Indiana drops handwriting from school curriculum

[Aikmaniac]

Because it ensures that the education system does not fall apart? :

On a serious note...it really is not needed.

I think it is basically something that is barely used anymore for communication.

Some may joke about certain types of math but it writing is much different.

How many times do we write or receive a letter in cursive now. Years ago it was quite common to write a letter to a friend, family or loved one by cursive. Now it seems pretty rare.

Think about it.

How often do you actually read or write a letter in cursive now. I really don't recall the last time I have gotten or sent one.

Now everyone talks on the phone, send emails or text. You don't fill out most working reports in cursive. You don't read manuals or instructions in cursive.

It is basically not used much at all now days.

I think ranting some about this and trying to pass it off as just another problem with the education system. To which I will say the education system has a great deal of problems...getting rid of cursive writing is just not one of them.

Guess I'm old fashioned.

When I do write letters or take notes, I always use cursive.

My boss can't read it.

 

[TheCount]

To see a kid fill out a job application and it looks like a 3rd grader filled it out does not look good in the eyes of many who may or may not hire a person.

The more well rounded a kid is coming out of school the better off they will be even something as simple as being able to legibly write your name .

You are assuming that not learning cursive means it is impossible to have neat handwriting.

Filling out a job application in cursive would be ridiculous, which is why most applications say "Print name clearly." not "Please fill out in cursive."

What they want to see is legibility, not how well you write script. In fact, most people that take cursive end up developing their own style of it that many others can't understand. Barely anyone prints textbook cursive, just like barely anyone prints textbook block letters.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Meh, there are plenty of doctors and executives with terrible hand writing. How neat your hand writing is has absolutely zilch to do with your intelligence or education level.

If a teacher can't read what you've written, I am sure he/she will be sure to tell a student so.

I know that every paper I turned in from middle school on had to be typewritten anyway.

Now that the internet is such a part of the culture, however, there's mostly no need for typing classes.

I have yet to see "Must write cursive." on a job description.

Handwriting has little to do with intelligence nor was it brought in to help with intelligence. It was brought in to originally help develop motor skills. And when you stop handwriting you're not testing those finite motor skills and they start to erode over time due to lack of use. Da Vinci may have had the highest IQ of all time (estimated at 220) and used all sorts of handwriting methods to keep himself sharp, like writing with his non-dominant hand and writing sentences in cursive and backwards.

Read some stuff on handwriting analysis or watch something where a handwriting analyst can tell you traits about person's character that they have never met before just based on their handwriting. For me, it's fascinating and uncanny.






YR

 

[Go Big D!]

I guess spelling will be next. No wonder we continue to fall behind in education

Without having read the rest of the thread I submit my reply to Doomsday:

This has already happened. It irks me that my kids have not been taught how to spell. Actually it really pisses me off. I have to teach them here at home (which I'll gladly do to ensure they learn properly) spelling rules because they are not taught in the school system here. All the rules about dropping the y and adding -ies, doubling the consonant and adding -ed / -ing, etc.

The way they are taught to write resembles a bunch of consonants thrown together and trying to figure out if and what vowel belongs and where.

I've asked my aunt (a 4th, 5th & 6th grade teacher for 25 years) why this is and she said it's because we have spell check now!

grrrr......

 

[TheCount]

Handwriting has little to do with intelligence nor was it brought in to help with intelligence. It was brought in to originally help develop motor skills. And when you stop handwriting you're not testing those finite motor skills and they start to erode over time due to lack of use.

That may be true, and I recognize the importance of developing motor skills in the young.

I don't know that motor skills was the original reasoning behind learning cursive, I personally find it a lot faster to write in cursive than in block letters and that is the only reason I would choose cursive over printing. My own personal handwriting style is a hybrid between cursive and printing.

There are a lot of ways to develop those small motor skills in children, sports and art being more fulfilling and a bigger aid to physical and mental development (in my opinion) than script.

I think a child will get far more out of learning to play an instrument than they ever will out of learning cursive.

 

[Dodger]

It was brought in to originally help develop motor skills.

Mmm...I don't see why cursive would help develop fine motor skills any better than writing print text.

 

[bbgun]

Mmm...I don't see why cursive would help develop fine motor skills any better than writing print text.

When you send a bday or get well card to someone, do you print your sentences like a third grader?

 

[Doomsday101]

When you send a bday or get well card to someone, do you print your sentences like a third grader?

Use crayon to give it a nice colorful look. :laugh2:

 

[Dodger]

When you send a bday or get well card to someone, do you print your sentences like a third grader?

I print them, yes, but my text doesn't look like a third graders, no. Lol.

Use crayon to give it a nice colorful look. :laugh2:

Only if I'm helping my son write one.

 

[Doomsday101]

I print them, yes, but my text doesn't look like a third graders, no. Lol.

Only if I'm helping my son write one.

Well then your a good dad, even if we disagree on this subject.

 

[Dodger]

Well then your a good dad, even if we disagree on this subject.

Thanks. Actually, he loves writing in crayon, and to be honest, he seems to have an early tendency to want to write in a cursive style, so if he wants to do that as he gets older, that's fine with me. Even though I have no use for it, I have no problem if others want to use it or learn it. So even if his school follows suit and drops instruction in cursive, I'm going to help him learn it if that's what he wants to do when he gets there.

 

[arglebargle]

Cursive was a writing form that allowed faster, more efficient writing. In a period where paper was valuable, pens were not mechanized, and ink could smudge, this makes perfect sense.

The information about cursive being useful for motor skills is interesting and seems to be backed up by some research.

"In one of the studies, Vanderbilt University professor Steve Graham, who studies the acquisition of writing, experimented with a group of first-graders in Prince George's County who could write only 10 to 12 letters per minute. The kids were given 15 minutes of handwriting instruction three times a week. After nine weeks, they had doubled their writing speed and their expressed thoughts were more complex. He also found corresponding increases in their sentence construction skills."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001475_2.html

Don't know what to think about it all. I totally write in cursive, and do so a lot. But I'm also an old fart. Took typing in school as well, and I must say, it certainly helped me. At 55 wpm, it helped get me some jobs, too.

I am reminded of an article I ran across about an engineering firm that had a policy of only hiring engineers who worked with their hands on something. IE, woodworking, carpentry, auto repair, fabricating, and so on. They said they found engineers who worked with materials physically, in business or as a hobby, had better real world performance.

Not sure if that would apply to cursive or not. Also not sure that touch typing doesn't develop related or different advantages. The fact that the schools don't see the advantage doesn't mean it isn't there. Many schools have jettisoned any music programs they may have had, despite overwhelming evidence that early music training has a strong corollary to better math and science skills.

 

[ScipioCowboy]

"In one of the studies, Vanderbilt University professor Steve Graham, who studies the acquisition of writing, experimented with a group of first-graders in Prince George's County who could write only 10 to 12 letters per minute. The kids were given 15 minutes of handwriting instruction three times a week. After nine weeks, they had doubled their writing speed and their expressed thoughts were more complex. He also found corresponding increases in their sentence construction skills."

I wonder how they assess sentence construction skills. As general rule, when constructing sentences, you should follow two basic guidelines:

1) Use active voice.

2) Avoid long strings of prepositions in the same sentence.

I'm proud to say that I shared these observations with CCBoy, and he's much more comprehensible now.

Unfortunately, in an effort to sound learned and intelligent, most people do the exact opposite of the above guidelines. This is because science writing uses passive voice and, as a consequence, tends to fall into heavy preposition usage.

 

[big dog cowboy]

When you send a bday or get well card to someone, do you print your sentences like a third grader?

Yes because no one can read my writing.

 

[Stautner]

The title of this thread is misleading. They didn't decide to quit teaching kids to write, they decided to quite teaching them to write in cursive.

I still disagree with the decision, but it's not as if they are cutting out how to use a pen or pencil altogether. I think probably the decision was that cursive was a form of writing designed to speed things up when writing a letter or document or report - something that requires a lot of writing - and the world has gone the way of using computers for that kind of writing.

Still, how does anyone sign anything in their own style, such as a legal document, if they write in block letters?

 

[Doomsday101]

The title of this thread is misleading. They didn't decide to quit teaching kids to write, they decided to quite teaching them to write in cursive.

I still disagree with the decision, but it's not as if they are cutting out how to use a pen or pencil altogether. I think probably the decision was that cursive was a form of writing designed to speed things up when writing a letter or document or report - something that requires a lot of writing - and the world has gone the way of using computers for that kind of writing.

Still, how does anyone sign anything in their own style, such as a legal document, if they write in block letters?

Sign Here: X :laugh2:

 

[Stautner]

Sign Here: X :laugh2:

Signature: X

 

[Doomsday101]

Signature: X

So you’re forging my signature. :laugh2:

 

[Dodger]

Still, how does anyone sign anything in their own style, such as a legal document, if they write in block letters?

As I mentioned earlier, by the time students get near the point of having to sign documents, you can teach them enough cursive at that point to write a signature.

 

[Doomsday101]

As I mentioned earlier, by the time students get near the point of having to sign documents, you can teach them enough cursive at that point to write a signature.

or you could teach them as a kid. It has worked for years.