Cursive = Doomed

I don't feel entirely broken up about this: Cursive is on its way out:

When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.

And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive.

Many educators shrug. Stacked up against teaching technology, foreign languages and the material on standardized tests, penmanship instruction seems a relic, teachers across the region say. But academics who specialize in writing acquisition argue that it's important cognitively, pointing to research that shows children without proficient handwriting skills produce simpler, shorter compositions, from the earliest grades.

I don't know how I feel about that one. My cursive writing skills were (and are), in a word, atrocious, and yet I never had much problem writing at length (unless I was bored, in which case I wrote as concisely as possible). I was personally pleased to start typing because it meant suddenly I could read my own writing, which was always a problem before. And of course, if I had problems with my own writing, think of the problems other people had.

I wonder how Athena's generation will handle this. As it happens, Athena already does a bit of typing, because she's been using a computer for years. Will she actually need cursive? It's an interesting question.

Will you miss cursive?

Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry

This entry has 17 comments: (Add your own)

#17 Comment from bgilmore725
10/14/06 1:21 AM | Permalink

Cursive writing is very much akin to calligraphy, and so it should be considered an art. For now it is a skill, and it's true, not every school is focusing on handwriting. It's a shame. Cursive is much easier on the wrist and finger muscles than printing. I don't think it will ever "die" out... the pendulum always swings from one extreme to another, and so will it return to its rightful place in the classroom. Maybe it will become an elective someday? That's a weird thought. Perhaps it won't be as needed in the future with all the reliance we have upon technology, and I would never want to give up the computer for helping me write great volumes with ease, but the beauty and individuality of handwriting cannot be replaced by the computer. My handwriting can be atrocious, and it can be quite attractive to look at... I love writing on paper, but I also love the convenience of the keyboard and Word. It's good to have both, and to be skillful at both. That's what I think! Bea
#16 Comment from sdoscher458
10/12/06 11:15 PM | Permalink

You can use a computer in cursive so maybe it will not die out completely. Poems look better that way.....Sandi
#15 Comment from xantidale
10/12/06 6:05 PM | Permalink

Pretty much the minute teachers stopped requiring assignments to be written in all cursive (5th grade, maybe) I've adopted a cursive-printing hybrid style of handwriting, intra-word hybridization, even.

The AP wrote a story about this three years ago (http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/06/08/cursive.keyboard.ap/index.html), via <a href="http://www.klio.org/marks/2003_06_archive.html#entry-75">Unmistakable Marks</a>. I won't mourn the death of cursive, whenever the bell actually tolls.
#14 Comment from aurielalata
10/12/06 11:32 AM | Permalink

Ok, if we get rid of cursive, what about our signatures? Will we all just print them? In a way, it's a sad thing, but then I think about all my students who have handwriting from hell.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing.

Jess
http://journals.aol.com/aurielalata/CIWTheOtherInvisible
#13 Comment from rebuketheworld
10/12/06 5:59 AM | Permalink

If you were drunk, stoned and went for a disneyland joy ride...THEN you could read my hand writing....its in code, sporatic, very male-like for a female-likely and indecisive....different fonts for my multiple personalities..lol..-Raven

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Cursive = Doomed