Is Cursive Writing Cursed with Extinction?
By Owen Edwards
7/5/09
With the fear that I might be labeled an Andy Rooney wannabe, cranky about things I can't do anything about, I am hesitant to mention the twinge of sadness I felt at the news recently that public schools have, for the most part, officially abandoned the teaching of cursive handwriting. But there, I've mentioned it, so I'll explain the twinge.
First, I'll be honest: I doubt that there was anything more tedious than my elementary school lessons in what used to be known as Parker penmanship (though I have a competing memory of "Palmer penmanship.") I recall, still, the wide-lined paper -- one line indicating the ceiling for lowercase letters, the upper for capitals, and the upswoop of the the h and f and other tall lowercase letters.
For the naturally disorderly state that young boys represent, the discipline of keeping writing within these borders was nothing less than painful. The girls were always better at the meticulous business. And as a leftie whose hand took on a clawlike curl in order not to smear what I'd written, the pain was accentuated.
And yet, these days, when I get the occasional ink-on-paper note from my son -- the successful product of an expensive private school, an expensive private college, and an expensive law school -- I look at his untutored block printing and have a moment of regret that he was spared the tedium of penmanship in order to do more "creative" things in the early years of his education.
Because most of his writing and correspondence, as is the case with almost everyone these days, springs from a keyboard and his self-taught typing skills, I wonder why I care. Truth be told, my left-handedness -- and laziness and impatience -- has never put me in the running for a calligraphy prize.
But when I sit down to write an important personal note, or a sympathy card, or anything else for which computer word processing is inappropriate, I can -- if I slow myself sufficiently -- turn out a legible and not unattractive script where all the letters connect with a rhythmic order that old Parker (or Palmer) might approve.
And in the process, I find a certain satisfaction at the logical, linear process of connecting one flowing letter to the next. This might be the equivalent of a computer animator actually taking a pencil and drawing a character on paper, just to recall the pleasure of small muscle control.
Handwriting may share some of the virtues of the growing slow-food movement. (If you want to infer that Twittering is junk food, don't let me discourage you.) There's an additional benefit: A necessary deliberation that slows me down and -- in the absence of a Delete key -- makes me choose words more carefully.
In my long, difficult effort to learn Italian long after my student years, I have found that I remember vocabulary better when I handwrite it on paper than when I type it onto a screen. This is anecdotal, not scientific, evidence, but the more deliberate act seems to be a mnemonic aid.
An additional worry as handwriting vanishes: Will coming generations, never having learned it, be incapable of reading cursive script? Few of us can read our doctors' prescriptions, but what if we couldn't read that inherited box of our grandparents' love letters?
A teacher in an excellent high school told me recently, "We're not hands on, we're tech on." Clearly, that's the way of the future, and, not being Andy Rooney, I'm not arguing against it. But some fine day, when budgets are no longer busted and schools can add extracurricular "frills" again, an elective on handwriting might be well worth offering. Call it a history course. With extra credit for lefties.
What do you think? Is there still a place for cursive writing in the curriculum? Please share your thoughts.
Information Skills - Librarian
Dear Owen,
If you are an Andy Rooney wannabe, then allow me to be as well! Not teaching penmenship is a mistake. Communication is a huge part of 21st Century Learning and yet we don't expect teachers and parents to lay a solid foundation for children to communicate with.
Writing is not innovative, therefore it is not an attractive activity. Writing however, does force one to think about what you are trying to communicate. In addition to meeting the NETS.S and NETS.T standards, we might want to ask ourselves if as part of our Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making standard we need to include writing out information as part of the analytical process for all work.
By making the student write out the thought process, you force the child to think critically. Isn't that where a lot of schools see problems in our assessment tests? Students have trouble thinking critically, analyzing data and comprehending what they are reading. Communicating quickly is wonderful, but only if you have something coherent to say.
One of my favorite videos is "A Vision of K-12 Students Today". The little girl in the video asks how repetitive spelling is going to help her in the digital world. Repetitive spelling teaches patience, ingrains the words into your memory and in a classroom where penmenship is prized it teaches children how to select words carefully.
Thanks for asking.
Best regards,
Andrea
Palmer penmanship
Dear Owen,
Personally, I do think there's still a place for cursive writing in today's curriculum. I also think the physical action helps with critical thinking and memory, and promotes creativity.
One of the best teachers I had was also the one who taught me cursive writing. Her name was Mrs. Palmer! I'm sure no relation to the Palmer in your article. Mrs. Palmer used to have us practice strokes and letters in our spiral journals.
Cursive writing, when done well, is an artform. And yes, I agree that Twittering is like eating fast, junkfood.
Thanks for the article.
Stephanie Mahathey
EC-4th Bilingual Teacher Candidate
Transition to Teaching Program
University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College
and
Volunteer Afterschool Tutor
Proyecto Digna/Juan Diego
San Felipe de Jesus Church, Brownsville, Texas
handwriting
Some folks, even teachers, have mistakenly called Palmer penmanship "Parker penmanship" by confusion with the Parker pen company. Whatever the name or the style you learned, clear rapid penmanship still matters ... at least, the next time your computer goes down and that cheery tech-support phone-recording asks you to "please find a pen and paper to write down all the information you will need." (The need multiplies when computers -- and power grids -- crash for longer periods. Ask anyone who survived Hurricane Katrina -- the schoolchildren who did without computers for six months, often after years of learning that handwriting couldn't matter in the Cyber Age, or other survivors: some of whom found rescue only when an emergency team picked up a handwritten message from a passing bottle.)
Good handwriting, though, doesn't need to mean using Palmer or any similar cursive style. Research (cited on my web-page) shows that the fastest, clearest handwriters avoid cursive. The most rapid and most legible handwriters join only some letters -- making the very easiest joins, skipping the rest -- and tend to use print-like letter-shapes when a letter's cursive and printed shape disagree. For those taught such a style -- yes, methods and books exist for teaching it -- reading cursive poses no insurmountable difficulties, as learning to read cursive takes 15 minutes to an hour of teaching: depending mostly on the aptitude and age of the student. (Learning to write cursive notoriously takes months or even years, particularly when the student must learn to write it without having already learned to read it: a fact worth considering in our era of ever-more-crowded school days.)
Kate Gladstone
Director of the World Handwriting Contest
Founder and CEO of Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works remediation/instruction service
http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
On Penmanship
A year ago, I had one of my 7th grade students tell me he bet that I couldn't read his writing. Why? Because he had written it in cursive. None of my students do, so I wondered if he thought I couldn't read it?
I do believe that cursive may become one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. I tend to write in a combination of printing and cursive, although when I write something such as a thank you note, card or friendly letter (another perhaps lost cause), I only write in cursive. Still, why do we have an obsession with cursive? Why isn't printing enough? I agree with some of what's been said -- especially the idea that people remember more of what they learn by writing it down rather than typing it -- but why doesn't printing accomplish the same thing? Or is that just nails on the chalkboard for some of us?
An interesting discussion!
Julie
cursive, what's that?
I am 28 years old. I learned cursive in school. I often wonder if the effort was wasted. I never use cursive in my modern life, except to sign my name. My notes to myself and others are in print.
Many people I know still try to use cursive writing, usually a mix of cursive and print. The results are not so good. It usually turns out to be a mix of chicken scratch and random loops than any identifiable symbol.
Is cursive doomed? Maybe. I feel it's more important for students to learn to print well so most of the world can read it, than learn cursive.
Cursive Vs. Print
Hmm... there have been many thought provoking points here and I wish to maybe add one more. I wonder if learning to write in cursive is much like learning multiplication or division? In the real world we have calculators at our disposal 24/7 so why learn how to do the math the long way or the difficult way? Except, that it is important to learn the foundations, the reasons that 2/2 is 1. I think learning to write in cursive is much the same.
We may choose not to write in cursive, but that's a personal choice. Should the schools determine which method we personally prefer? I admit, I typically write in print, but when my hand starts to hurt or I'm in a hurry I immediately switch to cursive. It is faster and puts less pressure on my hand.
Thanks for such an intriguing discussion!
Something's gotta give
Dear Owen,
Greetings from a fellow southpaw.
I really enjoyed your post. Just like A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney, or John Stossel's Give Me A Break, your passion shows through and makes your writing engaging to read.
I have to agree with you that I would feel rude if I didn't write in cursive for thank you cards, sympathy cards, and the like. Right now, like you, I think a plurality of our culture considers word processed text too sterile and cold for heartfelt messages. I suspect that the balance will shift as time passes, and a new, younger plurality will win the day. Maybe their new definition of "rude" will be text without emoticons. 8-)
Like you, I don't remember things as well when I type them. I just performed couple of quick searches on Academic Search Premier and Google Scholar, but I didn't find any studies that compared the effects of handwriting v typing on recall. In any event, I suspect that even if handwriting were shown to produce better recall than typing, it's unlikely that handwriting would enjoy the same advantage over printing. Maybe there's an education or psychology PhD student out there looking for subject about which to write his/her dissertation. If so, maybe s/he could save pen and paper work from extinction. Then again, I think there was a philosopher long ago who lamented the invention of paper and quill, saying something like, 'This will be the ruination of man's ability to remember things,' but that didn't save stone tablets. (The irony here is that I can't remember who said it or exactly what they said. Can anyone help me out?)
By now, you must be wondering what the subject of my post has to do with it contents. I'm finally getting to that.
From my perspective, it seems the quantity of information to be learned is growing exponentially. Since there are only 24 hours in a day, schools will eventually need to decide what skills and content have been rendered obsolete, so they can be nixed to make room for new skills and content. Something's gotta give. Learning handwriting is time intensive and growing less relevant everyday (relative to other things kids could be learning), while keyboarding skills, for example, are growing more relevant. Faced with these competing demands for curricular time, what else can schools do but get out the chopping block?
Hope you're enjoying the summer,
Michael Misha
Cursive
Hmmm, I teach cursive even though our kinder teachers no longer seem to think printing is important. I think it is still important to learn both because of the visual spacial skills that are learned. The other thing is that cursive is an art. In Japan, writing beautiful is considered an art and revered. Cursive can be the same. The many different styles and fonts that you see in computers came from the fact that someone thought that the font was beautiful or "cool". There are so many ways to write. I love writing on computers, but I am thankful that when I need or want to that I can write in cursive. More importantly, there is a lot of research out there on the benefits of cursive taught correctly. I get so tired of "best practices". I am thankful for what I learned at the University of San Diego. This was it. As a teacher, I would always be presented with the cure to educating children, and it was important to learn the current theories. However, each child is different. Take what you have found works for children and apply the new theories with what you have found that works with children. Rote memory, repetitive spelling, etc all have their merits in educating holistically. Each educational methods by themselves may work for some, but not for all. Take the best of each of them and do what you think is best for the child. For me, it is important to teach cursive for eye-hand coordination as well as many other benefits. Cursive still has its place even with the enormous benefits of technology.
It's absurd to think of that!
These last years, everybody, especially the people that run the education systems, seem to be in some sort of hysteria to look to the world as modern and as progressive as humanly possible. As a 17 year old who learned cursive in school, I have to say that I find it pitiful that there's even talk of it not being taught. Having changed schools a few times, and having covered a quite large array of teaching methods, from standard public schools to the Jesuits, I found that, more often than not, "modern" school programs were really just cheap excuses for having diminished programs, and though, of course, as a student I enjoyed the more modern programs on account of idleness being something generally more pleasant to kids than work, it was quite clear that, as a rule of thumb, the more progressive and modern the system was branded to be, the more monumental was the loss of time therein.
Cursive,apart from the very true observations about mnemonics and such brought forth by the previous posters, teaches two things: 1)A meticulousness and -yes, it's quite true- an affection for proper form in small things, that is all too often forgotten in our days and 2)that not everything depends on computers, but that these are JUST ANOTHER TOOL. You have to learn to do things yourself. They make certain tasks more practical, but they will NOT change the way we live. Youtube, or e-books, or Twitter, or whatever other trinket have NOT revolutionized my life, nor anyone else's -save perhaps that of the people that sell them-, and it's high time the people running the schools got wind of that stopped trying to play modern and compete with MTV, and went back to actually teaching things. For my part, I always went to school with the idea that, dull as it may be, learning things edified my mind, and made me smarter and somehow better, and certainly not because I genuinely believed that grammar, or quadratic equations would be found in my future employment to be of any use whatever. If you wand kids to do "useful" things, give them a pike and send them to mine gold; you can't get any more useful than that...
Perhaps I got a bit out of the way and ranted about things not completely of the subject; I am sorry for this, but the state of mind I expounded really is, I believe, the basis for this particular and many other problems in schools.
Ulysses, 17
Schoolboy until recently, soon-to-be student of Classical Philology
P.S. From personal experience, cursive writing was deemed by classmates as "cool". Though of course, it didn't stand a chance in hell against Gothic script; it seems that the older you get the better...
Re: Cursive writing
Well, I must admit that reading this entry and the ensuing replies was a little like I imagine an encounter with a Tim Wakefield knuckleball to be like. Seems as though it would be easy to hit out of the park but, because of the unpredictable direction, it is difficult to catch, let alone hit! There were some twists and turns to the discussion here, but it has been fun reading this!
All kidding aside, I remember when I first started teaching over a quarter century ago, my principal required each grade 1-8 class to begin each day with handwriting. He would come and collect our books every once in a while, and comment on the students' progress.
Part of me misses those days...there was something very predictable about the first 15 minutes of each day and the activity really did help to improve student handwriting.
In thinking about our world today, if you take away the handwritten greeting cards and, possibly, the notes to the teacher, there is little evidence in the non-school world that cursive is still an important skill. Nice? Yes! Vital? No.
Interestingly enough, the question that I come away with has to do with Owen's perception that, for some occasions, a handwritten response is considered more personal. I agree, but I'm wondering why, when emails and electronically printed communications are acceptable for things as important as job resumes, invitations, legal briefs, thesis documents and practically everything else that is communicated, it is more desirable to use handwritten text when sending greeting cards. There may be something important here. What is it about the handwritten (or hand printed) message that says, "I care" more loudly than if I were to use an electronic form of communication.