The cursive monster

“Should schools still teach cursive?”

It’s a question that pops into every education journalist’s mind at some point, including my own. The proof is in the Google search; this is the low-hanging fruit that every reporter grabs.

I don’t mean to belittle this issue; it’s an important one. The question of whether or not schools should teach a specialized form of writing that will be used infrequently in their adult lives speaks to multiple barriers schools face when it comes to updating for the 21st century.

But just as the same article gets written by dozens of journalist, the same response gets written by hundreds of website commenters:

teaching cursive is absolutely necessary – as a Catholic school graduate, i don’t actually use the full course of penmanship i was taught, like my grandmother (90 years old) or my father (63 years old) uses, but knowing it – like the Pythagorean theorem, is a part of being a well-rounded learner.
“zeck” http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/10/in-the-digital-age-is-teaching-cursive-relevant279.html?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=mediatwit

I guess we should not teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. They have calculators for these skills. Eventually, they will not need to learn to read. Technology will read everything for them. I mean….COME ON!!!! Do we want self-reliate people in society or what? Learning math facts, spelling, and cursive….Wow…that is truly challenging stuff. ugh

“jack5″ http://content.usatoday.com/community/comments.aspx?id=33945408.story&p=2

“Well I think that this is a bad trend that’s going on in this country dumbing down our education system in this country. Not teaching cursive is not a good idea, I learned cursive when I was in middle school and high school and I still use it not often because of computers but I’m glad that I learned how to write in cursive. Let the kids learn cursive.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Angel_R1240/hawaii-no-longer-requires_n_915402_100684787.html

Just another sign of the decline of the english language.  If you folks go and read letters that average Americans wrote to each other back in the good old days, you’ll see a formality and use of language that is all but extinct these days, having been replaced with text-speech a’la LOL and J/K.  It’s very sad to those of us who actually appreciate what a diverse, descriptive, wonderful language english can and should be.  The end of cursive, while not the death knell, is certainly another clearly visible marker on the long road of decay.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/07/06/typing-beats-scribbling-indiana-schools-can-stop-teaching-cursive/#ixzz1a2GIpUXW

There’s an argument to be made for cursive, but this view that by taking it out we’re making out dumb kids even dumber is the heart and soul of why schools can’t change. I have this on my mind after seeing Jamie Vollmer yesterday, and it’s not going away anytime soon.