As a school board director, I have been challenged to challenge my local school to demand the re-instatement of cursive writing
and a PS ... I got this in my FB this morning
That was my thought when I first heard this...... continued dumbing-down of our kids to equal mediocrity and lemming like obedience to “father government.”
Some schools are teaching a hybrid. It looks like the printed alphabet but the letters are connected. It is really an ugly lettering.
I call it dumbed-down cursive, because that is what it looks like.
And the reason they are not teaching cursive is that so many elementary schools have computers now (Apples) that kids spend so much time on a keyboard/touch screen that they don’t have time to practice penmanship.
I had heard the real purpose of failing to teach cursive was so the upcoming generations won’t be able to read the Constitution, DOI, etc., on their own.
Then they’ll be easily manipulated by the Propaganda machine.
I do historic research. And can’t stress it enough.
when that girl in the Trayvon Martin case said she couldn’t read cursive, I thought she was joking.
I taught my kids calligraphy. It’s art, and really improved their handwriting.
I’ve been saying it all along.
Some day Americans will need an approved scholar to tell them what the constitution says.
Series?
Kids can’t google and read the Constitution on the interweb? Of the Federelist papers?
Cursive is a dead language. I might be in the minority here, but spending the amount of time it takes to learn cursive in a limited curriculum in a keyboard drive world is silly.
The dumbing down of America starts with wasting phenomenal amounts of time learning things of limited value.
Cursive is dead. I helped to kill it by rebelling against it since middle school.
Good riddance.
Yes!! I totally agree. It makes me ill that my kids can’t write/read cursive. I think you’re absolutely right that it is to hinder their ability to read historic documents.
My neighbor’s 25 and 23yo boys can only sign their names in cursive. Their mother had to teach them that AFTER they graduated.
We had this exact conversation just this past Thursday.
Course, they were government educated.
I was taught cursive writing and calligraphy STARTING in the second grade.
Course, I attended private school.
High-level administrators (and the consultants they hire) frequently feel the need to do something dramatic in order to justify their positions, and to add something to their resumes.
Here's an example of that from my school district. For years we offered a general science course in the high school. This was an overview course, with minimal math. It was a good offering, and meant for those students with low math skills.
Then about 5 years ago, consultants came in. They said that our students needed to be challenged more. The general science course was eliminated. Every high school student (even the special ed kids) was shoved into chemistry and then physics.
It was a disaster. So now we have a new set of consultants. Their recommendation? We need a general science course for the low math skills kids!
Can they teach them to write it so that all others can read it? Cursive is currently a complete failure because it’s harder to read than hieroglyphics.
I well remember learning and practicing writing cursive at home, with the help from my mother, via an old instruction book of hers. It was summer vacation, and I was definately wanting to learn to do it on my own, before it was to be taught the upcoming school semester.
It was something of a symbolic transition for most of us kids, that we were crossing into the “grown-up” world by writing cursive. Block lettering was seen as for kindergarteners.
Anyway, I’d like to see the teaching of cursive maintained, just like history and geography, two other things that have seemingly become de-emphasized in recent decades. It seems like there has been a conscious effort to eradicate the elements of history/heritage that used to weave us together culturally. Probably one of the contributing factors to why this no longer seems like a country anymore, but a random, urban bus-station with disparate comers and goers.
Kids today think cursive is language
When I was in school in the 1970s, there was much controversy over whether Latin should still be taught in schools. People would argue the same points, that people ought to be able to read ancient Roman literature it its original form. This, in a time, when it was a challenge to get the typical student to read "Huckleberry Finn" or "Call of the Wild."
Needless to say, Latin is all but gone from the schools. I believe it is still taught in some places but not as widespread as it once was.
In business meetings, I notice that most of the under 40 crowd take notes on electronic devices like tablets and laptops. Now voice recognition technology is such that you can dictate your verbal notes to a device for posterity and instant recall. I think that eventually, handwriting itself will be a rare art form, practiced only by eccentrics and hobbyists.
Knowledge of cursive is requred for title searches when people need to go back to old documents and old surveys. But if folks are fine with not knowing for sure what something like that says......
Genealogy is popular today, cursive is needed to go back to research old documents even from the distant past - - like the 1900’s (sarc.)
They no longer teach cursive?!?
I am a professional writer, and my cursive is absolutely horrible. As a boy I didn’t want to learn it, wasn’t made to learn it and though I can read it, the only thing I write in cursive is my own name. And that’s a shame.
All I can do is applaud this idea.
All these “charter” schools and “magnet” schools and “vouchers”, yet, Jane and Johnny still can’t read or write.
Teacher today are leeches on taxpayers and are useless to society. They harm children through their liberal garbage and fail to teach.