Posted on 07/18/2013 7:16:56 PM PDT by Morgana
I have been computer-less at home for five weeks.
My brand-new laptop went belly up and had to be sent back. During the frustrating wait (which I suspect will lead to a later column), I have returned to writing with a pen and spiral notebook. It's been a flash to the past, reminding me of my younger days when every assignment, story and poem were handwritten. Are the days of writing by hand on their way out?
Having beautiful, cursive handwriting used to be a source of immense pride. Handwriting skills were taught right alongside reading and math. Prizes were awarded in school to the students with the best penmanship.
But that is changing. Common Core State Standards omit cursive writing as a requirement, which means schools are no longer required to teach it. With so much emphasis going to other skills, learning to write in cursive is not a priority.
Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, told The New York Times, "Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it's already dying despite having been taught for decades."
There is opposition. A 2010 study of preschool students found young children who wrote out letters rather than simply seeing them had changes in their brain activity when they later reviewed the letters. Karin Harman Janel of Indiana University said Motor System Augmenting Visual Processing leads to better learning. In other words, the actual writing process boosts brain activity.
(Excerpt) Read more at mywebtimes.com ...
In the days of cursive communication my mother used to say that your penmanship was the first impression you would often make on a person.
I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I’ve basically lost the ability to write in “cursive”.Of course I still have a fairly nice signature but that’s it.And yes,my ability to *read* cursive is still very much intact.
Cursive is an oppressive tool of the white man.
I was in grade school when Nixon was president and was told by the teacher that Nixon said that you could not take the pencil off the paper when writing in cursive. Does any one remember this or was this bs?
You wouldn’t be able to write separate words if you didn’t take pencil off paper.
dats ol skool...
I had a mortal enemy in the form of my 3rd grade teacher who humiliated me via my messy cursive writing in front of peers. I dreaded the day of the parent-teacher conferences, because I knew this teacher flat out hated my guts, and the feeling was mutual. But to my great surprise and relief, this time my mom sat me down and read me the riot act for all the stuff I deserved it for, but then said that she believed me about the teacher being a bitch (or words that conveyed that sentiment) and that I was to work extra hard and blah blah, but that I would not not be forced to learn to write with my right hand like the teacher demanded, and I would not be punished or disciplined for my cursive skills (or lack thereof)
So while I’d be happy to see cursive go, personally, I think I hate the idea of Common Core even more than that teacher, and the sooner we abolish the Dept. of Education and put education in the hands of local school boards and parents, the better.
Why write in cursive when I can speak cursive.
Soyouhaverunonsentancesthatnobodycanreadorunderstand?
The 6 foot tall 200 lb. School Sisters of Notre Dame nun that was my second grade teacher would be appalled by this development.
I caught a high velocity yardstick across the knuckles on day 1 and my cursive writing has been impeccable ever since.
Next article will be about the importance of maintaining our butter churning skills.
That would be when you wrote one word. I remember my teacher telling us that.
LOL, it was assumed, even by little perdogg, that it applied to writing one word at a time.
I hardly write with paper at all now. I have no pen on my desk, searching for one just a few times a year. It’s not just cursive that’s dying, it’s writing by hand period.
The last great hope for cursive was, to nobody’s awareness, the Apple Newton. One interacted via stylus (no virtual keyboard) and the most effective way to enter words was cursive handwriting. Alas, that device died, and the last compelling mundane reason to use a flowing script vanished.
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