So Long Cursive Writing? A Critical Part of America’s Education

People who read and write cursive will soon be able to communicate in what will look like “code” to many.

When WWIII knocks down all satelites, I'll be one of the elite creepy assed cracker code writers.

At the rate things are headed, before too long English is just going to be people speaking in nothing but acronyms.....OMG!

Rachael Jeantel be all like “cursive witing is retarded, sir.”

Well, when the “teachers” are ignorant of a subject it is bound to go away.

Cursive writing is just one more casualty of our public educational system.

Like reading sundials?

Time marches on. Cursive writing is not as important as it's being made out to be.

I think there are other things to worry about these days. If we had a return of morality, work ethic, limited government, and the religious foundation on which this country was founded, I could live with or without cursive writing.

"A lady in front me in line at the grocery store was writing a check [that in itself odd as everyone uses a credit card] ... but her writing was so sloooooooow it was fascinating."

Not odd for me! I have checks with a design I like and you'll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands. I have them pre-filled out when I get to the register, and it only takes a second to write the amount.

Quicker than some people fumble with cards..."Do I punch this button now?....It's saying credit, but I have debit..."

I don't do cursive....

Well, now I know why the cashier at Staples looked at my signature on the credit-card scanner last week and said, “Oh! You still sign your name in cursive. I haven’t seen anyone do that for a long time.”

Why use the Constitution’s “We the People” in defense of cursive? Those three words, as they stand in the famous finished copy of the Constitution (and are photographed in the article) are not in cursive — they are in a very different form of handwriting, “Olde Englishe” a/k/a Blackletter (which survives as the type-font of many newspapers’ mastheads). If you truly suppose that the only way to learn to read a document is to write the same way, why aren’t you calling for a law that all schoolchildren must learn to write not only cursive handwriting, but “Olde Englishe” Blackletter handwriting?

Further, the pen that wrote James Madison’s words (the Constitution) was not in James Madison’s hand. The famous document that we all have seen was prepared (from Madison’s final manuscript) by a professional penman of the era — a professional handwriter — named Jacob Shallus. (The archives of Congress still contain his bill for the job. Fear not; it was paid.) Just as we, today, often take an important document to a copy shop, to ensure that it looks as professional as we want to, so was this often done in the eras before photocopy machines and computers: the “copy shop” of the age was a man with a quill pen, copying the words of other men. Madison’s handwriting is much different from Shallus’; for one thing, Madison’s is somewhat simpler and is thereby far clearer.

For a somewhat similar reason, it is odd and bewildering to see the Mayflower Compact invoked in defense of cursive. The Compact, like many documents of its era, was written in a rapid print-like handwriting with hardly any letter joined to the next. You can see this for yourself in any photograph of the Compact, such as the photo here: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=mayflower+compact+google&FORM=HDRSC2#view=detail&id=CEBEC296C395A5048871EA39D2347CD5FB9857D7&selectedIndex=1

Maybe, just maybe, the Pilgrim Fathers of old were on to something. Maybe today’s dumbed-down scribblers could take a lesson from old William Bradford, who wrote the Mayflower Compact (and much else) in this clear and impressive style. After all, even in our own day, research shows that the fastest and clearest handwriters join only some letters: making the easiest joins, skipping others, using print-like forms of letters whose cursive and printed forms disagree. (Sources below.) It is evident that this is what Bradford does — it is just as evident that this would not be considered “cursive” by the vocal devotees (in their diminishing ranks) of cursive handwriting today

Reading cursive still matters, of course — precisely because few if any cursive handwritings (even at their best) are remotely as easy to decipher as the form of handwriting that Bradford used (a form with Renaissance roots, called “italic” because it was first seen in Italy, where it was the form used in the first handwriting textbooks ever published in our alphabet. The cursive we know today originated later on, in the Baroque period.)

Reading cursive matters, and must be learned, precisely because we, today and for several centuries, have been taught not to write as clearly as did Bradford (or Elder Brewster: another Italic writer among the Mayflower band).

Reading cursive MUST be learned — and that art is not always acquired simply by learning to copy cursive — but even small children can be taught to read writing that they are not taught to produce.

Reading cursive can be taught in just 30 to 60 minutes — even to five- or six-year-olds, once they read ordinary print. (In fact, now there’s even an iPad app to teach how: named. “Read Cursive,” of course — http://appstore.com/readcursive .) So why not simply teach children to read cursive — along with teaching other vital skills, including some handwriting style that’s actually typical of effective handwriters? (Bradford’s example, and the writing of many other persons of his generation, shows us that simple, practical, fuss-free handwriting is at least as traditional as the complicated cursive variety.)

Today, educated adults increasingly abandon cursive — even those who might be assumed most to favor it. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority — 55 percent — wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When most handwriting teachers shun cursive, why mandate it?

Cursive’s cheerleaders sometimes allege that cursive makes you smarter, makes you graceful, adds brain cells, or confers other blessings no more prevalent among cursive users than elsewhere. Some claim research support, citing studies that consistently prove to have been misquoted or otherwise misrepresented by the claimant.

For instance:

The much-ballyhooed difference in SAT scores between cursive writers and non-cursive writers is ... brace yourself ... 1/5 of a point on the essay exam. That’s all.

(Yes, I checked with the College Board — see below for the source info they sent me — because not one of the many, many media that mention the “slightly higher” difference actually states _how_much_”slightly higher” the difference is. The College Board researchers who found the difference note, in their findings that this one isn’t statistically significant: in other words, it’s so small that it’s less than the difference you’d expect if the same person took the same test twice. In fact, it’s even smaller than the score differences between males and females taking the SAT.)

So far — in this article, this thread, and elsewhere — whenever a devotee of cursive has claimed the support of research, one or more of the following things has become evident when others examine the claimed support:

/1/ either the claim (of research support for cursive) provides no traceable source,

or

/2/ if a source is cited, it is misquoted or is incorrectly described (e.g., an Indiana University research study comparing print-writing with keyboarding is usually misrepresented by cursive’s defenders as a study “comparing print-writing with cursive”),

or

/3/ the claimant _correctly_ quotes/cites a source which itself indulges in either /1/ or /2/.

What about signatures? In state and federal law, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind. (Hard to believe? Ask any attorney!)

All writing, not just cursive, is individual — just as all writing involves fine motor skills. That is why, six months into the school year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from print-writing on unsigned work) which student produced it.

Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.

SOURCES:

Handwriting research on speed and legibility:

/1/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May - June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf

/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September - October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf

Zaner-Bloser handwriting survey: Results on-line at http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H2937N_post_event_stats.pdf

College Board research breakdown of SAT scores (the cursive/printing information is on page 5)
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2006/cbs-2006_release.pdf
Background on our handwriting, past and present:
3 videos, by a colleague, show why cursive is NOT a sacrament:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CURSIVE —
http://youtu.be/3kmJc3BCu5g

TIPS TO FIX HANDWRITING —
http://youtu.be/s_F7FqCe6To

HANDWRITING AND MOTOR MEMORY
(shows how to develop fine motor skills WITHOUT cursive) —
http://youtu.be/Od7PGzEHbu0

[AUTHOR BIO: Kate Gladstone is the founder of Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works and the director of the World Handwriting Contest]

When it comes to the matter of educating children, the state of Ohio and the federal government are run by a host of blithering idiots.

Of course they are blithering idiots...they are products of the public school system. Schools have destroyed America.

Sure, doing arithmetic, reading paper maps and using a physical compass will go by the wayside.

I give directions out to lost drivers in my neighborhood all the time because their GPS led them astray. Boys and their toys...

BfloGuy? dblshot? Who spells these days?

Cursive teaches self control and concentration. It allows us to communicate without the need for electronic gadgets. Even the poorest of handwriting is more of a life saving device then none at all. I look at our kids and feel great sorrow for all they have missed and will miss. There is joy and fun in some of what they have that we didn’t, yet I think we are heading for an enslaved society where all communication is monitored, allowed or not by the government. They can turn a keyboard off in a moment, but not a pen and paper.