Scribbled Out
By: Vanessa Herring
Updated: November 21, 2012
Days spent in the classroom learning the under curves and loops of cursive could become a thing of the past. In the digital age more school districts are focusing on technology. In the Rochester City School District the focus is more on keyboarding than cursive. Students use smart boards and iPads in elementary school. Those are the skills the district says students will need to read, learn, and succeed, "an iPad where you not only read online but you also access the information that's in the book online," said Anita Murphy, Deputy Superintendent of the Rochester City School District, "so it's not about looking at a picture of a cell anymore it's about looking at that picture, touching that picture and then watching the cell split."
New York is one of 48 states that has adopted the Common Core Standards for Education. Teaching cursive isn't required, "each district or state starts to draw on what does that look like, in New York state," explained Murphy, "and then each district then says okay what does the state say and how do we make that relevant to our children."
Some students may never lean the strokes to create script letters and that can spell trouble, "there's a lot of assignments due in my classes that deal with cursive," explained Luther Smart, a 10th grade student who has trouble writing in cursive, "I just make the best of it." Leeland Smart who also has trouble with cursive added, "most of the stuff that's in the work force they want you to write in cursive."
At Saint Rita School in Webster students spend time every day practicing the loops and lines of cursive. They're required to write in cursive for assignments until sixth grade, "my theory is if they would really make themselves do cursive and keep writing they'd find that that is really faster," explained Katherine Ann Rappl, the principal at Saint Rita, "because you don't pick your pen up."
All that time spent painstakingly practicing is often thrown to the wayside and cursive may become a lost art, "I think when I said some of those graduates are proud that they know cursive, in my heart, I think they still print in their notebooks," explained Rappl.
Leaving a generation of printer and kids who may never learn how to sign their own names.
New York is one of 48 states that has adopted the Common Core Standards for Education. Teaching cursive isn't required, "each district or state starts to draw on what does that look like, in New York state," explained Murphy, "and then each district then says okay what does the state say and how do we make that relevant to our children."
Some students may never lean the strokes to create script letters and that can spell trouble, "there's a lot of assignments due in my classes that deal with cursive," explained Luther Smart, a 10th grade student who has trouble writing in cursive, "I just make the best of it." Leeland Smart who also has trouble with cursive added, "most of the stuff that's in the work force they want you to write in cursive."
At Saint Rita School in Webster students spend time every day practicing the loops and lines of cursive. They're required to write in cursive for assignments until sixth grade, "my theory is if they would really make themselves do cursive and keep writing they'd find that that is really faster," explained Katherine Ann Rappl, the principal at Saint Rita, "because you don't pick your pen up."
All that time spent painstakingly practicing is often thrown to the wayside and cursive may become a lost art, "I think when I said some of those graduates are proud that they know cursive, in my heart, I think they still print in their notebooks," explained Rappl.
Leaving a generation of printer and kids who may never learn how to sign their own names.
Comments
Handwriting matters ... But does cursive matter?
Research shows: the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive. They join only some letters, not all of them: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. (Citations appear below)
When following the rules doesn%u2019t work as well as breaking them, it%u2019s time to re-write and upgrade the rules. The discontinuance of cursive offers a great opportunity to teach some better-functioning form of handwriting that is actually closer to what the fastest, clearest handwriters do anyway. (There are indeed textbooks and curricula teaching handwriting this way. Cursive and printing are not the only choices.)
Reading cursive still matters %u2014 this takes just 30 to 60 minutes to learn, and can be taught to a five- or six-year-old if the child knows how to read. The value of reading cursive is therefore no justification for writing it.
(In other words, we could simply teach kids to _read_ old-fashioned handwriting and save the year-and-a-half that are expected to be enough for teaching them to _write_ that way too ... not to mention the actually longer time it takes to teach someone to perform such writing _well_.)
Remember, too: whatever your elementary school teacher may have been told by her elementary school teacher, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over signatures written in any other way. (Don't take my word for this: talk to any attorney.)
CITATIONS:
/1/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HANDWRITING STYLE AND SPEED AND LEGIBILITY.
1998: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf
and
/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer.
DEVELOPMENT OF HANDWRITING SPEED AND LEGIBILITY IN GRADES 1-9.
1998: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf
(NOTE: there are actually handwriting programs that teach this way.
Shouldn't there be more of them?)
Yours for better letters,
Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
and the World Handwriting Contest
http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
Kate G.
November 20, 2012 at 12:24 am
