Why the Education Establishment Hates Cursive

American Thinker ^ | December 23, 2016 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[Kaslin]

Modern educators are dismissive of cursive. Indeed, many are hostile to such a degree that you should immediately suspect that they are up to something.

Here is an education journalist providing the Party Line: "Cursive writing is an anachronism. Spending any classroom time on it is comparable to teaching how to use an abacus: it's interesting as a history lesson, and probably offers some side benefits, but it is not at all practical as a day-to-day skill in the modern, connected world."

A professor of education argues: "Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it's already dying, despite having been taught for decades." (You can depend on education professors to confuse "decades" with "centuries.")

When you read such swaggering attacks on cursive, you might assume that the question is settled. The old geezer is dead, so take him off life support. You rarely see thoughtful praise of cursive. Even people who are sentimentally inclined to support cursive can't think of many reasons to do so.

I propose a higher truth: the Education Establishment is always a reliable guide to what is good. If our socialist professors rail against X, you know that X is educational gold. Here are eight reasons why cursive is valuable and we should fight to keep it in the classroom:

1) LEARN TO READ FASTER. The main thing is that learning cursive accelerates learning to read. If it did nothing else, this alone would still make it a huge asset. Cursive obviously makes a child more aware of letter forms and how words are spelled. Don Potter, the phonics guru, states: "Any attempt to educate American children that neglects the direct development of fluent handwriting is doomed to fail. The little dribble of handwriting done with the typical phonics programs is FAR below optimal."

[Paulie]

It is more important in this case. Too much of our most important history is recorded in cursive, and not just the Constitution either.

Without the ability to analyze original documents or other writings themselves, one opens themselves up to those who would rewrite history. And the left is bent on erasing most of our glorious history. Why? To minimize resistance to making us cogs in the NWO wheel, like any other country.

I don’t think ou’re looking at the big picture here.

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

See my #36.

[Cowboy Bob]

Writing cursive requires a higher form of intelligence then what liberals possess.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

but wondered if there was a way to program in some random inconsistency to make it even more indistinguishable

Well, you could run it through MS-Paint and do some scratchouts.

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

Post O’ The Thread.

[joesbucks]

Mixed feelings on this. For me, my handwriting was so bad that before the advent of word processing, I would write notes by printing them so people could read them. I learned this from a boss who did the same. Frankly, for so many, their cursive so stinks the only way to read what they write is to have them print.

Oddly over time my cursive has improved and I am often complimented about my nice handwriting.

[Nifster]

The Palmer method.....know it, live it, own it

[Gaffer]

Read what I said again. Especially the part about “...the only printed communications I had.....”

[QBFimi]

>> “Cursive is obsolete for the simple reason that writing is obsolete.”

Uh, can you say “EMP”? “North Korea”? “Iran”?

[Ransomed]

It would take more time and effort to learn for sure, but once learned it would seem to be much more useful than cursive.

Freegards

[Nifster]

You don’t have to sign for anything?

[Lisbon1940]

My genealogy work is what got me motivated to reactivate my high school Deutsch. Recently I have been using Duolingo on my device to accelerate my learning.

[mountainlion]

If any of these snowflakes try to do their ancestry or study old documents they will have to hire someone to “translate” documents and have someone to read the Constitution and Bill of Rights to them.

[exit82]

Bonus points for obscure “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” reference.

[Nifster]

Utter nonsense

[QBFimi]

>> “I have finally gotten the hang of gothic German type but continue to be stumped by the handwriting on original German documents.”

Guess you’re talking about Suetterlinschrift:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin

Agreed. “I’ve tried; G-d knows I’ve tried!”

[rlmorel]

I don’t know...to me, reading cursive and writing it are (to me) two different things.

Writing cursive is akin to knowing a language.

Reading cursive is akin to simple interpolation-kind of like knowing Spanish, and being able to noodle out the meaning of something in Italian or French that you don’t know, simply because you know Spanish.

Cursive can be so variable, but...after your figure out how someone makes their “e” and “i” and so on, then you just hit a word you can’t immediately figure out, and you interpret it contextually, and you have that figured out.

I guess I completely understand why people don’t write it, I just don’t understand why someone can’t read it.

[Paulie]

I think you nailed it right there.

[Nifster]

You sir are delusional

To not be able to read for ourselves our founding documents puts all citizens in a dangerous position

The idea that electronic communications are the only type of the future says that you will not do well when power outages occur. If they last long you will not survive as well as others

[Always A Marine]

Education is for free men, while mere training is for slaves. Those with the ability to read, think and communicate offline maintain the spark of liberty that cannot be threatened by lack of access to the hive. Banishing cursive is just one more tool to enforce a Utilitarian State in which individuals have no intrinsic worth apart from their material usefulness to the State.