The New York Times reports today that the loss of handwriting skills may lead to the loss of cognitive development.
Maria Konnikova writes:
“Does handwriting matter?
“Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.
“But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.
“Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.
“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.
“And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn’t realize,” he continued. “Learning is made easier.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This may well have real logic. Maria Montessori had children who might be able to walk but had never crawled, go back and crawl to do just as these people who would have children write do, develop cognitive abilities through physical activities. AND she did pretty well with her children. I am reminded too of the effects which violin playing had on students who followed the Suzuki lead, the cognitive abilities through a physical activity. Anthropologists suggest that humans developed their cognitive skills because they have a thumb placed in the right position on their hands which allowed grasping of materials which in turn led to their development of tools etc etc.
So much is lost when people who are ignorant of how people learn believe that they have THE answers. Their ignorance is exceeded only by their ego. They know not that they know not and worse they know not that they know not but are absolutely certain they know.
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Don’t ever worry that reformers will let facts get in the way of their mission.
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No, facts are hardly evident (or correctly represented) in media discussions (or legislative deliberations) about cursive. The NY TIMES piece is an example.
The closest that the article approached to giving a reason for cursive was in noting that some stroke survivors lose the ability to read typefonts. Never mentioned: just as often, the ability to read cursive is lost, but the reading of type and/or print-writing is preserved.
The NEW YORK TIMES writer also ignored research that discomfits the cheerleaders for cursive. It turns out (sources on request ) that:
• legible cursive writing averages no faster than print-writing of equal or greater legibility, [1]
• cursive does NOT objectively improve the reading, spelling, or other language use of students who have dyslexia and/or dysgraphia, [2]
and:
• the fastest, clearest handwriters are neither the “print”-writers nor the cursive writers. Highest speed and legibility are attained by those who join only some letters, not all of them—making the simplest joins, omitting the rest, using print-like shapes for letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree. [3, 4]
Why — in the NY TIMES, as elsewhere throughout the media’s and legislatures’ discussions of handwriting — do studies which are headlined as supporting cursive actually say something different when one finds and reads the originals? Why does Ms. Konnikova, science writer, one-sidedly ignore whatever research on handwriting is not so easily obscured?
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Where’s your source? You have footnotes, but no source. I am not buying it. By any stretch of the imagination, cursive is far more efficient, far quicker, than print.
Kids need to learn it and need to develop fine motor skills. End of story.
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Thanks for this, @kategladstone. I have been sensing a lot more personal philosophy than science at play on this issue from the start (meaning well before it appeared here). Hence, my mention of the most prominent Teabilly theories.
I should add that there is an interesting word somewhere near the heart of the debate that is awfully familiar: “de-emphasize.” It is what is recommended regarding handwriting instruction past the first couple of grades. Let’s put aside temporarily the question of just when is the most sensible point to de-emphasize handwriting and focus on what it means to do so with this or any subject, topic, or skill in school. Because the very same word was at the heart of the Math Wars. NCTM in its various standards volumes starting in 1989 used the term regarding things that generally fall under the notions of rote computation, procedural knowledge, suggesting that such areas should receive less emphasis, while greater emphasis should be placed on conceptual understanding. As I would put it, somewhat more boldly, “No more black boxes,” which is meant to convey that we need to more away from teaching mathematics like it is simply a mysterious set of arcane tricks that no one can or need understand. But the point here is that when the Math Wars sprang up, those who vehemently opposed NCTM’s position managed to turn “de-emphasize” into “eliminate entirely.” And I see that same thing going on here. It’s troubling.
Add that to what you’ve pointed out and it’s hard not to conclude that we’re looking at more of a religious or philosophical debate than a scientific or educational one. Cui bono?
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Re:
“You have footnotes, but no source”:
Susan Nunes, you do not even have footnotes. Neither did the NEW YORK TIMES story. Sources for the cited research — the researchers themselves — are easily reached by searching google for their e-mail addresses, which are a matter of public record (as all of the researchers are affiliated with universities).
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Ya, I just saw a clip about a baby spa. Before they can crawl, they put them in a hot tub with a flotation ring on their neck. Being able to move the arms and the legs underwater promotes brain development. So, I’m guessing hand writing, cursive, art, P.E. and music are good for the brain. Plus a little recess and nap time for everyone.
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But hey, let’s throw away what we’ve always done and EXPERIMENT ON this generation of kids because Pearson and Gates need to sell more tests and learning software.
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As Gates said in another context, about his Common Core + VAM + PARCC + SBAC experiment:
“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.”
And if we have to throw away that generation of kids, hey, there are more where those came from.
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It is notable that Pearson USA, through its wholly owned subsidiary Scott-Foresman, owns one widely used handwriting program, D’Nealian.
It is equally notable, and disturbing, that Pearson USA and Pearson UK own, and promote, diametrically opposed handwriting programs — promoting each, to buyers in the respective countries, as best “according to research.” (The program that Pearson describes to buyers in a given country as proven best “by research” always happens to be whichever program was produced by the company that Pearson bought out in that particular country.)
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I’m not sure that it’s disturbing so much as confirming what I’ve been told for decades by my publishing friends: there is no educational philosophy at work, just one of maximizing profit. Whatever sells.
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My daughter (15 years) learned cursive….2 school years later my son (14 years) was not taught cursive. My son has trouble signing his name. I will be teaching him cursive this summer. Btw, we live in Charlotte, NC and my kids went the best elementary school in town. Idiots!
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My special ed high school students never learned cursive and couldn’t read it, but they loved to see me write cursive. I put a chart up in the class for the curious and showed some of them how to write their names in cursive. A signature in cursive was a mark of pride to them.
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Me, too. I’m in elementary special ed. & I’ve had students develop legible cursive who could never manage manuscript. Plus, they love learning cursive and feel a grown-up sense of accomplishment. Why, oh why would we deny this to them?
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Nicely put, 2old2teach: I also teach high school special ed, and many of my students have been fascinated with cursive, and have expressed regrets about what they consider a deficit in their educations–i.e. not learning to write in cursive.
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To Tim McFarland —
I’ve had students who could never master cursive OR print-writing develop legible, rapid, and attractive italic.
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The effective learning impact of cursive writing has been known since
brain studies on returning brain damaged Korean Veterans.
Duh to Arne Duncan and his elite pals.
Marcy Dunne Ballard
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Please post a citation of those studies. Without exception so far, when I have seen anyone assert the existence of brain studies supporting cursive, the citation (if ever given) has proven either to have established no superiority of cursive over the other styles of handwriting, or not to be about handwriting at all.
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Interesting. I freaked when I heard cursive writing is being eliminated in many schools. I asked the teachers and principal at my kindergarten twins’ school whether they’re still teaching it, and they assured me they are, in 3rd grade. Phew!
I’m not sure why it’s so important to me, but it is. I guess I fear kids will lose a sense of history if they lose the ability to read cursive. It’ll be like when I see something written in Sanskrit. It’s sad.
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I was 4 yrs old in 1966, and my private school kindergarten taught all of us to write in cursive – and I switched to public school in 1st grade, but had to wait until 2nd grade for the same handwriting book. My point is, don’t wait until 3rd grade. Start teaching it at home…now. “:)
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You have to be careful teaching cursive at too young an age. It has to do with the eye-hand coordination of young children.
I taught cursive in a private school second grade, and it was tough for many of them to master it.
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I take Dehaene’s work seriously (he wrote THE NUMBER SENSE, a very intriguing book that, along with Keith Devlin’s THE MATH GENE, should be required reading for anyone weighing in on mathematics education issues), so I will read further about this research.
But what of the main claim that the Tea Party and like-minded folks have been pushing about the dark conspiracy connected to the handwriting issue: namely, that Obama and his countless evil minions are doing away with teaching cursive writing so that kids won’t be able to READ cursive. And why would “They” want to do that?
Well, of course, so that citizens won’t be able to read the original documents upon which the country was founded. Then, “They” will change all printed (and Internet) versions of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and remaining Amendments to suit their nefarious schemes. Bye, bye, troublesome 2nd amendment. And then come the black helicopters and the UN to take away “our” guns (won’t take long at my house unless the cats have a secret cache of firearms somewhere).
Of course, I can’t find a single flaw in the above logic, but perhaps someone here does and can help me out.
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It’s a waste of time, I think, Michael, to bring up these wing-nut theories. This is a serious issue with major implications.
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Whose time is being wasted? I’m pretty sure mine isn’t, and I don’t believe anyone is required to read what I write or reply to it. But I’m never clear on all the rules.
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Good point. I just worry, Michael, because people tend to associate this issue with right-wing nutcases, but there really are significant ACTUAL issues involved, and we certainly should not be experimenting on a whole generation of kids.
Carpal tunnel syndrome at age 7, anyone?
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I think the flaw with that theory is: It’s really pretty simple to read cursive or script fonts even for someone who can’t write cursive. While early fine motor skill development surely impacts early literacy acquisition, attentiveness, organizational skills, etc., once one learns to read, deciphering different typeface styles is fairly effortless. I”m sure a graphic designer could confirm that the thousands of crazy fonts available and the ability to digitally manipulate typefaces is really limitless — yet people can read dense paragraphs in wacky fonts.
Unfortunately for those trying to keep the masses from reading important historical documents, they’ve already been transcribed all over the internet — even on US Government sites. I even found an audio transcript of the Constitution free on YouTube.
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The flaw: anyone who has not been taught to write in cursive, but who can read print, can be taught how to read cursive in 30 to 60 minutes. (In fact, there’s an iPad app that does it — titled “Read Cursive”: appstore.com/readcursive ).
No cheerleader for cursive — in the Tea Party or out — has shown any reason to prefer the more time-consuming process of learning to read cursive only through spending a couple of years on learning to write it. If they wanted people to read the Constitution, wouldn’t you think they wanted this power made available to anyone who can read? Even a literate six-year-old can be taught to read cursive in less time than it takes to watch a Tea Party video asserting that the UN and the White House want to make the Constitution unreadable.
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In case you’re unfamiliar with my views and/or my tone was less than its customary “dripping with sarcasm” best, my comment was of course made with tongue firmly planted in cheek. I very much appreciate YOUR comments, because they substantiate much of what I’ve suspected is at play on this issue.
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“There was a high correlation between handwriting and keyboarding speed and handwriting speed was consistently faster than keyboarding speed across all ages. Only a small minority of children in years 5 and 6 had faster keyboarding than handwriting speed. Results showed that children’s compositional quality was superior in the handwritten scripts as opposed to the keyboarded scripts. Keyboarded scripts were up to 2 years behind handwritten scripts in development. Writing by keyboard does not necessarily lead to improvements in script quality, compared with handwritten scripts. Explicit keyboarding instruction (touch-typing) is needed to develop keyboarding fluency and unlock the full potential of the word processor for children’s writing.”
Connelly, V., Gee, D. and Walsh, E. (2007), A comparison of keyboarded and handwritten compositions and the relationship with transcription speed. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77: 479–492. doi: 10.1348/000709906X116768
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Makes perfect sense since “hunt and peck” really does slow down the thinking process.
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It’s interesting how this plays out later with adults. I generally write on computers, but when I actually need to any real analysis or thinking (which sadly is far less often than I would like), I have to go to pen and paper. Ultimately I’ll throw out 95% of what I end up writing by hand, but the other 5% is stuff that I could never have written on a PC. The shift in medium is a trigger that I need, for whatever reason. Who knows, maybe the pen is just a kind of talisman, or a connection to the way I learned how to write and think in the era before there was a PC in every home and room.
Plus, it’s fun. I will sometimes sit at home in my office with a pad and a fountain pen and write, in cursive, whatever words I happen to hear coming from the TV or the other room. It’s not a sign of great mental health, I know. Afterward I destroy the paper, which resembles the work product of a lunatic in an echo chamber.
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very, very funny!
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I was serving private schools in our district. Yes, public schools provide speech services to private schools. One of the schools had first graders practicing cursive every day. It was beautifully done & I think there is something to this. Our school psychologists & occupational therapists have been talking about this, too.
We typically started cursive in second grade after the holidays & those kids were so excited to begin!
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“Fourth graders with learning disabilities in transcription (handwriting and spelling), LD-TD, and without LD-TD (non-LD), were compared on three writing tasks (letters, sentences, and essays), which differed by level of language, when writing by pen and by keyboard. The two groups did not differ significantly in Verbal IQ but did in handwriting, spelling, and composing achievement. Although LD-TD and non-LD groups did not differ in total time for producing letters by pen or keyboard, both groups took longer to compose sentences and essays by keyboard than by pen. Students in both groups tended to show the same pattern of results for amount written as a larger sample of typically developing fourth graders who composed longer essays by pen. Results for that sample, which also included typically developing second and sixth graders, showed that effects of transcription mode vary with level of language and within level of language by grade level for letters and sentences. However, consistently from second to fourth to sixth grade, children wrote longer essays with faster word production rate by pen than by keyboard. In addition, fourth and sixth graders wrote more complete sentences when writing by pen than by keyboard, and this relative advantage for sentence composing in text was not affected by spelling ability.”
Berininger, Virginia, et al. Comparison of Pen and Keyboard Transcription Modes in Children with and without Learning Disabilities Learning Disability Quarterly August 2009 32: 123-141
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Thank you.
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This is even evident in middle school students, especially the students who have not mastered the keyboarding skills they need to be efficient, speedy typist. You can observe students composing their thoughts. They attempt to transfer those thoughts by searching the keyboard for the letters to form words– only to lose their train of thought. They are constantly deleting what they compose wasting precious time in finishing their essays. I often have students script their essays before typing them because I know I will get a better finished product.
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Ballpoint Pen? Interesting that so many discussants cite rain imaging studies as if pictures of neurons firing had more authority on settling this matter than other lines of reasoning. Have the concepts of mind and mindfulness become taboo”
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The study did not specify cursive, limit its findings to cursive, or compare cursive writers with those using any of the other forms of handwriting. Further, the research (Dr. Virginia Berninger, whose surname you misspelled) has informed me — and others who have asked — that most of the children writing by hand in that study, as in her other studies, were writing in print handwriting, not in cursive handwriting at all.
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Thanks, Kate. I saw the misspelling after posting. What I am interested in here is the transition to devices. Gates and Pearson are pushing, big time, the “creative disruption” of replacing teachers and print with online assessments and computer-adaptive learning software, and they are pushing national assessments to be done online by kids beginning at very young ages–at Grade 3. Read chemtchr’s comments about her students. I have encountered this. A lot of teachers have. If it were up to me, all these modes would be taught, and none would be forced on any kid. Kids differ.
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Thank you, Diane. We always share “Science Times” with our sons, and then discuss it.
But…
Every lefty (and now, “Lefty”) who remembers the tyranny of the nuns during the practice of “Palmer Method” during the 1950s might disagree with this article, although it’s enough fun to be shared. I had to fight for the right not to be “right” back in the days when some of those pre-historic mystics believed there was something very wrong about not being Right. I learned “Palmer Method” in elementary school, and then unlearned it in high school because at our high school the discipline method was detention. And in order to be freed from detention you had to copy — in print, not “writing” — the entire six-page discipline code of the school. By converting my “handwriting” to quick print and by memorizing the discipline code, I was able to be the first one out of detention. I guess I could have decided to conform more often, but a couple of the reactionary teachers I had (one was proud he was friends with Francisco Franco) made me decide to go more firmly to the Left rather than smile, etc.
Our young ones, though, have a different approach in 2014. This summer, Josh wants one of his summer learning projects to be learning to “write cursive.” So we are going to utilize the classical method. Maybe we’ll get a bit pretentious and call it “calligraphy.”
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My father was one of many people victimized (in the 1920s) by being forced to become right-handed, which he did for everything except baseball. In retrospect, a class-action lawsuit should have emerged from that craziness.
I just never enjoyed cursive writing. And I actually was given SUMMER HOMEWORK on handwriting one year in elementary school. That REALLY made me loathe the whole thing. My handwriting is never great, but I can make it legible on demand.
To me, being forced to learn to keyboard (or as we called it in the ’60s, “type”) was the flip side of that coin. Loved it. Had to type a minimum of 35 wpm corrected for errors to pass the mandatory course (and no graduation without it). Proved rather useful in college, graduate school, and, with the advent of computers, in my daily life. Indeed, without it, I wouldn’t be able to knock out all my useless comments, blog posts, Facebook entries, etc. with such alacrity.
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I hated cursive, hated handwriting generally in fact. Cursive was something I only learned to do well as an adult, largely motivated by my embarrassment about my childlike penmanship.
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I’m neither proud nor ashamed of my handwriting. On the large scale of life’s accomplishments, it simply never mattered to me. My mother has very fine handwriting, and was haunted as a child by the fact that it didn’t measure up to her mother’s.
I have no quarrel with anyone who wants to have perfect handwriting or who simply enjoys it. Like Chinese calligraphy, it can be viewed as an artform, a discipline, maybe a meditative practice. It’s just not one I care to indulge in any more than necessary. I print quickly and can print quite well when I take the time, but again, given the available choices, I’ll take my laptop every time. Don’t like texting on my phone or having to poke at my iPad (indeed, that’s a maddening input device). Typing feels as natural as breathing to me and I love having gotten away from the physical mess that typewriters caused. Again, I’m SO happy that I don’t have to hunt-and-peck. Watching my son do it is a bit disappointing, and I never could fathom why my father didn’t learn. Of course, my mom, aunt, and great aunt are/were all excellent typists. Gender stereotyping (no pun intended) in the first half or more of the 20th century can be thanked for that.
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We actually had dip-pens, and in fourth grade I was in a Catholic school with a crazy old-country nun who made me use my right hand, so the wide strokes came out in the correct direction, and my hand didn’t trail in the ink. One day I picked up the pen in my left hand from old habit, and reversed the direction of the flow. Delightful! Everything worked perfectly, “Sister, look! my hand doesn’t go in the ink if I just go the other way!”
She screamed, and made a ward sign, and never bothered me about anything again. It’s one of the happiest memories of my childhood.
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If you are looking for resources that can qualify as “classical calligraphy” — half a dozen are here: http://www.BFHhandwriting.com, http://www.handwritingsuccess.com, http://www.briem.net, http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com, http://www.italic-handwriting.org, http://www.studioarts.net/calligraphy/italic/hwlesson.html
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If only Bill Gates cared….
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Oh, I think Bill Gates cares. He’s a decent person. I just think he’s misguided and out of his element.
Bill Gates is rich and successful in business, so people listen to him. Unfortunately, being rich and successful in business doesn’t make you knowledgeable about educating children.
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Gates’ rant against public pensions makes him seem more similar to the Koch’s or Arnold’s. Decent people, probably not.
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There is nothing decent about him. He is perhaps more evil than the Kochs.
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I wasn’t aware that Gates ranted against public pensions. I looked it up, and my quick read shows he was criticizing the accounting methods used in assessing future pension liabilities and how this may end up sapping funds from other aspects of education that he feels should get more funding (new technologies, etc.).
True, he doesn’t seem to value the teacher as much as he should, and this goes to my original point.
No one is as evil as the Kochs. Who are the Arnolds?
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I will follow my gut on this one and say that the idea that there is a connection between handwriting and cognitive development seems perfectly reasonable. But my gut also says that cursive is just one of any number of possible scripts, that our attachment to cursive is largely nostalgic, and that we should let it go without too much blubbering.
On the other hand, it is 8:15 and I haven’t eaten dinner.
But the gut has spoken. To summarize its conclusions:
Handwriting = good.
Cursive = We had some good times, but history happens.
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See the note below re: speed with cursive. This is a pretty significant finding.
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Talk to the Gut, Shepard!
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Shepherd, that is. The Gut takes responsibility for that misspelling.
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LOL.
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That’s a fact. Cursive is far more efficient than printing.
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FLERP!, that just seems so. . . reasonable. I hope Handwriting can handle the “Dear Cursive” letter.
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“the most recent conference of the International Dyslexia Association, Vanderbilt University professor Steve Graham presented a compelling argument for teaching not only manuscript, but also cursive. In one of his studies he found that the average first-grader writes nine to ten letters per minute. After 15 minutes of handwriting instruction three times a week for nine weeks, the students doubled their writing speed and constructed more complex sentences. He also noted that students who remain printers rather than cursive-writers write much more slowly—so slowly, in fact, that Graham believes it is nearly impossible for printers to take accurate notes in most high school and college classes and may have difficulty writing essays for the SAT. This concern was supported by Ms. Pressler in her Washington Post piece when she pointed out that SAT essays written in cursive had slightly higher average scores than those that were in print.”
–Dr. John Russell, Windward School, “Learning By Hand: A Case for Handwriting Enhancing Reading”
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Also, the discussion on this thread is just about the production of text. There’s also drawing, a form of expression that’s probably connected to paper in a much more fundamental way than writing is. (Whether I type or write by hand, the end result is words.) I imagine that the shift from pencil to keyboard will have, is having, and has already resulted in significant changes in how well people can draw. Presumably that would have a big impact on not just art (although the nature of that impact may be obscured by the impact of new technology on art), but a kind of thinking.
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Which gives me a great opportunity to post, yet again, this (I heart Vi Hart.):
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In the Graham research you cite, the handwriting instruction which he gave the first-graders (which helped their speed so much) was instruction in print handwriting, not in cursive.
Other research by Steve Graham (see below) establishes that the fastest, clearest handwriters are neither the cursive writers nor yet the cursive writers.
According to Graham’s research, the highest speed and highest legibility in handwriting at all grade levels are attained by those who join only some letters, not all of them – making only the simplest of joins, omitting the rest, and using print-like shapes for letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree.
/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
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I’ve also checked with the College Board about Ms. Pressler’s (and others’) statements on SAT scores. The “slightly higher” score for essays written in cursive was slight indeed: 2/5 of a point difference between the average of all cursive handwriters’ essay scores and the average of all print handwriters’ essay scores. As the College Board’s own report (link below) makes plain, this difference is less than (e.g.) the difference between the average SAT essay scores of male and female students. (No one — yet — is advocating sex-change operations for the college-bound.)
College Board research breakdown of SAT scores (the cursive/printing information is on page 5) —
Click to access cbs-2006_release.pdf
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(No one — yet — is advocating sex-change operations for the college-bound.)
yet
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I always hated writing in cursive. I typically print. However, I find printing to be too slow for notetaking, so when taking notes during a lecture, I typically use cursive.
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“My pen can’t pour a lyric line when I’m gone…”
It would be refreshing to start with a survey of what we currently understand about cognitive development and coordination. Consider your own experience, older educators: for some children, penmanship is torture, but for others it is sheer delight. There’s so much we don’t know about the effects of these crazy universal edicts on real children.
I’m positive my district’s mandated enslavement to the touchscreen hasn’t helped the cohort of 16-year-olds I teach. After two years, they scratch primitive messages on Note Anytime, or laboriously type in strangled fragments with their thumbs. Everything beyond simple screen games and twitter-note-passing is awkward for them, and they don’t even aspire to get their hands on a real computer to type and edit text, or analyze a data set. Let alone write code.
I give them paper and lab equipment, but I worry a lot about their power of reason just fading, as their physical experience becomes more and more impoverished. Abstract verbs like depend, support, balance and extend have a basis in the truth of concrete relationships, which are learned from the blocks, sand tables, and waterwheels that have been banned from younger grades.
Pressure, stress, compression, expansion, volume and mass themselves, force and resistance … object permanence, the conservation of mass … stupid bubble tests on junk standards have been substituted for the power of active learning and exploration. It’s a “done deal”, imposed under force of law, while nobody paid attention.
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A powerfully argued, important note. Superb!!!
This note should be read by every school board in the country.
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This is so, so good. Wise. Profound. Of enormous import. Saving this note, chemtchr, to share with others. Very, very well said. One of the best comments I’ve read in two years of coming to this blog.
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The thing I really love about this note is that it gets at the roots of much of what is wrong with Ed Deform–the lack of respect for differences among children, the lack of understanding of developmental appropriateness, and the freaking technocratic inhumanity of it all.
Let’s have a little less evidence-based constructed response in Grade 1 and a lot more dancing, please.
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This is so powerfully written that I find myself wondering whether this Chemistry teacher also writes novels or short fiction. Really eloquent. Thank you.
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chemtchr:
“My pen can’t pour a lyric line when I’m gone…”
Just in case some readers aren’t familiar with the source of that quotation:
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Another YouTube version…
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That is why I still have kids copy work from the board, including hw assignments. The act of writing itself does something different in the brain, as opposed to keyboarding, just like reading from paper and books is different from reafing digitally. We know it–we can feel it in our brains. Let’s use ALL paths to knowledge and stimulation, no
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not just the newest one…
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This is a perfect example of how the Common Core standards failed to adequately research Early Childhood education since the CCS abandoned the importance of handwriting after second grade.
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My father was a calligrapher for over 60 years; he was educated at the Art Institute of Chicago. If there were a calligrapher’s hall of fame, he’d be in it. Late in his career he took up the art of Japanese brush painting. I remember watching him make his own ink with a combination of water and an ink stick.
I can only imagine what he’d think of the idea that handwriting should be relegated to the perimeter of our children’s education. I’m afraid he might have seen it as a direct assault on the validity of his life’s work. And that in itself is reason enough to stand up and assert that handwriting DOES matter. My only regret is that it was so much easier for me to compose this comment on my computer than on a yellow legal pad. But can’t we teach both skills to our kids? Why should one necessarily diminish the need for the other?
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Let’s imagine, for a moment, something COMPLETELY CRAZY, something that would NEVER happen.
Let’s imagine that in half the states in the country, we continue on the course we’re on. That is, we continue subordinating everything that we do in school to outcomes that deformers want us to Achieve^TM on punitive, abusive, invalid, instructionally USELESS online summative standardized tests.
Let’s imagine that in the rest of the states, we stop giving summative standardized tests COMPLETELY–banish them and lock up anyone who speaks of them–and take the BILLIONS thereby saved and
spend it on traditional Chinese calligraphy sets and calligraphy paper and
on the training of calligraphy teachers
for all the elementary schools.
Let’s imagine that in those schools we teach to our children this ancient art, centered upon reverence for the beauty of the written word.
Let’s say that instead of requiring that students pass the standardized test to move into middle school, they have to produce the suite of Ten Oxherding Pictures.
http://www.sanbo-zen.org/cow_e.html
Flash forward ten years.
Had I Bill Gates’s fortune, I would bet it all against your nickel that students in the states that got the calligraphy would be smarter, healthier, happier, more productive, more creative, more capable in every subject (even standardized test taking!), and better prepared for college and careers than would be the ones in the states that got the deformers’ whip.
Of course, our students would be better off if they did ALMOST ANYTHING EXCEPT submit to pedagogy and curricula driven by the insane testing. SIMPLY REMOVING IT would bring about a great flowering of humanity and creativity in our schools.
One can dream.
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Click to access oxherding.pdf
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Great irony. Steve jobs credited his study of calligraphy in a non-credit college course with the early success of Apple computers.How? For I the first time he really learned about styles, spacing, proportional fonts and so on.in the era whenApple took off, most computer letters were formed within a grid with little green pixels.
You can find this source with keyword Steve Jobs + Sanford graduation speech.
Worth noting that I endured the Palmer method in grade 3. In grades 4-7 I had some formal lessons on fancy lettering during Art classes. I am struggling youse my iPad, no continuity of movement none of the satisfactions of mastery…effortless performance. With few or no errors, then multitasking.
1872 drawing books for children began with the mantra, wring is a form of drawing, drawing is a form of writing. The expression,
I can’t draw a straight line WITH a ruler! endures across generations! perhaps because children would do warm ups for drawing and writing in the same way. Unlined paper, three vertical paralleled lines, three horizontal lines, three diagonal lines all straight an approximating a 45 degree angle. Other exercises required finer spacing, more lines, and variations, such as a line of dots or dashes. You might find some images of these posterized lessons for teaching on the internet. Later in the year children drew geometric shapes progressing across the grades to objects suitable for mass production. In fact the whole program was the result of New England manufacturers who
thought it would produce the skilled draftsman and designers to compete with On the evolving international stage.
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The lines of gibberish are my argument with an ipad apology and time to stop.
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Even when you are losing your battle with your iPad, your words are a pleasure to read, Laura. As Krazy TA says, keep posting. I’ll keep reading and learning.
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With sympathy for your iPad woes — which I share — may I help people trying to find the Steve Jobs graduation address by providing the school’s correct name? (Stanford — with a “t”)
It is ironic, indeed, to see Jobs’ calligraphy training used (as it so often is) to argue for cursive. The calligraphy taught at Reed College — where Jobs learned his, from a master in the craft — is a semi-joined, print-like form called “italic,” which is what the Renaissance era used/taught for handwriting. (Cursive as we know it today — all letters joined, with loops and certain distortions made to allow that to happen — did not begin appearing until the Baroque Era.)
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Secretary hand, which is joined and thus a form of cursive, was common in the 1500s.
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It emerged for use in creating legal documents because it’s a lot faster to write connected letters than to write unconnected ones, which is also why cursive is an advantage for taking notes and for writing exams.
Anyone who can write both fluently can readily check this for himself or herself.
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I would consider the possibility that taking notes by hand during a lecture is becoming obsolete, and that K-12 teachers who lecture extensively SHOULD be obsolete, myself included.
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Michael, I emphatically do not believe that there is some one golden teaching style that everyone should employ. When I was in fifth grade, I was fortunate enough to have an amazing teacher by the name of Mr. Schimezzi. This guy would have gotten completely unsatisfactory evaluations today. Most of the time, he stood at the front of the class and lectured. TO FIFTH GRADERS!!!! Not a practice I would recommend in a methods class. LOL.
But he was AMAZING. He was the Pied Piper and Carl Sagan and Aesop and Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Scheherazade and Richard Feynman all rolled into one. He kept us all absolutely at the edges of our seats. He took us to amazing places. He fascinated us. He made us want to know more and more and more. And he made us feel all grown up because our class wasn’t like little kids’ classes. He actually taught us stuff. We came away knowing things. He took it all–science, art, history, math–and he turned it into the most improbable and crazy and endlessly fascinating stories. We would lie awake and night and think about the strange things he told us of. He was one of the two or three greatest teachers I’ve had, and I’ve had some amazing ones. Mr. Schimezzi, wherever you are, if you are still around, thank you. For teaching us that we were all part of this story, for letting us in on all those secrets, so that we would go home and tell our parents and they would say, “Wow. Now isn’t that amazing?” And it was.
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Kids don’t need cursive to take PARCC or SBAC computer tests. Requiring 8 year olds to compose timed essay responses on keyboards seems like a great idea to those who have never met one. Sorry Bill, it is not taking most of us ten years to figure out what a monumental mistake you’ve made.
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Reblogged this on Our 3rd Grade Community and commented:
We taught handwriting, but definitely not to the degree it deserved. Adding an increased emphasis on handwriting as one of my goal’s for next year.
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I taught cursive to my students in 3rd grade right up until I retired. We had to squeeze it in when we could until after testing, then we practiced more. Most of my students loved doing this. They were quiet and practiced the best they could. Many of them asked me for packets to practice over the summer. I would show them on the overhead and then walk around to help those that needed it. I enjoyed this time as much as they did.
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The elimination of cursive in public schools has been happening for ten years that I know of, and teachers, parents, grandparents, and even grandparents who are calligraphers (I know one) have been outspoken in their alarm and concern about it. The arguments against its teaching have been that learning cursive involves mindless practice, drill and kill, and that cursive is essentially obsolete. But I agree with everything that has been said in this discussion about the importance of writing by hand, especially in cursive, and the need for children to have it and use it as a skill, for themselves, for their family heritage, for their personal expression.
At the same time, I’m frustrated by the fact that, though Jules in this discussion mentions that one of his children was not taught cursive and is now 14, suggesting the teaching stopped 8 or more years ago, so many writers here seem to believe the elimination of cursive is the result of the Common Core state standards, which have been adopted so recently. If the Common Core includes it for only 2 years, I agree it should be practiced more. But my experience is that 2 years is more than a lot of schools have been doing in recent years.
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Who said that elimination of cursive was due to the Common Core? I don’t think that anyone did.
What people are objecting to is little kids being taught keyboarding so they can do abusive, invalid, instructionally useless online summative standardized testing that IS tied to the Common Core.
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Bob Shepherd,
I object to “little kids being taught keyboarding so they can do abusive, invalid, instructionally useless online summative standardized testing.” No one favors what you describe. In your state, in your district and in countless others, no doubt, such abusive actions are happening. I believe you. Such behavior on the part of state or local administrators is criminal, it’s an abuse of children and a defrauding of taxpayers. But it is not tied to the Common Core. If you believe that federal officials and sleazoid think tank educrats made your district an offer it couldn’t refuse, then I believe you believe that. But it is not happening in every state or district that is working with the Common Core state standards.
What frustrates me about your belief in the tie between the standards and the sleaze is that, where the vam/test binge is not happening, I read teachers describing their new opportunities to do collaborative work, very much like you describe in Japan, because the standards have made it possible to do so.
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Who, exactly, appointed David Coleman (by divine right?) absolute monarch of the English language arts in the United States?
I absolutely support collaborative work by teachers to design curricula and to develop pedagogical approaches. I just don’t think that a committee of amateurs should be empowered to tell every teacher and curriculum developer in the country what he or she must do.
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I have seen collaborative work by teachers, working within the CCSS framework, that was brilliant. But they didn’t need MANDATORY standards to inspire this work. In fact, MANDATORY standards exert a chilling prior restraint on innovation.
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You make an important point, Linda, that when the standards are NOT tied to VAM and to the abusive, invalid tests, then great stuff can happen EVEN WITHIN the limitations of Lord Coleman’s silly list.
But we certainly don’t NEED his silly list, not when we have a nation full of researchers and scholars and practitioners with better ideas about almost everything that is on that list.
Ecologies are healthier than are monocultures. And bullet lists are not springs of innovation.
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But I am happy that you mention this collaborative work, Linda, for it’s the one source of light in the darkness of the CCSS. But for every brilliant lesson I see from a group of teachers, I see 20 templated nightmares and 100 prepackaged CCSS skill drills from big box publishers.
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Linda,
I believe the elimination of cursive handwriting, although as you point out, has been happening ten years or more before Common Core, was a pre-cursor of things to come. Unbeknownst to any of us, Georgia and some of its leaders, political and otherwise, became one of the first perpetrators of Common Core. With that, many school systems abolished the teaching of cursive handwriting here even more than ten to fifteen years ago. Sadly! Teaching on the high school level, I continued to wonder why I always received thank you notes from brides and new moms-to-be that were printed…and horrible printing, I might add. Finally, one of my co-workers with younger children informed me as to what was happening in the lower grade levels. I was, to say the least, as everyone here–appalled!!!
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What is the current status of cursive in Georgia’s schools?
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And Linda, if “no one favors what I describe,” then why are 3rd grade students in almost every state in the United States going to be REQUIRED to take absusive online summative standardized tests from one of the Curriculum Commissariat’s consortia? It’s interesting that there would be an almost universal mandate that “no one favors.”
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Technology has enabled and disabled humans in many ways. Ironically, programs like Dragon were used by students who couldn’t hold a pencil/pen (cerebral palsy or birth defects). Now we have Siri on iphones, ipads, ipod touch for everyone. Technology has taken over human qualities & uniqueness.
My fifth grader takes forever to type a sentence on word doc. He is a brilliant kid but his processing speed is very slow. I’m sure his SBAC test score will not be indicative of his academic ability. Another reason why these test don’t reflect true abilities.
Instead of singing A-B-C-D, E-F-G…, plutocrats will have kindergarteners singing qwer-tyu-iopa-sdfgh-jkl-zxc-vbnm while the teacher points to a visual of a keyboard. It’s silly, but who can argue about the demands standards are having on teachers and students.
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I teach both manuscript and cursive. I notice that students who write their spelling words for practice do better on their spelling tests than those who type them on the computer.
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Amen.
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As a history teacher who assigns a lot of essays, I am used to reading execrable handwriting. Today I had one essay exam that I absolutely could not read. I handed it back to the student and had him type it class. Why do we need brain science to justify teaching this venerable human skill? Why are we so quick to trash established parts of our culture? What did we gain by jettisoning penmanship from the curriculum? Smarter kids? Ha! There is wisdom in being cautious to change. Our modern fetish for innovation is foolish. Michael Pollan on radio tonight derided the ideology of nutritionism –a pseudo-science that now commands the way we view food. We lurch from innovation to innovation (eat oat bran, no saturated fat!, avoid omega-6 fatty acids); we have no ballast of tradition and common sense to stabilize us and keep us on a generally sound course. The traditional diet of the French violates much of the “science based” conventional wisdom about diet, and yet it yields more pleasure and more health. Analogous pseudo-science steers education erratically. A traditional education yields more pleasure, more skill and more intelligence, though it violates the tenets of educationism.
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Diane, your story is inspiring – and I’m surprised (“very surprised” as they said in Casablanca) that so few who advocate the Common Core ignore history (both their own and our common experiences in American public education). I was brought up in Winnetka, Illinois, home of the Winnetka Plan (http://bit.ly/1h7Vk6V). Derived from Dewey and Washburne and – one might think from googling it – everybody else who ever studied education in the early 20th century – the program advocated individualized instruction and was celebrated as the epitome of innovation and “20th century methods.” Among other features, it introduced typewriters in elementary classes, and, after teaching signing your name, focused on writing something of interest.
Ironically, I went to parochial schools through 9th grade. That meant the nuns had us sit in rows and (largely) ignore what happened in those “public schools” as if they were beneath “us.” (Today most of those schools are home to charter schools, and I wonder the relevance of the declining number of new nuns has on the number of charters – and don’t say “none,” since puns are rude.) I remember my mother took me to the Jesuit advisor of my 9th grade class after a miserable year and asked about college placement advice – I then intended to be an architect which later shifted to educator. She asked the priest how many kids went to M.I.T. and what their experience has been. “Oh, we’ve had kids go to M.I.T., but they usually transfer after a year or so.” When asked why they transferred, he explained that they wanted to major in philosophy, and came back to the Jesuits. The next day I was in public school.
Thanks for the inspiration, and the irony of applying “common core” skills of history and philosophy to addressing the failure of so many core advocates to provide ballast in these debates.
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GOOGLE “Handwork” and an old tradition springs up that is still alive in Waldorf schools and others. It takes us beyond the act and issue of handwriting but directly into the heart of the matter. Beautiful work and beautiful brains that is not to be lost. Something the corporate cravens know nothing about because they do not study the history of children’s work in schools.
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Why have students draw, paint, sculpt, write by hand, sew, do origami, dance, sing, recite, jump rope, play hop scotch or four square, when they could be hooked up to galvanic skin response bracelets while they do their flash video worksheet on a screen on CCSS.Literacy.ELA.3.2a and answer the ten bubble questions that follow it in preparation for the online test, both of which–online worksheet and test–are SO much more lucrative for ed tech entrepreneurs and their partners Gates and Pearson and so much better at imparting to kids the essential 21st-century workforce skill of gritful obedience in a low-level service occupation?
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Re:
“Why have students draw, paint, sculpt, write by hand, sew, do origami, dance, sing, recite, jump rope, play hop scotch or four square, … ”
Because (many lobbyists and legislators for cursive proclaim) “cursive is an art” and can (by implication) therefore replace all of the above. (In the states that have proposed or implemented cursive mandates, the introducers and supporters of the mandates routinely sell the mandate bill by describing cursive as “an art” — while cutting _actual_ art programs.)
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That’s really sad. Just awful.
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Bob, you are so beautiful with this great response which nails it once again. Read again Inventing Kindergarten by Norman Brosterman and re- imagine with everyone here, another future for all of us.
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To me, handwriting, especially in script, is as personal as a fingerprint. Handwritten letters are real communications from people that mean something to me. Emails just aren’t that kind of communication. We seem to be outsourcing everything: our mental functions to calculators and computers, our writing ability to keyboards, our imaginations to video games, and our athletic ability to Wiis and other devices. What will be left of us when we lose power and have to speak or write or figure things out on our own?
Although knowing how to type (or “keyboard”) is essential now, isn’t it one more way to homogenize and eliminate any traces of individuality kids might have? It makes them all more vulnerable to becoming cogs in the machine.
Of course there’s a Simpsons episodes that touches on this: Bart can’t read the teacher’s script writing on the board. When the teacher asks him if he knows cursive, Bart says, “Well, I know ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ and…”
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Why “especially in script”? I see uniqueness in all handwritings. If print-style handwriting were less individual, schoolteachers could. (As they do) routinely identify which student wrote any piece of unsigned work.
To see wide individuality in non-cursive handwritings – even within just one particular form of such handwriting — visit the “Exemplars” gallery at http://www.italic-handwriting.org and tell me what you think.
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To Michael Paul Goldenberg —
Yes, _cui_bono_ indeed! (“To whose good?”)
Though I have no answer to that question, it is interesting to note that, among those state legislators who have introduced or supported bills to mandate cursive, at least 90% of them (in every state where such legislation exists or has been introduced) already also the introducers or sponsors of bills to remove or dilute that portion of science instruction which deals in any way with evolution. A further large percentage of them (ranging from 30% to 70%, depending on the state) have also claimed that cursive is to be mandated “because it is an art” while cutting down _actual_ art programs in schools.
Well, the time and money to teach cursive have to come from _somewhere_ …
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Yes, I forgot to paste in my sources for the four footnotes. Thanks to all who mentioned this — so here are the sources.
SOURCES:
[1] Arthur Dale Jackson. “A Comparison of Speed and Legibility of Manuscript and Cursive Handwriting of Intermediate Grade Pupils.”
Ed. D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1970: on-line at http://www.eric.ed.gov/?id=ED056015
[2] “Does cursive handwriting have an impact on the reading and spelling performance of children with dyslexic dysgraphia: A quasi-experimental study.” Authors: Lorene Ann Nalpon & Noel Kok Hwee Chia — URL: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/234451547_Does_cursive_handwriting_have_an_impact_on_the_reading_and_spelling_performance_of_children_with_dyslexic_dysgraphia_A_quasi-experimental_study
[3] 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
[4] 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
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And just in time, here’s an article from Scientific American, courtesy of Slate, that says students learn more when they take notes by hand than when the use a laptop: http://www.salon.com/2014/06/04/study_tip_dont_take_notes_with_a_laptop_partner/?source=newsletter
Regardless, isn’t there something to be said for learning handwriting as a good thing in and of itself? Does everything always have to be broken into its data-comfy components? Articles about all the science and nutritional value of various foods make a simple blueberry seem like some kind of alien thing; actually enjoying a blueberry gets lost in the stampede to document its health value. (And of course, what’s promoted as a miracle today is seen as a curse tomorrow. Not blueberries, though.)
Kids, too, are being treated as data points, not as children. Teaching handwriting requires practice and labor, but also the attention of and thoughtful interaction with a caring adult. It rewards that practice with something the child has created himself, not just letters on a screen. Writing becomes “input” and topics become “content.” No engagement necessary.
I taught a series of seminars about college counseling to adults a few years ago and was introduced by the organizer as a “content provider,” not a teacher. I felt degraded and demoted. Whether it’s handwriting or calculating in your head, surely we owe kids more than teaching them how to punch out words on a keyboard.
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The SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN study cited in SALON, like other studies adduced as support for cursive, compared handwriting (of any kind) with keyboarding. It did not find a superiority for cursive versus any of the other forms of handwriting.
To use the results nonetheless as an endorsement for cursive is very much as though a study showing that cats outdo dogs at catching mice were to be used as evidence that Persian purebreds outdo all other cats at catching mice.
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It’s much faster to write in cursive than in block. This is a considerable advantage when taking notes. I do not support forcing all kids to learn cursive. Kids differ. But it’s obvious that cursive, for most people, as faster and more effective for notetaking, and that’s a huge advantage of it.
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And it’s much faster to write in italic than in cursive.
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And many of those italic hands are very, very beautiful!
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“The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade.”
Last I was aware of, many 5 and 6 year olds are just developing the gross and fine motor skills needed for producing legible writing. Seems like another example of poorly thought-out CC standards for our youngest learners.
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Kategladstone, I don’t know what you’ve got against cursive, but I’m talking about handwriting generally. I do happen to think that most sentient adults should be able to write in cursive, though.
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Dunno about anyone else, but what I have against what we call “Cursive” is its nasty tendency to degenerate into that illegible scribble for which doctors are so notorious (but unfortunately not alone), which has caused *thousands of deaths* from “medical error”; just ask any nurse or pharmacist. If only for all the lives it has cost us, “Cursive” deserves to die.
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If we talk about “forcing” kids to learn cursive, shouldn’t we acknowledge that we’re “forcing” them to learn stuff in the first place? Aren’t we “forcing” them to learn to add and subtract? To spell? To remember things? Whether it’s cursive or just plain old printing, seems like being able to WRITE is a basic ability everyone should have, even if wee surrounded by keyboards.
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Here’s one for you: a friend of mine was interviewing for preschool. Her 3-year-old son can recognize a dozen or more “sight” words, can count, and can write his name (!!!); sound like he’s on track for college and career? Nope; the school was concerned that his skills with the computer mouse are behind. Wonder why the education system Bill Gates is bequeathing to us is relentlessly geared to online testing? Don’t buy stock in finger paint or crayon companies.
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It’s a conspiracy to dumb students down in Common Core and lack of handwriting. I was shocked when I gave a graduation card to my 18 year old grandson. I had written in cursive, and he had difficulty reading it. He said he hadn’t been taught cursive since second grade. What a shame! I retired after 32 years in the classroom. We always taught handwriting in the past. I firmly believe there’s a connection between handwriting and brain development, just as there’s a relationship between art, music and math. No more time for art and music any more. What does that tell you? Hey, people out there. Wake up. Time to see what’s going on with our children. I’m tired of people just talking about these subjects. Time to DO something about it. I have. I’ve written to my governor and representatives. Don’t just sit on the sidelines and gripe. Come up with solutions!!!
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Anne — you say you have a belief about handwriting amd brain development. Some people who have this belief say that it applies to any handwriting; others who have this belief say that it applies only to cursive handwriting. Which of these is your belief: that handwriting develops our brains, or that only cursive develops our brains?
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Kate, it seems to me that there is a LOT of “belief” being offered on this issue, to the point of things appearing to be a lot more religious than scientific. Evidence that really doesn’t support the notion that cursive writing is an “essential skill” for human cognitive development is, as you’ve suggested, a little bit thin, and often that which is offered in support does not, upon closer scrutiny, actually bolster the claim at all. The issue begins to smell like “don’t touch my traditions,” one of my least favorite arguments for keeping things in the curriculum (I like, “This student wants to understand something and so finds herself drawn to this particular area of study. Let’s support that impulse.”)
As for those who like the creative, artistic components of handwriting, more power to them. I don’t see any of what’s going on as denigrating calligraphy or related endeavors. But I’m hard-pressed to see that all of us must pursue that, and it’s trivially obvious that not everyone wants to. As someone who teaches mathematics, I should state flatly that I’m not of the school that insists that any given subject MUST be learned. See my statement in quotation marks above for what I do believe.
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