I earlier posted about an article in the New York Times that expressed concern about the loss of handwriting, as children are taught keyboarding at younger and younger ages. The article said that some researchers believe that a loss of handwriting skills may be associated with a loss of cognitive development.
As I read the comments on this post, I felt inspired to share my own experiences with handwriting and typing.
When I started public school in Houston, we used pencils and quill pens. By quill pens, I mean that the pen was dipped into an inkwell repeatedly to have enough ink to write answers. Because I am left-handed, this was often messy as I ran my hand over the wet ink, which always got smudged. I believe we were taught to write with the Palmer method, which required making round, round circles again and again. It was excruciatingly boring as my circles were never round enough.
About the time I was in third grade, there was a technological breakthrough, and we switched from quill pens to ballpoint pens. I would have said “hallelujah,” but the ballpoint pens were even messier for a lefty than the quill pens. I always dragged my hand across whatever I wrote, and whatever I wrote was smudged and my left hand was always ink-stained. To make matters worse for us lefties, the chairs in the classroom had single arm extensions, almost always designed for righties. So my natural tendency to turn my hand above my writing was accentuated because of the design of the chair. There was a brief period when my teacher tried to force me to write with my right hand, but she gave up when she saw it was hopeless.
Now, despite the Palmer method and despite being graded for penmanship, I have truly terrible handwriting. Sometimes I can’t decipher my own notes.
I was really happy the day I was able to buy a portable typewriter. It was my proudest possession. That was probably about ninth grade. I was finally freed from the bondage of my own awful handwriting.
So, from my personal experience, I am not prepared to say whether my struggles with pen and ink improved my cognitive development. I don’t know. I do think it is a good idea that young children learn to sign their names and to write notes. It is practical. I admire people with beautiful handwriting. But I was never one of them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have adequate cursive, but I remember my mother forcing me to copy “final drafts” perfectly in ink. Perfectly? That just about guaranteed that I would make a mistake. I’m glad I was taught cursive, but I love that when I make a mistake typing on the computer (and I was a lousy typist, too) I can just backspace and correct it.
You were never one of them because you grew up in that horrible time when lefties were taught like righties whether they were actually forced to write right handed or not. During my early attempts to teach, before I had any reputable formal training, I worked with a boy who was aphasic. Modeling was very important in helping him to learn. He was very precise in the way he printed, but he was left handed. In order to make instruction as much the same as possible, when I wrote with him, I wrote with my left hand. We slanted the paper to the right so he didn’t have to drag his hand across his writing. I really had very little idea what I was doing, but it did strike me as important that we build on a skill that he had.
My own handwriting looks nothing like it did before I realized I could bend the rules a bit. I do love the act of writing. It is an art form to me. That boy would be a man in his 50s now. I hope he still enjoys writing the way he used to. He could have been a skilled draftsman.
My Mom died a couple of years ago. When I come in contact with one of her letters, I feel like I’m with her. I feel like I’m holding her. Dad too. Their handwriting is very different, so unique to them. Even their photographs are not as alive for me as their handwritten letters.
Exactly. Keyboarders only won’t be able to read handwriting. Another reason to abjure the CCSS.
Very moving, Linda! Sorry for your loss.
I feel the same way, Linda. I have a bunch of handwritten recipe cards from my mom and others who have passed away, and even a whole binder of recipes from my great-grandmother. It has occurred to me that I should scan them to preserve the cards from further kitchen accidents.
I was stunned and saddened a year ago when a college student admitted to me she could not read cursive, and thus my handwritten comments on her papers.
Something(s) important is/are being lost by the de-emphasis on handwriting, cursive or printed.
Enough people can’t read cursive that there’s actually now a book to teach cursive reading to anyone who can read print (no matter how one writes, or if one can wrote by hand at all) — READ CURSIVE FAST at https://nationalautismresources.com/read-cursive-fast/
Linda, a similar experience (not involving my parents, but someone close to me whom I admired very much) is one of the things that motivated me to learn, or re-learn, cursive as an adult.
It is amazing how their letters make me feel so connected to my parents.
Cursive writing is a total waste of time.
Kids differ.
One size does not fit all.
That’s one of many reasons why invariant standards are a TERRIBLE idea.
We need, instead, LOTS of VOLUNTARY OPTIONS, put forward by scholars and researchers and classroom practitioners and curriculum developers, subject to continual debate and revision.
Clearly.
There are many other reasons why an invariant national list (especially an amateurish one like the CCSS in ELA) is a bad idea, but that one should be sufficient for people to say,
No, thank you. We are fully capable of thinking for ourselves.
I must say, Diane, your cognitive development didn’t seem to suffer from never having developed that lovely Palmer hand.
I must confess that I always thought of excessively pretty adult handwriting as infantile. But that may be because I, too, have terrible handwriting, though I paint and draw fairly well.
Kids differ. My suggestion: try them at all these things: cursive, block, keyboarding. Let them do what comes naturally to them. But don’t just pigeonhole the child based on one try. Come back to it. Children are on very different developmental schedules.
And clearly, cursive has many advantages, as several studies mentioned on that previous post show–it’s quicker and kids write more and more complexly than do those who print. And those who who keyboard perform worst of all–they write less, write simpler sentences, and write a lot more slowly. Those who can only print and/or keyboard have a terrible time keeping up when taking notes.
Re: “cursive has many advantages, as several studies mentioned on that previous post show—it’s quicker”:
If “that previous post” means the NY TIMES post, no study of handwriting that is referenced there found higher speed for cursive handwriting than for any other form (such as print handwriting, fir example).
Print handwriters and cursive handwriters alike do worse (in speed, and in legibility) than writers who join some, but not all, of the letters and use print-like letter-forms where these disagree with cursive.
I am such a writer, and have been since age 24 (I am now 51). Before that age, my attempts at print handwriting and cursive handwrlting were alike dysfunctional. (My teachers of English were irritated, often to anger: not only at the near-illegibility of all I wrote, but at the fact that — once it could be deciphered — it was far more complex, grammatical, and accurate than they thought a non-writer of cursive had any right to be.)
My current handwriting speed (again, in a writing that my teachers would have called “definitely not cursive”) ranges from 120-150 LLPM (legible letters per minute), depending on purpose (obviously a note to oneself is written faster and more casually than an important letter). Please let me know, Bob, whether I am a slow writer of insufficiently complex sentences.
Kate Gladstone — http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
handwritingrepair@gmail.com
This whole debate about cursive versus print versus keyboarding is slightly interesting…Especially in an age of high-stakes priorities. But that’s just my opinion.
Yes, 3rd grade is when you start learning cursive. The biggest concern I have is how to write the letter ‘Q’. This is confusing to students when it’s the kind of Q that looks like a ‘2’. Third graders get hung up on this. They also are really excited to learn cursive; like it’s a rite of passage. This year with my state’s CCSS, there was actual debate whether or not to include cursive handwriting. But where? Which Core category does this fall under? How would those standards be written? Is it going to be included in our year-end tests? The Board of Education for my state decided that it should not be excluded from instruction because of the ‘cultural and artistic value’ that it has. So again, which Core Standard does it fall under? Fine Arts? Social Studies?
In my opinion, valid or not, nobody really writes using picture perfect cursive. Not unless you are from the War Baby generation or older. My mom has perfect cursive writing and so did my grandparents. Mostly what I see is a morphed version of print and cursive, with heart-shaped dotted ‘i’s, and our own creation of other letters. When you need to ‘sign’ your name it should be in cursive, but even that is still our personal morphed styles.
Actual handwriting should not become extinct and give in to keyboarding. Just like
actual books and other printed reading material should not be replaced by Kindles and tablets. Again in my opinion, we can’t and shouldn’t create lifestyles that are dependent on technology or anything else that make our lives that much easier and faster. It’s almost like dumbing-down society! There is something to be said about writing a quick Thank You note to someone, that expresses a sincere feeling of gratitude; it’s personalized. For the sake of fine motor skills, I can’t help but to consider this as part of the whole-child (person) growth and development, continuing into adulthood. Researches say that reading or using logical problem solving skills, may prevent our brains from deteriorating. Could handwriting also be a part of that theory? Huge possibility now with this new data.
One last thought…maybe it’s nice just to do something with students that is not going to be on a high-stakes test. I don’t really want to create a rubric or exemplar for cursive handwriting. So if students are excited to learn cursive, then I will definitely implement the instruction.
Is cursive handwriting really something that we need to extensively debate?
Maybe we ought not have driving lessons, or, perhaps, use Siri?! How far down do we “dumb down” if we use technology to measure heart beats or go to the moon?
I’m another lefty, and was taught to write with my hand curled above the line, drawing the pen behind my hand. Very painful position (I suspect it had something to do with the arthritis I developed later). In 8th grade, no longer subject to inspection of my writing technique, I learned to hold my hand below the line, following the pen across the page. No more dragging through the ink, no more pain. My daughter learned my method from the beginning and never had a problem.
I have a bright engaged son who struggled with cursive and has not the best (neatest) handwriting. When he hit middle school, he was permitted to use his laptop to write most of his papers. This made a big difference in the work he did. Since he didn’t dread the physical act of writing, his content improved immensely. So, I think as always we need to recognize individual’s abilities and needs.
I used to be a lefty, but when I learned to write in 1st grade, my teacher made me use my right hand –which really pissed me off because she let another lefty write with his left hand. So now I am mixed dominant –right handed and left footed– which I discovered when I owned motorscooters and automatically used my left foot to balance whenever I came to a stop. I write with my right hand, but for domestic tasks that I learned at home, I still use my left hand, such as for opening bottles and sweeping.
I learned in classrooms on desks with ink wells, too. The desks were screwed to the floor in rows. By the 50s, we used cartridge pens though –what a mess those were! Each desk was attached to the chair in front of it and looked exactly like this one from NY –by the time I was in school, they were just about as worn as this, too: http://welovegarbage.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/the-perfect-fit-dimola-bros-finds-1920s-desk-for-inkwell-pen-in-nyc-storage-cleanout/
BTW, I value cursive and was shocked as much as my parents when my much younger brother was not taught cursive in the 70s in his high performing suburban school district.
When I taught Kindergarten and 1st Grade, I encouraged the children to use D’Nealian because it transitions so well to cursive: http://dnealian.com/lessons.html
Why do you value cursive?
I have more reasons than I have time to enumerate, but one that is important to me is that I don’t want Americans to become like the Egyptians, who I believe miss out on making direct connections to their ancient heritage because they cannot read, write and comprehend hieroglyphics. I think US citizens should to be able to access documents like the Declaration of Independence in their original form.
To the Cosmic Tinker —’learning to read hieroglyphs, or to write cursive, takes years. Learning to read cursive takes 30 – 60 minutes. So why not teach the next generation to read cursive — but to handwrite more simply and reliably themselves?
As I said, I have more reasons than time to go into it. I don’t believe there is one correct way to write, whether in manuscript or cursive, and I have always been flexible and given children choices when teaching them how to write.
Although it was traumatic for me to be switched from lefty to righty when I was taught how to write, I’ve found writing in cursive to be much more comfortable and useful than manuscript, and I continue to use it in both my personal and professional lives.
If we are going to rid ourselves of extraneous required courses due to time constraints, I’d vote for Algebra, which I have never had any reason to use in real life.
I have absolutely terrible penmanship whether cursive or block letters! Although, I do love letter writing and make every effort to slow down a bit and send off a letter to friends every once in a while (in my most legible penmanship). But one thing I can say, is that I am able to read even my worst messy penmanship despite the gestaltness.
Reading at the right pace is partially an enabler of comprehension. Read too slowly and the focus is on individual words as opposed to the concept behind the collective. So, when I am able to write out my thoughts in cursive I can get out more of my thoughts as opposed to using block lettering. The typewriter was a bit of a frustration to me in college because I was so bad at it that I was forever having to stop and use the correcting tape and this too stopped the thought process! But with email, internet etc.. now that truly works for me. My typing is very fast now and my ideas really flow. Gotta love the delete keys and sometimes the auto spell check! But…
That being said, I still love cursive writing… the fact that I do not need to be plugged in to collect my thoughts … still love the art of letter writing.. yes with a writing implement. And, like Linda… I love the individuality of a hand written letter for her very same reasons. In my box of photos are favorite letters from long lost relationships or family members. There is nothing like rereading them on occasion (their uniqueness to the individual who wrote them makes the experience so special).
I always had top grades in elementary school in every subject but “Handwriting.” Hated it. It’s not that my writing was illegible–it just wasn’t extremely neat. I tend to write fast which can squish letters together, but now I try to create enough space between letters so that everything has its place. I can easily and quickly form letters that are neat by spacing them properly. Ironically, I learned this technique from studying printed words on the computer. Writing is a spatial-physical activity, and like with anything else, every person has strengths and weaknesses. As a musician, I am not very visual-spatial, so perhaps that’s why my handwriting was never on par with my other skills.
There are techniques for writing neatly with a “squished,” fast method. See 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
Just from a practical perspective, has anyone noticed the disclaimer statement on t he last page of the SAT that requires students to copy the disclaimer statement in cursive and sign their names in cursive? We do not teach cursive in Hartford, CT. When student scores are discounted because they cannot fulfill this requirement, the Hartford Board of Ed then blames teachers, ignoring their own policy mistake.
Perhaps this will be replaced by a digital signature in Lord David Coleman’s new Scholastic Common Core Achievement Test, the SCCAT.
Re the SAT’s “oath that students must write in cursive” — that oath (technically called the “certification statement”) indeed comes with instructions that say “Do not print.” However, to my personal knowledge (I have done SAT coaching for students in various parts of the USA), students who don’t write cursive have not been penalized if they had been taught and had used any of the other forms of handwriting that are not printing: e.g., if they had been taught italic handwriting, or if they had developed and used the semi-joined although print-like handwriting that so many people (young and grown) are gravitating to.
So I asked the SAT’s public relations officer, Katherine Levin, whether the common claim is correct (that students must know and use cursive in order to write out the required oath or “certification statement,” and that they will be at some disadvantage if they write it in some form of handwriting other than cursive. Here’s her response: note particularly the part that I have =emphasized= by marking it =like this:=
“For security reasons, each student who takes the SAT is asked to copy a one-sentence statement agreeing to the conditions set forth in the test regulations and certifying that he/she is the person whose name and address appears on the answer sheet. Student are also asked to sign the statement. Students are expected to copy the statement in their own handwriting instead of printing it and to sign the statement in the same way they would sign an official document. =Students who don’t regularly write in cursive or who haven’t been taught cursive are at no disadvantage.=”
Further contact with Ms. Levin revealed that her employer, the Educational Testing Service (the company which creates, administers, and grades the SAT) defines the term “printing” for examination purposes as meaning only WRITING IN UNCONNECTED “BLOCK” CAPITAL LETTERS (in other words, what you have just been looking at). Students whose writing, of any sort, includes lower-case letters as well as capital letters are considered to be complying with the “do not print” instruction. If any grader or district is discounting the scores of such students, then, ought to be looked into (and possibly NOT by the personnel on whose watch it occurs).
By the way, my band has been perfecting “Fixin’ to Test Rag” and will post it on YouTube soon.
awesome
Make sure you post the link repeatedly.
Can’t wait Bill!
And it’s one, two, three, what are we testing for
Don’t tell me I don’t give a dam
Common Core’s just a testing sham
scam
Another south-paw with a comment. Just slightly younger than you, in elementary school we had desks with holes in the upper right corner – ink wells I’m told, which no longer served any purpose. My handwriting was meticulous through 3rd grade – always “Excellent”. But then in 4th grade, when it came time to slant the letters, I couldn’t manage it – my left hand got in the way and my (Cursive was right!) became instantaneously “Unsatisfactory”. In fact, my handwriting today still looks like I’m in 3rd grade, but it is clear and legible. As an adult, I learned calligraphy – from a left-handed calligrapher. Allegedly, Steve Jobs, another lefty, was so taken by the beauty of calligraphy, that he included the different fonts in his computers. Interestingly, Job’s co-designer, Steve Wozniack was also left-handed, as was was (sorry about this) Bill Gates. All managed to cope with their “disability” thanks to modern versions of Dr. Ravitch’s manual typewriter
As a former chemistry teacher for 41 years, I’ve read more lab reports than I care to calculate. My observation is that we have reached that typically American goal of everybody being an individual. That is, no two of my students’ penmanship was alike. Some were beautiful and their thoughts, reasonable or not, were clear while others were undecipherable, which made it difficult to discern what they were actually trying to express.
The bottom line is that I too do not know if there is a link between handwriting and cognitive development, but I do think, good or bad, that our brains do in fact function differently, but not because of our handwriting skills – however lacking they may be.
“Free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes.” – Maria Montessori
If you don’t show children how to write in cursive, you have made the decision for them that this is one experience they will not have. Show them the possibilities and let the children, who are people too, participate in the experience and make their own decisions. However, the adult must first be able to exhibit patience and trust in the child as a capable learner.
Re “an experience they will not have”: all parental decisions are decisions about what experiences the children will, or will not, have. Nothing about learning cursive suggests to me that a child needs to experience that.
The research makes a strong case for handwriting — but makes only the weakest case for supposing that the benefits of handwriting exist only in cursive rather than any of the other forms of handwriting.
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 below) 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?
CITATIONS:
[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] Lorene Ann Nalpon & Noel Kok Hwee Chia. “Does cursive handwriting have an impact on the reading and spelling performance of children with dyslexic dysgraphia: A quasi-experimental study.” JOURNAL OF READING AND LITERACY, vol. 1 (annual for 2009), pp. 61-97: on-line at 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
We can’t keep adding without subtracting. How about beautiful ital or cursive being included among art offerings.
Re: “We can’t keep adding [to an existing or proposed cirrocukum] without subtracting” —
Indeed. In state legislatures where cursive bills are being deliberated, or have already passed, there is she hunt of what they may want subtracted to make room for cursive, among state legislators who have introduced or supported cursive mandate bills, over 90% (in those states where I have been able to check, so far) have also introduced or supported bills to reduce, dilute, or outright abolish lessons on evolution.
Further, a substantial number of those legislators whose testimony in defense of cursive states that “cursive is an art” have introduced ot supported the passage if bills to remove or diminish _actual_ art instruction.
Yes, I grievously misspelled “curriculum” above. The same dyslexia (and other neurological impairment) that got in the way of my attempts at cursive makes me — on occasion — a grievously fumble-fingered typist.
It started with a “c” and ended with an “m” and had the correct number of letters and syllables. I read “curriculum” and didn’t even notice how your fingers got tangled. 🙂
I must admit I find it ridiculous that state legislatures are spending their time debating handwriting mandates although considering the sorts of things they feel compelled to mandate, penmanship seems quite innocuous.
As long as we expect people to be able to read cursive, we have to offer instruction. It just doesn’t need to be so formal. I don’t think we can trust it to an art program which may or may not exist. If we did offer it through an art program, I hope it could be taught with the same freedom from regimentation.
Another sinister lefty here, although I was born too late to have “enjoyed” quill pens. I attended public school until 4th grade, when I started attending a local Catholic school. My Catholic school used a report card that I assume came from the diocese, and one section graded students on “Christian Values” such as honesty… and penmanship. I kid you not.
For years I received an “Unsatisfactory” mark on the supposed “Christian Value” of good penmanship. Over the years, my handwriting has not improved much. Will the pearly gates be barred to me in part because of my messy script?
I don’t think handwriting is suffering because we are teaching keyboarding instead. I think it’s because we literally don’t have time to work on fine motor skills in Pre-K and Kinder anymore. We don’t subscribe to common core-so I can’t speak to that aspect of it, but our state standards no longer leave room for fine motor activities at all, they are supposed to be reading 40 words per minute by the end of Kinder, so who has time to let them practice making lines and circles-I have to sneak that in. I also think we put pencils in their hands too early-if you do that before fine motor skills are developed properly they develop all these funky grips to compensate. We don’t even teach them keyboarding in the early grades and I still see a big difference in the past 10 years or so in writing ability.
If they are, remind Saint Peter that, during his life on Earth, his language was first-century Aramaic: which was written in the Hebrew alphabet, whose letters do not join (even in cursive Hebrew script). If he sends you down below on a one-way ticket, he’ll have to go there himself on the same terms.
lol!
I appreciated this! HA!
To equate your experience with insufficient tools is inaccurate at best. I am sorry your experience was negative. However, as a teacher who has been in the trenches for nearly 20 years, I think this has study has valid points.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Diane,
Growing up in the same era and as a left-handed, allow me to make a few additional comments: Each month or so, beginning in fourth grade, the teacher gave us a new pen nib which we inserted in the pen holder. Sometimes she forgot to give us the new ones, and students would trade with each other, hoping to get a better nib. I remember laboriously copying from the blackboard into green notebooks with those pens. This was before copying machines, of course. Students would be assigned to fill up our ink wells which were on the right side of the desk, meaning we left handers had to cross over to dip in our pen.The Palmer method required exercises with loops and up and down strokes to prepare us for cursive. (We had started grade one with cursive.)By 6th grade, the teachers, in an effort to improve the boy’s handwriting, gave all of us a failing or near failing grade in handwriting: 65 in red ink. It didn’t work.Students today should 1) learning to read cursive and 2) sign their name in cursive. That’s all they need though a few students still look forward to learning cursive as it is a sign of being an adult.
Bill Oehlkers
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 04:09:30 +0000 To: wjo@jhu.edu
Re:
“Students today should 1) learning to read cursive and 2) sign their name in cursive.”
Why item 2? In state and federal law, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind. (Hard to believe? Ask any attorney! Then ask yourself why schoolteachers, on this matter, routinely tell children a falsehood about the law of the land. Is cursive so immensely important that it can properly be defended with a lie, or is it insufficiently defensible by other means?)
Kate Gladstone • http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
handwritingrepair@gmail.com
Some might infer that facing Pearson an a standard bearer and enforcer suggests wa’ve already died and done lots of naughty things to get here.
Talk with Barbara Madeloni about how they messed up an otherwise very useful ePortfolio alternative.
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 Pearsin in
Much to much time spent on style. By 4th grade we expect word processed manuscript. I’m a product of late 50’s to late 60’s public school. Cursive is dead on almost all levels. I’d rather see an emphasis in writing computer code…a skill that has a viable use. All major certification tests (SSA, SLLA, Praxis) no longer accept cursive. Thumbprint ID, electronic signature, voice actuation, photo ID; don’t even need cursive to collect SS or file tax returns. And we know that the brain is not a muscle, so why do we think kinesthetic processes make it stronger?
More to the point,…why do you think kinesthetic processes are just about muscles? I agree with you that we don’t need to be stressing over penmanship but I am opposed to losing the ability to write by hand. That in itself is restrictive and is closing off an important way or aid to processing information.
http://www.cursiveiscool.com/sites/default/files/cursive-rather-than-manuscript-printing.pdf Some European countries teach cursive before they teach printing. Children’s books are published with cursive script instead of block printing like ours. I work in a school in a state where handwriting is no longer required and as a result is only half-heartedly being taught. Most of our 4th & 5th graders at my school cannot read cursive or at the very least have a lot of difficulties reading it. Somehow I feel we are taking steps backward. But I do agree with a previous commentor, you can’t just keep adding to the curriculum. Some things have to be taken out to add these new requirements. Will one day we teach no handwriting at all? We will start keyboarding in kindergarten because everyone is a 1:1 school. If we move to that, what do you do when technology fails?
I agree that in this day and age penmanship isn’t as important as it once was….and probably shouldn’t be. Six years ago when my daughter was taught cursive in 3rd grade they didn’t spend a crazy amount of time on it, but she quickly learned the basics and can read and write in cursive when she needs/wants to. The public school did a disservice to my son two years later when he was not taught the basics of cursive. I can tell he is embarrassed that he does not know how to write in cursive and has trouble signing his name….which he has had to do more and more on documents for sports, school, etc Yes, I will be teaching him cursive over the summer.
I am surprised no one has mentioned the possibility of looking at how other nations do it. All recognize that handwriting is a critically important skill and none have thrown in the towel and given up teaching handwriting it. Only in the USA are children made to switch from “ball and stick” printing to the ornately decorative Copperplate hand with lots of loops that was universally taught here and which was never designed for communicating anything but invitations and certificates.
In contrast to how we do things here, in other countries they introduce the same script from the beginning without requiring a confusing switch in third grade. They begin with graph paper, large squares in the earliest grades and then progressively smaller. Almost everyone learns to write legibly using this method. It is a question of practice. Nor do they use a script with lots of loops.
I myself was completely won over by the arguments of Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty’s Italic script books, which include a history of writing and alphabets as part of their suggested curriculum. Home schoolers already use this, but you will never see it in our public schools because it cannot be totally copyrighted by Pearson, McMillan, Disney, et al. Or if you do see a version, it will be an inferior one with lots of useless, extraneous alterations inserted only for copyright reasons.
P.S. I have no connection whatever with Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty.
http://www.handwritingsuccess.com/example-page-two.php
Actually, a few other countries do it the USA way … but most of those are countries that score as low as, or lower than, the USA in t
International assessments of academic progress.
Those with “truly terrible handwriting” will, I hope, shudder at the frequent assertions that one’s handwriting is a reliable index of one’s intelligence, one’s grasp of spelling and grammar, one’s character, or even one’s humanity. These are perennial claims of those who promote cursive (including organized lobbyists for cursive mandate bills in state legislatures). Even more common, but amounting to the same thing, are claims that learning cursive is not merely the outward and visible sign of having such good qualities, but their actual _cause_. (Either way, lobbyists for cursive have taken to claiming that you cannot possibly be a good person, or a good student, with bad handwriting. It may sound incredible that anyone would seriously so claim, but it can be documented that such claims are being offered — and often accepted — as truths of great import.)
The danger of such claims lies in this: wrong judgments (about a student or anyone else) then become easy to make instantaneously, and therefore tempting to make. We would cringe if anyone claimed to know all about a student’s intelligence or character grasp of subject matter from the color of his skin: why should we not cringe when all of these are claimed to be evident through the shape of his cursive?
Yes, I’ve always wondered why the US taught such elaborate cursive. Those capital Gs always look like spiderwebs. What’s the point?
the point is to look more pompous
Like you, I am left handed. When I started learning Palmer method penmanship in the early 1950s, we used soft pencils. Not only was the side of my hand covered with graphite, but also cuffs and sleeves. In parochial school, the nuns looked at my left hand, shook their heads, and gave me a C in penmanship.
Now my research focuses on history of visual arts education; these posts raised questions for me because, when handwriting entered the 19th-century common school, drawing did as well. At that time, inspired by Pestalozzian pedagogy, both drawing and handwriting started from vertical and horizontal lines, and those circles you mention. The idea was that lines and curves were the foundation of both writing and drawing. In fact, Rembrandt Peale’s drawing book, Graphics, combined instruction in both. By 1870, Massachusetts passed the first public policy legislation for art education–requiring the teaching of drawing in all public schools. This Drawing Act was, in part, a response to arguments that all children (and their teachers) needed to know how to draw for both cultural refinement and the state’s economic development.
What might young learners be losing by not having opportunities to write and draw in schools that focus too much on keyboarding and preparing for fill-in-the-bubble test?
The research makes a strong case for handwriting — but makes only the weakest case for supposing that the benefits of handwriting exist only in cursive rather than any of the other forms of handwriting.
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?
You obviously were taught cursive in a rigid, punitive environment. Anything taught in that sort of situation is going to leave a sour taste. I would not be writing in cursive if I had been taught the same way. Being a child of the 50s, it was part of our formal instruction, but style slowly morphed after formal instruction passed. I don’t generally write Qs like a 2 among several other stylistic changes. Besides its usefulness for some people in speed and in processing information, it makes wonderful illegible signatures possible for professionals who use a stylized “brand” to represent their name. 🙂
I was taught cursive in some rigid, punitive environments and in some that were not so. Teachers who originally were not rigid or punitive became so, with me, in the face of my inability to produce the “warm, natural, human, alive warmness” (as my fourth-graze teacher called it) that she revered in cursive and in all who wrote well and gracefully in cursive.
Re:
“When I started public school in Houston, we used pencils and quill pens. By quill pens, I mean that the pen was dipped into an inkwell repeatedly to have enough ink to write answers.”
Then you mean a dip pen. Unless the dip pen was made of a feather, it was not a quill pen. (Confusingly, the smallest dip pens are called “crowquills” — because they were originally made from the feathers of crows.)
Kate, we used feather pens, quill pens.
Lucky you … I stand corrected.
Now in middle age, I hardly ever write in cursive. But making words by hand forged my relationship to language. When you write in cursive, you’re making something of your own. When you type, your experience of the world is mediated.
Not having kids learn to write because they will probably type later is just – insane. They need to make things with their little hands. It’s like telling them not to bother to learn to walk, because really, they’re going to spend all their time driving.
Making words by hand — yes. But why must the words be made in cursive? Why not italic (to name just one of the other firms of our writing system)?
I am still most attracted the handwritten letters in my mailbox. Just saying.
Connecting writing implement to paper does have a certain creative nature to it, a personal connection. Using a computer, however, expedites writing, editing, and distributing.
On a somewhat related note, Many people are finding that they connect better to text on paper than digital text. Not all people of course but there are studies that show readers are more engaged to paper and print.
I’m a righty when I write. My handwriting has always been and will be terrible, not for lack of effort. In 3rd grade Mrs.Shaheen tried valiantly to teach me how to write legibly. Despite her best efforts, she failed. My parents both have beautiful cursive. As for me I figure it’s a fine motor thing, and doesn’t really bother me a bit. I see no correlation between handwriting and intellect, motivation to learn and overall success in life. Handwriting is overrated.
Doctors have some of the worst handwriting in the world. I would say it is no reflection on their intellectual ability.
I have poor fine motor and have trouble with both handwriting and typewriting, though I studied and practiced typewriting for years. For me, word processing, which allows you to instantly see and correct errors, has been a boon. So …
I still think the Getty-Dubay method is attractive and sensible for someone like me. The Pearson-owned D’Nealian is an adaptation of the Palmer (copperplate) hand and is far inferior on many levels, being neither fish nor fowl. (It is typical of Pearson’s ad hoc approach to things educational.)
The Getty-Dubay harks back to Renaissance Italic script developed by Petrarch and his followers. Petrarch had complained that Medieval manuscript writing was so crowded and cramped and full of abbreviations that it seemed designed for anything but reading. Renaissance manuscript books are both readable and among the most beautiful ever created:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_minuscule#Petrarchan_reform
… Petrarch was one of the few medieval authors to have written at any length on the handwriting of his time; in his essay on the subject, La scrittura[7] he criticized the current scholastic hand, with its labored strokes (artificiosis litterarum tractibus) and exuberant (luxurians) letter-forms amusing the eye from a distance, but fatiguing on closer exposure, as if written for other purpose than to be read. For Petrarch the gothic hand violated three principles: writing, he said, should be simple (castigata), clear (clara) and orthographically correct.[8] Boccaccio was a great admirer of Petrarch; from Boccaccio’s immediate circle this post-Petrarchan “semi-gothic” revised hand spread to literati in Florence, Lombardy[9] and the Veneto.[10]
Thanks for a marvelous summation of a key chapter in our handwriting’s development! It would be good to have a link to Petrarch’s handwriting, if a sample can be found on-line. Meanwhile, many other italic handwriters’ scripts (Renaissance and modern) can be found in the “Exemplars” gallery of the Society for Italic Handwriting at http://www.italic-handwriting.org
If you want to reach me: http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com or handwritingrepair@gmail.com
The writing of Petrarch (1304 – 1374) is still angular, like the Gothic script he criticized).
http://shakespeare.berkeley.edu/index.php?option=com_g2bridge&view=gallery&Itemid=256&g2_itemId=17926
But note the spacing of the lettering and wide margins. It was left to his disciples, born after the death of Petrarch , Poggio Bracciolini and Niccoló Niccoli who achieved the humanistic script and cursive (respectively) in the early fifteenth century. Poggio’s handwriting, in particular, would be hailed as “almost magical”.
Here is a link to Poggio’s script.
http://universeofthearts.weebly.com/poggio-bracciolini.html
I’m a big fan of Petrarch but it is actually a gross simplification on my part to suggest that Getty-Dubay is directly derived from Petrarch (and his disciple Poggio Bracciolini): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italic_script
There actually is a handwriting form derived directly from (and named) Petrarch — it is used in calligraphy classes at Saint Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, where it was devised by the then head of the Art Department (Father Edward Catich) and features largely in his textbook REED, PEN, AND BRUAH ALPHABETS FOR WRITING AND LETTERING.
I have seen the handwriting of some Saint Ambrose alumni who had taken the school’s introductory handwriting and calligraphy class decades earlier, as freshmen, and had used the Petrarch script ever since as their daily rapid handwriting. It remained of textbook appearance and quality, even at highly practical speeds.
For one thing, the Pearson-owned D’Nealian letters are too slanted and the ascenders and descenders are excessively long to be readable and clear. In addition (unlike in Getty-Dubay) in D’Nealian there are different sets of capital letters for print and for script, making the transition from print to script harder for children.
In my last few years teaching a request was made that had never been asked in the previous 35+ years. I’d give the students a worksheet/handout and some high school student would ask if I could re-do the worksheet on a computer and print it out for them because they couldn’t read cursive writing. This happened in a special admit academic magnet school…one of the top schools in the country. The kids saw nothing problematic with the request; I found it insulting! I do think there is some good in learning handwriting…and this is from a lefty who also suffered with too much emphasis on it in elementary school! By the way, I usually responded to the kids that if they can’t read my handwriting, I guess I wouldn’t be able to give them a check since they couldn’t read my signature!
If the student does not know how to read cursive, offer to teach him or her. If the student refuses to be taught, and you make plain that you will continue writing in cursive, mark this as you would mark a refusal to read the assigned material. Alternatively — or in addition — write one day on the blackboard, in cursive, “The first student to read this aloud today will be dismissed fifteen minutes early tomorrow The rest will be given two extra pages of homework tomorrow. Similar offers and penalties will be announced here at random intervals, also in cursive. You have been warned.” Photograph it for your records, then erase it and announce that you will tell them tomorrow morning what it said. Then do so.
Cursive writing used to be taught in third grade in my kids’ elementary school. My older son was taught, but my younger son was not taught as the teachers refused to teach it the year he entered third grade. However, when he was in fourth grade his teacher assigned the book Dear Mr. Henshaw for the kids to read. The teacher was puzzled when the kids would not read the book. I finally informed her that the book consisted of letters written between a boy and his favorite author and because those letters were written in cursive, the kids couldn’t read the book. The teacher responded that that was a ridiculous reason for the kids not to read the book because she thought even if they had never been taught cursive, the kids could figure it out enough on their own to read it. Needless to say, no one read the book and a the unit built around that book was a disaster.
Send that teacher for further training — with all materials to be supplied in English, but transcribed into Cyrillic letters. Require her to write her assignments the same way, and advise her of that requirement by similarly writing it out in Cyrillic transcription. Assure her that she will soon pick it up because she is motivated,
When I read this post regarding handwriting in cursive, I nodded in wistful and infinite understanding. I recall my difficulties with cursive writing. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the art of it (especially the jaunty yet wavy e’s, when it came time to put it all together in words and sentences it was nothing short of a great demonstration of utter dysgraphia.
We graduated from big, round pencils to ballpoint pens in the first grade. I was the last one in the class to receive my pen. And the teacher made a big deal out of it to all the others in the class. It didn’t matter to me that my friends were smiling at me. I was transfixed on that new pen with its long thin tail.
A few years later, I attended a private, parochial school. Esterbrook pens with a manually refillable ink bladder were required. Oh, how I suffered. Writing in English was difficult enough, but writing in Latin was disastrous. My cursive began to literally fall apart into unconnected letters.
This display of a lack of cursive skills began to affect my grades. Not because I lacked the cognitive skills, the ability to produce good work, but because the teachers would give little regard to poor “penmanship” and provide a grade to match that view.
There were no accommodations available back then, so I began taking writing lessons from a neighbor of ours who also taught art and art history at the local high school. As I improved my cursive skills, my grades miraculously improved even though I was of the same cognitive level as I was the previous semester. A miracle, indeed.
Like you, I found that high school encouraged students to type. I remember the day when my father came home and presented me with a new portable Smith-Corona typewriter. Another miracle. I took a typing class during the summer before I started my first year in high school. I was on fire. No more holding back. I could write away almost effortlessly.
Then I went away to university. In those early days, lecture halls did not allow for the clack of portable typewriters. I had to result to taking notes by hand. Most of the time (and to this day), the notes were largely undecipherable. Then came small handheld cassette tape recorders. Yet another miracle.
Despite the horrible background noise, I could transcribe the words coming from the lecture halls, by typing of course. (By the way, I must mention my older sister here. She would look down upon me with her smug smile as I toiled away with my transcriptions. She had wonderful cursive writing ability and, beyond that, was an excellent stenographer).
Transcription was a slow and laborious task. But it was better than throwing several pages of undecipherable jottings in the trash as there was no way I could understand them. Then, bam, another miracle. A great transubstantiation. I could buy complete transcriptions of lectures from those more talented than I in the art of all that laborious note taking stuff.
As it turned out, I never needed those notes all that much. As I became further intrigued with learning, I found that I possessed pretty good audio-visual skills and a good memory to boot. I began to use……….”bullet points.”
Now, I want to thank you and any other person who might read this rubble here. This is clearly a thought bubble. It came from the nexus of reading your above post and my trying to figure out what I had written down on a to-do list for our upcoming vacation.
Re:
“This display of a lack of cursive skills began to affect my grades. Not because I lacked the cognitive skills, the ability to produce good work, but because the teachers would give little regard to poor ‘penmanship’ and provide a grade to match that view.”
And herein is a pernicious danger — as well as a source — of beliefs that cursive handwriting either demonstrates or creates (both have been claimed) intelligence and/or subject-matter knowledge. In my own observation and experience, there are teachers (and some parents) who are so sure that the child who struggles with cursive is mentally and/or morally worthless (and that the opposite is true for the child who masters it easily) that they will accept no evidence to the contrary, and will urge his/her classmates or siblings to judge likewise. (I have seen students who produced “A” or “A+” quality work — as far as content, grammar, organization, logic, and spelling went — be told that they must have cheated, because [the teacher thought] no work which looked that ugly, or which took that long to decipher, could possibly have come honestly by its correctness in other regards.)
My 7 year old daughter WANTS to learn cursive and is attempting to teach herself. I respect her interest and recognize that I am somewhat ill-equipped to teach her. Since she won’t learn it at school, does anyone have a suggestion (e.g., instructional book).
I always found Handwriting Without Tears worked well for kids who struggled with handwriting. http://www.hwtears.com/hwt
Your daughter sounds highly motivated. I wish her much success at her goal!
Many of the kids and teens who are sent to me for handwriting help are “Handwriting without Tears” washouts. WHATEVER method “NYC Mother” and her daughter use, I hope they will have better success.
Thanks!
It is more that what you think. Check out Scientific American’s article on cursive writing. It involves parts of the brain needed for adult processing that typing and tracing, etc. do not do. It may be an essential training tool for further learning. Also notes taken in classes with cursive writing create more engagement and more learning than do typed notes.
No disrespect Steve, but I call BS. Did Einstein write in cursive, or Mark Twain? As I type this out, I’m totally engaged.
Yes and yes, I would assume.
Einstein wrote a cursive whose formations would not be regarded as entirely correct in the English-speaking world, and Mark Twain wrote a cursive whose features would not be regarded as entirely correct in the _modern_ English-speaking world.
Among earlier men of fame, Michelangelo is well known for (among other things) a beautifully precise (and probably rapid) handwriting which would be excluded from all consideration as “cursive” by today’s cursive devotees — because its forms, though slanted as far right as many modern cursives, are predominantly print-like and do not join every letter within every wor. In this, he was in line with the common custom of his time and place. See samples of his handwriting at http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=%ee%80%80michel+angelo+handwriting%ee%80%81&qpvt=%ee%80%80michel+angelo+handwriting%ee%80%81&FORM=IGRE
Your opposition to cursive seems more related to inappropriate pressure applied to you when you did not have the fine motor or visual motor skills to meet their standards. The arbitrary nature of instruction is not isolated in writing instruction. Although the country is currently engaged in trying to undo all we have accomplished in special education over the last 50+ years, there are thousands of people who can remember how their inability to perform some school related task like everybody else cost them dearly. In the case of cursive writing, it is a skill that does not need to be mastered to function although I would interpret the “learn to read cursive in an hour and a half!” as a an oversimplification to make a point. Interestingly enough, my local school system used to delay cursive instruction until 4th or 5th grade. Adults who went through the elementary school generally do not really write in cursive. Some are lifelong printers and others tend to have a personalized italic style. While I was expected to complete all school work in cursive after learning in third grade, they did not seem to have the same restriction, so they never really got the practice required for it to become automatic. They did get enough exposure to be able to read it and of course develop whatever signature scrawl their profession encouraged. 🙂
To “2old2teach” — Re:
“Your opposition to cursive seems more related to inappropriate pressure applied to you when you did not have the fine motor or visual motor skills to meet their standards.”
Schoolmates and other acquaintances who did extremely well at cursive have rejected it too. They were not subjected to the same pressures that I experienced, because they had no trouble with cursive (and, in some cases, because they were in different classrooms with different teachers).
One of my colleagues, in fact (not a schoolmate — someone whom I met in adulthood), mastered cursive well enough as a schoolgirl to win a national medal for it (she was a Palmer Method medalist at age nine). She was certainly praised for this, in school and out. In her twenties — still writing excellent Palmer — she quit conventional cursive and went for italic handwriting, which she uses and teaches to this day: over five decades after she swore off Palmer. If you want a link to her web-site, Google her name: Ann Alaia Woods.
She is not the only writer whom I know to have quit cursive in adulthood despite having experienced no trouble with cursive, but she is the only surviving such writer of my acquaintance to have earned a Palmer Method medal, in national competition. (She has since received awards, in other competition, for her current — italic — handwriting.)
Re:
“The arbitrary nature of instruction is not isolated in writing instruction.”
What do you mean?
Re:
“I would interpret the ‘learn to read cursive in an hour and a half!’ as a an oversimplification to make a point.”
In the phrase you (mis)quote, I did not write “an hour and a half.” I wrote “thirty to sixty minutes” because that is how long it takes me to teach someone how to read cursive. (Read carefully, please. Reading comprehension is as important as handwriting.) Why would you regard it as “an oversimplication”? Having done it, I regard it as a fact.
Re:
“Interestingly enough, my local school system used to delay cursive instruction until 4th or 5th grade. Adults who went through the elementary school generally do not really write in cursive. Some are lifelong printers and others tend to have a personalized italic style. While I was expected to complete all school work in cursive after learning in third grade, they did not seem to have the same restriction, so they never really got the practice required for it to become automatic. They did get enough exposure to be able to read it and of course develop whatever signature scrawl their profession encouraged.)”
Is their _non-cursive_ handwriting (of whatever form) automatic? Is it (aside from signatures) readable? If so, then my only concern would be with their decision to sign things illegibly — I regard that as the written equivalent of mumbling one’s own name when introducing oneself. Signatures — in whatever form of handwriting — deserve to be seen and read.
I did not mean to raise your ire. I do not write cursive in anyone’s style but my own, nor did I encounter anyone requiring that I write in a formal style after instruction in cursive ended. I meant my anecdote only to be an observation of a pedagogical decision that seemed to produce a particular outcome more often than not. The outcome is neither positive or negative as far as I can tell. I just found it interesting. Forgive me for not getting your time frame correct. I was too lazy to go back and check and picked a short period of time to represent my astonishment. You should publish your system; there are probably thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people out there who can’t read cursive.
It is not a matter of good or beautiful handwriting; it is that the act of forming the letters engages the brain in a way that tapping a keyboard does not. Whether it is because writing takes a little longer or because of some kinesthetic connection, it seems that the cognitive connection is stronger
At any rate, however, history marches on. Perhaps the cognitive connection was stronger with quill pens, but we moved on to ballpoints, and we will now move on to keyboarding. The brain, I believe, will adapt
Did Picasso write in cursive?
I doubt that Spanish schools taught the loopy Palmer copperplate that was used here and in England (apparently). However, Picasso had incredible fine hand-eye coordination and could have written beautifully in cursive or any other method. Others who had fantastic hand-eye control included J.J. Rousseau, Frédéric Chopin, and the Bronte sisters. Lucky them!
The SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article (the one that I read, anyway) found those advantages in handwriting generally (irrespective of whether or not the handwriting was cursive). Can you please explain why you are stating that the article attributed those advantages specifically to cursive?
To Steve Ruis — is “the Scientific American article on cursive writing,” which you ask me to read, the recent article on handwriting whose evidence turned out (when I read it and went back to the actual research summarized) to support handwriting generally and (again) _not_ to support a claim of superiority for cursive over the other forms of handwrlting?
I wish that someone — some proponent of cursive, perhaps — would explain to me why the proponents of cursive, when they read a research piece of other article comparing handwriting with keyboarding, like to describe this as showing a superiority for cursive even when the research did not include cursive or the research data did not establish a superiority for cursive.
When my youngest daughter was four years old I decided to enroll her in preschool in order to prepare her for the rigors of kindergarten.
Her older sister was entering kindergarten at the same time and she had enjoyed a half day preschool program at the YMCA in a neighboring town.
Because our town had half day kindergarten and I could not assure being able to pick up the youngest at the “Y” and be back in time for the kindergarten dismissal I chose to enroll my youngest in a well respected private preschool in our town.
To this day, both my youngest, (who is now 13) and I, recall this time as a dark time. Instead of the socializing aspects of YMCA with it’s choosing of morning “stations” where a child could sign by placing their velcro penguin at their choice of sand/water table, painting, shaving foam station etc. In the morning followed by swim or gym and then story time, my youngest spent her time sitting around a large table laboring over drawing straight lines, cutting with scissors, tryying to write her name and other fine motor skills that developmentally she simply was not ready for. Meanwhile the elaborate playground that had initially attracted us was only seen from a distance as we entered and exited the building.
Instead of the excited cries of her older sister who had enthusiastically proclaimed comments like “mommy, guess what’s the fastest land animal that doesn’t gots to stop?” When I picked her up, I got a tired, cranky girl who was truly miserable. Later my youngest was diagnosed with dyslexia, but I sure would like that year back and enjoy taking a joyful three year old to parks and playgrounds instead of worrying about her being competitive enough for kindergarten. 😦
For young children, I always understood handwriting as a tool to focus minds on paying attention to detail. For example, how are upper case and lower case letters different? In addition, without the use of erasers, it allowed them to learn from their mistakes and enabled them to improve their fine motor skills and letter recognition while working independently. This improvement can serve as a good tool to boost self esteem. As for lefties and for many gifted children, they may need a little more differentiated techniques to make handwriting bearable. They are not the majority.
All of what you say applies to handwriting — and is not limited to cursive. Why are considerations which support instruction in handwriting of _any_ form so often represented as though what they supported was, specifically, cursive handwriting?
It’s interesting to read all the stories about the travails of learning to write by hand. I too hated learning cursive, but then went on to develop a fine italic hand as a calligrapher. Still can’t read my had writing, but i do know what it is important for me to write when i note-take because i remember so much more. I think it’s the process of writing and it’s relationship to thought and memory, more than the hand writing product itself. However, I will say that, as a HS Art teacher, i an encountering an epidemic of dysgraphia in my school.
Elizabeth — are you related to the late Ade de Bethune? (Also a calligrapher and teacher)? I ask because I knew her, and we became friends, toward the end of her life.
Sorry if this has already been posted http://www.vox.com/2014/6/4/5776804/note-taking-by-hand-versus-laptop
Yes — another study whose data show advantages of handwriting over keyboarding, and show no advantage for cursive over other handwriting.
I went back over the original NYT article post on handwriting to try to discern where the debate about cursive over other writing styles arose. The main point of the article appears to be a caution against the elimination of handwriting as opposed to keyboarding. While the article makes reference to some research that might suggest the superiority of cursive over other forms of handwriting, the takeaway for me was the importance of handwriting. For many of my special education students, handwriting was a valuable tool for processing and paraphrasing information. For some the keyboard was salvation because it eliminated or reduced their mechanical struggle with taking notes and/or recording their thoughts (which can be very different tasks). My attachment to cursive (and I use the term informally to mean joined writing) is purely personal. I enjoy writing is script. Period. However, I can’t imagine torturing my dysgraphic students with endless handwritten assignments, if the correct tool for them is a keyboard. That is no different than forcing my illiterate high school students to be bound to textbooks far beyond any possibility of comprehension when the material is available through auditory books, video resources and rich, interactive classroom activities.
In this post, Diane details her negative experience with handwriting which she appears to equate with the Palmer method of teaching cursive. I did not see posters responding with their own personal experience as any more than anecdotes on personal experience perhaps tangled up with a muddying of the usage of terms (I am not going back to check).
Does it strike anyone else as incoherent that so many in the self-styled “education reform” crowd seem so eager to find an ‘excuse’ to teach writing the ‘easy’ way by using a keyboard, thereby avoiding entirely the ‘rigor’ involved in teaching students the ‘hard’ way of writing, i.e., by hand?
*I write as someone who was considered a good enough typist that I got a number of jobs based in large part on my speed and accuracy in using a typewriter. When electric typewriters came along they put a big smile on my face, and computers with their keyboards and word processing programs—ah, the joy of dozens of different fonts and automatic footnoting and the like! But handwriting, IMHO, also has its place.*
For a bit of different perspective on this posting, I invite people to look at a school where many of the top Silicon Valley folks send THEIR OWN CHILDREN. It’s called the Waldorf School of the Peninsula. It is easy enough to google the school’s website directly. I especially advise those interested in looking at the “History” web page.
Let me give y’all a taste of what 21st century learning looks like from a 2011 NYTIMES article entitled “A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute.” The first four paragraphs:
[start quote]
The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.
But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.
Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.
This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.
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Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?pagewanted=all
Just sayin’…
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. Much food for thought.
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It took me a long time to learn how to compose on a computer. I had to write things by hand and then type them in. It was very difficult to do the thinking that was required tapping on keys. That difficulty may have been an artifact of growing up with typewriters and not computers. Typewriters were only for transposing not composing. It used to annoy me no end when computer keyboarding classes put such a high value on typing speed as if the computer was simply an extremely expensive typewriter. Thinking takes time.
I’ve met survivors of Waldorf schools. I wasn’t impressed — particularly after I learned about such Waldorf School policies as the frequent one against allowing left-handed students to learn handwriting with the left hand and to write left-handed. (ThAats the one I’m mentioning here — I could have picked others — because that’s the questionable policy there which is most directly related to handwriting. Ex-Waldorf people (also current Waldirf people) who have discussed that policy with me have said that the explanation given for it us that writing left-handed is bad for “soul development” … ? … ! …
kategladstone: while I will, of course, wait for further confirmation of what you wrote, I am most grateful for your comments.
Another example of how amazing this blog is [yes, I ended a sentence blahblahblah but I it doesn’t make a jot, tittle or bit of difference].
Keep commenting. I’ll keep reading.
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Sounds like a religious reference to the left hand being “unclean.”
To KrazyTA: if you want confirmation that the Waldorf private school chain regards left-handed writing as bad for your soul, all you have to do is search “left hand” or “left-handed” or “lefty” or “left-handedness” at this extensive forum/resource site run by disappointed ex-Waldorf teachers/parents/students: waldorfcritics.org
I don’t know if the lefty-writing-is-bad-for-your-soul stuff at Waldorf is related to some “left hand = unclean!” Religious or cultural belief — the explanation that I have been given as the official one (this has been given to me by current/loyal Waldorf people as well as by disgruntled ex-participants) is that being left-handed is a symptom of being too disconnected from the physical, material world because of overwork in one or more of your past lives, and this weakens a certain layer of your aura (they have some special term for that, rather than “aura,” but basically it’s the part of your aura that is closest to your body) so that this non-physical part of you ends up developing in reverse and thereby out of sync with the material world, so (according to their belief-system) you have to be carefully, systematically turned right-handed … so that this flaw in one of the ingredients for your soul can be fixed, so that your soul can develop properly as you become an adult, so that you won’t end up as an overworked (and still left-handed) soul in your NEXT life.
They are entirely serious about this.
Waldorf Schools are fine, as are Montessori and many other models – particularly when kids fit their culture/learning style as yours seems to. Yet the entire discussion of cursive vs. typing seems to miss a key and critical point: Our keyboards are designed to SLOW typing, and idiots who seem obsessively comparing and contrasting technology vs. quill are ignoring the most obvious change possible. When typewriters began, their keys got jammed because of typing speed, so they slowed them down with vowels in different places. There are, most surely, alternate keyboards, but not easily viewed as such, and even less commonly available on laptops or tablets.
So, in any case, don’t compare typing and cursive for speed. Pretty is always good, but rarely cost-effective if defined “objectively” and almost never when enforced arbitrarily. Tech is always good, but not always as stimulating and contemplative as alternatives. But biotech arguments that ignore the limitations of both are doomed to irrelevance and, frankly, ought to be embarrassing to those who cite speed factors or other neuropathway options. Unless, of course, they want to compare keyboards in languages other than those in the west, but nobody has yet mentioned such options. Fools. It’s not all American, English speaking students that ought to be in a “scientific study!”
I hope that I could contribute in this thread about the effective public education. If USA educational leaders consciously care for the well being of all children, please reinforce sport, music, languages, painting and field trips in elementary and junior high. We will have the best high school and university students without worrying about mental illness or drug addiction.
We will have all teachers, coaches, parents’ volunteers, and children who are always enthusiastic and enjoy teaching and learning to fulfill their potential. I have been there and done that for the past 23 years. I look back now and always smile with enjoyment.
My child has learned how to swim at the age from 2 to 16, skating, hockey, teeball, softbal, tennis, curling, skiing from 4 to 16, languages from 4 to 16 (Vietnamese, Chinese, Italian, French, and Spanish: singing and dancing only), martial art from 6 to 16, playing drum, violin, and piano from 8 to 12. He enjoys reading poetic and philosophical books from the age of 6 until now. Please note that he really loves cursive writing, and still writes his diary.)
At his age of 16, he was well rounded athlete and academic effortlessly. His only drawback is his naiveté in trusting people due to his faith and belief in God. He has now learned quickly 4 guiding principles from Buddha:
DO NOT quickly believe in the saying from:
1. People with authority, scientific knowledge, and wealth (due to their own gain)
2. People with old age, claimed to be a Wise-man (due to his control of his own power)
3. Any written old testaments (due to possibly fake)
4. Any mystery, unfounded truth, and lack of proof of science (due to rumour or legendary).
It is always my best joy to bring up a child to be the best citizen and truly productive human being for society in term of bringing his own happiness to his surroundings. I sincerely wish all parents/Teachers to succeed in your teaching children to be confident and treasure their learning for life. Back2basic
It was always a great bemusement to me when, throughout my long career in special education, the most requested skill from parents was that I teach their kids “to write.” By this, they meant handwriting and, without knowing, they also meant the Palmer method as the gold coin of written communication. This continued till the day I retired in 2009. It seems, “pretty” penmanship was equated with intelligence in their minds. For these occasions, I had lists, written by my husband, Dr. Willis, PhD. Not one parent could read his writing. Then, we could move on to the urgent skills and concepts.
Thank you for “adding value” to this conversation.
“For these occasions, I had lists, written by my husband, Dr. Willis, PhD. Not one parent could read his writing. Then, we could move on to the urgent skills and concepts.”
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I suspect that one reason people want to equate pretty handwriting with anything else they value (it’s been “expertly” described as essential for intelligence, grace, learning, diligence, empathy, spelling, grammar, punctuation, logical thinking, creative thinking, patriotism, clear speech, the ability to read books other than “baby” books, and the ability and willingness to make friends!) is that this holds out the promise of being able to understand and evaluate children (and other people) in an instant.
If you equate cursive writing with intelligence and/or mastery of English, for instance — why, then, if you’re a teacher of English, you don’t HAVE to read all of an essay before deciding if it gets an “A”! — “If the handwriting is bad, I know right away that the content and organization and grammar can’t possibly be good!” (thus one teacher — or “teacher” — put it to me.)
…which is why we can be truly thankful for the invention of the typewriter et al. I know my teachers were ecstatic when they could require that our papers be typed.