about much, but I see no reason to still teach cursive in school. Another waste of time, plenty of better things could be taught in the amount of time it takes to teach cursive. It's simply useless in life, I can print faster than I can write in cursive anyway (perhaps because I use it........ never? ) and the amount of time spent on it would go much farther if it were allocated for spelling or grammar, which is something kids clearly need more help on.

Only time I use it is with my signature........ and I wouldn't really call it cursive. Signatures are personal.

 

[DainBramaged]

It could be taught since many people still use it; however, I wish that they would just emphasize neat writing.

 

[xtknight]

No, it's useless. I hate it when I have to read someone else's cursive. Signatures could just be a bunch of scribbles and it wouldn't even matter. A signature does not mean to write in cursive. It means to write something that symbolizes only you.

 

[spacejamz]

i vote they should teach courtesy and respect instead of cursive since alot of parents don't...it would make alot of peoples' experiences in grocery stores, the movies and the mall more pleasant...

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: acemcmac
I think people mixing curisive and print ruins handwriting. If we didn't teach cursive, everyone's handwriting would be 1000x more legible. Grade schools need to standardize when they expect each because it's the petered out support for cursive in the years after you learn it that leads to the disintegration of handwriting skill...

Actually, the whole point of script ("cursive") is that it is much more unique to the individual and therefore more personal. My script has several unique traits whereas my printing is essentially copybook and may as well be something out of a typewriter for all the personal character it has.

ZV

How is that a good thing? The point of a language is to allow people to communicate, "unique traits" just mean your language isn't standardized and it makes it harder for the reader to decypher your text. People writing like typewriters is good, it minimizes the amount of trouble required to read something and the chance of confusion as a result.

Besides, it's what you say(or rather, write) that counts, not how you say it.

 

[marvdmartian]

When Sara Singh began mulling whether to teach her third-graders cursive writing, a problem arose: She didn't know pure cursive because she doesn't write that way.

There's a big part of the problem. Teachers who evidently aren't educated enough to teach! I'm assuming this teacher is at least in her 20's......which means she was educated during the 80's & 90's (traditional elementary through high school). Where was the teacher that should have taught her how to write in cursive??

Also, why are they waiting until 3rd or 4th grade to teach these kids to write longhand?? I learned in 2nd grade, shortly after learning how to print in Kindergarten and 1st grade. In fact, I had a head start, as my mother was a 2nd grade teacher before she married and started the brood that ended up being my two sisters, my brother and myself. We were on vacation the summer between my 1st & 2nd grade schoolyears, and having long boring driving time every day, my Mom asked me if I wanted to start learning how to write cursive (which might explain why my cursive handwriting is actually readable, unlike my brothers! :laugh: ).

This is a lot like when I was in high school, and if you wanted to take science past the one year they required for graduation (at that time), you had to take a course where calculators weren't allowed. Instead, we learned how to calculate using sliderules!! :shocked: Why did they do that, especially since the following years when you'd take chemistry and physics you'd get to use a calculator?? Because they wanted us to learn the old methods, which taught us not only some shortcuts in making calculations, but also how to think. Unfortunately, in the following 30 years since I took that course as a freshman in high school, I've lost the talent to perform mathmatical calculations with a sliderule (let's face it, windows calculator is just a click away). But my pencil & paper calculations, plus my "do it in my head" calculations, are a lot stronger now because of that "back to the basics" learning I did back then.

So if you have nice penmanship now, thank your teachers. If you don't, it's because of the "oh well" attitude that's taken over too much of our educational system in the past quarter century.

 

[slpaulson]

Yes
I almost always write in cursive, unless I'm filling out a form.
Actually I think we learned cursive in 2nd grade, and were generally required to do our homework in cursive until high school.

 

[nageov3t]

the US schools already excel so much in terms of math and science, why SHOULDN'T we waste time learning cursive?

 

[rivan]

I all but refused to use it in gradeschool when I was that young. By high school I was printing - all caps - it was just SOO much faster for me to write that way.

I think it should be covered, but not mandatory beyond the tiny fraction of the day when learning to use it.

 

[Whisper]

If for no other reason that to allow students to read it later in life, sure.

I hardly ever see it anymore, but if I had no idea what any of it meant, I'm pretty positive that'd hinder me to some extent.

 

[Compton]

I've always hated cursive. Its impossible to read, and I prefer to write in Arial 10 pt anyway.

 

[OrganizedChaos]

only cursive i know is my signiture and i'm not even sure i got that right.

 

[Martin]

You people are weird. I hate typing in block letters - makes it look at if something is written by an illiterate oaf or a first grader.

 

[BillGates]

Hell no - total waste of time. That time in school could be spent in much more productive and useful ways.

 

[fstime]

Waste of time,

I write in block lettering always.

Very simple and easy to read.

Drafting