I have mixed feelings about this one: No More Cursive Handwriting

[kennyc]

Twenty-three second-graders file into Virginia Edwards' technology classroom at Grant Ranch School, take a seat at their iMacs, pull on headphones and launch a program whose graphics and audio prompts teach them crucial keyboarding skills.

Gradually, the staccato tapping of their fingers will supplant the graceful curves of what once stood as an academic rite of passage: cursive handwriting.

....

rest here:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_17710389

[poohbear_nc]

Cursive handwriting was the bane of my elementary school existence! And for what?

I was fairly ambidexterous - forcibly changed to a rightie only - and as a result I never could get the cursive writing to slant "correctly" - and hence was criticized my entire lower school career. For what?

I now print everything but my signature.

P.S. I recently discovered Kanji characters - and am enjoying creating them - so I guess I wasn't scarred for life.

But I no longer see the point for enforcing small children to learn "perfect" cursive.

[kennyc]

Seeing that I print everything but my signature....I tend to agree....but it does seem like "The End of Something"

(to invoke Hemingway and one of my favorite stories he wrote and whom I believe wrote all his work in longhand, cursive)

http://www.repeatafterus.com/title.php?i=8752

[dsvick]

My cursive writing sucks - always did. Like Poohbear I print everything except my signature which you can't read anyway - see my first statement.

My son is learning cursive now and was very excited when he learned all the letters of his name and could then write the whole thing, at the same time though they are also learning keyboarding too.

[vivaldirules]

I learned and used cursive until the 6th grade. My teacher that year only printed and I have only printed English (except my signature) ever since. In college, I learned Russian and the only decent way to write Cyrillic is cursive. That conveniently helped me keep the two languages separate in my head. Now, 30 years later, if I'm forced to use cursive I end up spitting out Cyrillic letters and toss in a few Russian words. Weird.

Would the end of cursive be bad? I don't think so. No more so than the end of slide rules and slate tablets. As long as there's thoughtful expression in the words that are recorded.

[Ervserver]

My gf recently filled out a job app that required it be written in cursive

[vivaldirules]

Wait. 4 out of us 4 ebook readers only print. Coincidence? Time for a poll?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Wait. 4 out of us 4 ebook readers only print. Coincidence? Time for a poll?

[ardeegee]

Back when I used to write things on paper (a very rare thing now, except for the occasional signature) I always wrote in cursive unless there was some explicit requirement not to, and I felt that I was writing like a primary-schooler when required to print. That's how all school assignments were done in middle school through college, and that's the way everyone else wrote and was taken for granted to expect to write, too-- the only people who wrote everything in print were those who were just barely literate. This was in South Carolina in the 1980s and going forward. I was actually very surprised around a year ago when I saw my first story about cursive going out of style in schools-- in my mind, it was one of the basics of literacy.

[ficbot]

I went to a religious school and we never had time to learn cursive properly. The teacher just started using it on the board one day and we adapted, or didn't. I vividly recall the fourth grade penpal project we did. We were paired with a class of kids in Iowa, and I remember the teacher explaining how they were all going to have much nicer cursive than we did because they weren't killing half the day on Hebrew and so had time to learn to write it properly

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I went to a religious school and we never had time to learn cursive properly. The teacher just started using it on the board one day and we adapted, or didn't. I vividly recall the fourth grade penpal project we did. We were paired with a class of kids in Iowa, and I remember the teacher explaining how they were all going to have much nicer cursive than we did because they weren't killing half the day on Hebrew and so had time to learn to write it properly

[ardeegee]

Excellent commentary:

http://blogs.ajc.com/bob-barr-blog/2..._bob_barr_blog

[TGS]

Originally Posted by kennyc

...but it does seem like "The End of Something"

When we stopped putting children up chimneys, that was "The End of Something", thank God.(comment by someone whose bad handwriting got him branded as stupid as a child and who later went on to get a number of degrees up to and including a PhD!)

[poohbear_nc]

(comment by someone whose bad handwriting got him branded as stupid as a child and who later went on to get a number of degrees up to and including a PhD!)

same here bro!

[nohmi2]

Originally Posted by Ervserver

My gf recently filled out a job app that required it be written in cursive

It sounds crazy I know, but the reason for writing out a job application in

cursive, is because the said application is then studied by a graphologist.

Cheers