I’m a lefty. No problems with cursive. The problem is with right handed teachers not being smart enough to have left handed students tilt their paper the opposite direction. Right handers have the top of their paper tilted toward 11 o’clock where left handers should tilt their papers to 1 o’clock. That fixes all that ridiculous upside down bent wrist hooey.
See my #11 for lefties. Just tilt your paper to the right. Simple solution.
>>I’m a lefty. No problems with cursive. The problem is with right handed teachers not being smart enough to have left handed students tilt their paper the opposite direction. Right handers have the top of their paper tilted toward 11 o’clock where left handers should tilt their papers to 1 o’clock. That fixes all that ridiculous upside down bent wrist hooey.
I’m not talking about the bent wrist hooey. As you point out, that is easily solved and my right-handed teachers did teach that when I learned cursive in 1970. Cursive is the faster and easier alternative to block printing because the pen is mostly pulled across the paper with the pen tip slanted away from the direction of travel. Very efficient if you are using your right hand.
But a lefty has to push the pen with the point aimed in the direction of travel. Almost all the efficiency of cursive is negated making loose-form block printing more efficient for the lefty.
I am a lefty who “crooks” my wrist to write. Did you know that there are right handed “crookers”?
I have 4 children, 2 right handed, 2 left handed. 1 right handed son crooks, 1 right handed daughter doesn’t.
1 left handed son crooks, 1 right handed daughter doesn’t.
My conclusion, it is something in the brain that controls handedness and crooking - not the method of placing the paper. If I place my paper tilted to 1 o’clock, my handwriting slants so far to the left that it is almost unreadable, but if I tilt it to11 o’clock, it is vertical. I can’t write with my wrist in a normal position.
I learned cursive with the palmer method, by the way - back in the days of metal nibs and inkwells. I am not sure what methods were used to teach my children, but the inkwell was long gone when they were in school.
The brain is a mystery and an enigma. My grandchildren have not learned cursive, and I am sad for them.