Kansas may halt cursive education

[Flames66]

I have never heard of "Cursive" before. I looked it up and it is apparently an old way of saying joined up handwriting. I never write in this way because it slows me down. I like to write things by hand, but I never join the letters.

My opinion is that it should still be taught as handwriting can be useful in a large number of areas, but it needs to take less of a prominent role.

 

[MetalMagpie]

People aren't necesserily sitting in front of a computer their whole life, FFS America do you really want your next generation to only be able to communicate through a fricken keyboard?

Get rid of cursive, then handwriting alltogether I'm guessing - hell, whatever makes it even harder for your kids to find a job - why bother learning English, or social skills, or anything at all that isn't spoon fed through a computer screen. Hell, why do we even need teachers these days if handwriting is on it's way out. God damn pens and pencils holding us back.

They're getting rid of lessons in a style of handwriting, not lessons in handwriting in general. Cursive writing is difficult to do well, and difficult to read even when done well. "Pretty" handwriting is far less important then being able to write clearly.

I was forced to learn cursive at primary school (we called it "joined up writing") then had to unlearn it very quickly at secondary school (where the teachers demanded printed handwriting to make it easier for them to read and mark).

 

[Flames66]

I will laugh at the day when people are so used to computer typing for written work that when in some strange situation, they are force to use cursive writing, their hand writing will be awful!

I cannot fathom a single situation where an adult would be forced to use cursive. Pretty much everything is typed now.

I write things with a pen on paper almost every day, I find it difficult to understand how people wouldn't.

Could you help me with something? Is "cursive" handwriting in general or just when the letters are joined? If it is the latter your statement makes perfect sense to me.

Wow.

Just wow.

I'm amazed and appalled by this thread. Are you people serious? You still use printing to write? If you cant write in cursive in Australia by the age of 10, then the teachers start looking at you like there's something wrong with you.

I...
I just...

I cant type any more. I have to leave the computer. This is just so brain exploding.

I do not write with joined letters because it is awkward and uncomfortable for me. My writing is much more legible without. I don't see how it would be an issue in schools or in life whether someone joins their letters or not.

 

[StBishop]

On one hand, there are enough people that still write in cursive that it's probably best to learn how to read it. But on the other hand, time spent learning how to type is going to be infinitely more valuable than time spent on penmanship, cursive or otherwise (after basic writing skills are learned, obviously).

If you can't read it, it's not done properly.

The letters still need to be legible otherwise it's no better than messy printed writing.

I think cursive is great, if you want to use it use it. But I also think it's a waste of time.

It's like dancing. I think it's great, but forcing everyone to do it is stupid because most people can't/don't want to do it.

I never learned cursive because I despised it and refused.
I had a friend who was banned from it due to how messy his writing was.

If you can't do it properly, don't do it at all. I don't think it's worth teaching, handwriting in general still needs to be taught, but not cursive specifically.

 

[StBishop]

Wow.

Just wow.

I'm amazed and appalled by this thread. Are you people serious? You still use printing to write? If you cant write in cursive in Australia by the age of 10, then the teachers start looking at you like there's something wrong with you.

I...
I just...

I cant type any more. I have to leave the computer. This is just so brain exploding.

I can tell you that you're straight up wrong.

As a pre-service teacher in Highschools (as in I've been working in highschools the past 2 years) I've seen cursive once.

It was a British kid who had recently moved to Australia.

I don't recall a single person using cursive at my schools in Queensland (I went to 3) and the majority of people I know who I went to school with in the Northern Territory didn't use cursive.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

While I do agree that cursive are being less these days but I do feel they hold some important heritage wise.

Maybe, but we don't exactly have lessons dedicated to knowing how to convey thought and emotion through cave paintings.

OT: Cool, I guess. I haven't used it since the first years of middle school where we were forced to use it because it would be how we would write for the rest of our futures. What a load of bullshit that was. Mine was always illegible and I'd still spend more time focusing on the style of my words than what I was actually writing, a pointless exercise really.

 

[Lunar Shadow]

Due to a disorder regarding my finer motor skills, I can't write legibly in cursive anyway. Or print for that matter, though it is easier to figure out.

 

[blackrave]

People, there are things you MUST learn in school
Writing is one of them.
What next? Ditching books and replacing them with magazines, because most of the people don't read books anyway?
Schools should make more educated people, not less.

Maybe, but we don't exactly have lessons dedicated to knowing how to convey thought and emotion through cave paintings.

OT: Cool, I guess. I haven't used it since the first years of middle school where we were forced to use it because it would be how we would write for the rest of our futures. What a load of bullshit that was. Mine was always illegible and I'd still spend more time focusing on the style of my words than what I was actually writing, a pointless exercise really.

I'm not sure about your education, but most people learn "knowing how to convey thought and emotion through cave paintings"
But instead of caves we use paper and canvas, and techniques are various (i think that is called Arts in english)
Also I drew my own cave paintings for History lesson (for presentation- just to prove a point that paintings as basic communication technique is fairly effective)
But once again, maybe your education was different

 

[Flames66]

I write things with a pen on paper almost every day, I find it difficult to understand how people wouldn't.

Could you help me with something? Is "cursive" handwriting in general or just when the letters are joined? If it is the latter your statement makes perfect sense to me.

It actually refers to the latter. I as well write nearly everything by hand but I did not use cursive since the third grade (Germany here). I really can't think of any situation where I would have to use cursive, I don't even use it to sign things, I just do what my teachers did, the first two letters of my name and some gibberish afterwards. Not only that but cursive is discouraged at my university because what you write has to be readable by many people.

That makes perfect sense to me. When I write, my handwriting is not neat, but it is readable. I do not join my letters and haven't since I realised at primary school age that is just made things awkward and hurt my hand.

 

[orangeapples]

The important part of any non-verbal communication is the transmissions of ideas using symbols. That includes the reading of those symbols as well. It is important for students to be able to understand what those symbols are.

However, cursive is not only an art lost on students as it is one lost by the teachers as well. Many teachers don't have the patience to decipher student's writing anymore and now say "If your handwriting is hard to read then type it." Schools have been encouraging the idea of not improving the student's handwriting in favor of uniform block letters.

I think that students should learn how to write as well as type. Cursive should die and schools should focus on getting students to have legible handwriting. Computers don't use cursive because block letters are easier to look at.

There is one benefit I have to using cursive, and that is that in my normal handwriting, my [a], , [g], and [y] all look the same. In cursive they're all pretty different only because I have to take more time to write in cursive...

 

[Willinium]

Back in my elementary school the students including myself were told that if you didn't write in cursive than your work wouldn't count. So to this day I have trouble not writing in cursive.

 

[Coppernerves]

People, there are things you MUST learn in school
Writing is one of them.
What next? Ditching books and replacing them with magazines, because most of the people don't read books anyway?
Schools should make more educated people, not less.

We're not talking about handwriting, we're talking about cursive, when you join the letters up instead of taking the pen off the page, it's hard to read, and with modern pens which often only mark when you press down hard, often slower than writing letters separately.

The uses of handwriting in day to day life in the western world are mainly taking notes, and writing reminders and calendar entries, all of which are only read by the person who writes them, as a memory aid.

Nevertheless the skill of handwriting clearly should be preserved in case of electromagnetic pulses or attacks on electrical infrastructure.

 

[blackrave]

People, there are things you MUST learn in school
Writing is one of them.
What next? Ditching books and replacing them with magazines, because most of the people don't read books anyway?
Schools should make more educated people, not less.

We're not talking about handwriting, we're talking about cursive, when you join the letters up instead of taking the pen off the page, it's hard to read, and with modern pens which often only mark when you press down hard, often slower than writing letters separately.

The uses of handwriting in day to day life in the western world are mainly taking notes, and writing reminders and calendar entries, all of which are only read by the person who writes them, as a memory aid.

Nevertheless the skill of handwriting clearly should be preserved in case of electromagnetic pulses or attacks on electrical infrastructure.

Then please describe difference, because apparently I don't understand what you mean by "cursive writing" and "handwriting"
Aren't these things the same?

 

[Sidmen]

People, there are things you MUST learn in school
Writing is one of them.
What next? Ditching books and replacing them with magazines, because most of the people don't read books anyway?
Schools should make more educated people, not less.

You seem to have missed the entire purpose and subject of the thread, my friend. Cursive is the method of writing in which you make a bunch of illegible squiggly lines on a piece of paper, whereas printing is the method of making letters that look like those on a computer screen or printed document.

Nobody (outside of England, apparently) uses Cursive handwriting anymore, and schools are only now catching onto the fact that people would rather be able to read something instead of just looking at the squiggles and going "yep, that's a report alright".


*The preceding may include some sarcasm and exaggeration.

^^ This is Cursive writing, and a relatively good sample too. Only took me 3 extra seconds to decipher it into English.

 

[Yopaz]

Cursive have really screwed over my handwriting so I can't see this as a bad thing, though I still think that being able to write a proper handwriting is incredbly important. Typing may be big, but for almost anything that has to do with math, chemistry or physics it's quite unpractical. I am quite skilled at writing equations on a computer, yet I use more than twice as long as I would when using good ol' pen and paper.

 

[sethisjimmy]

Cursive relies on the assumption that linking your letters together is somehow faster and more efficient than writing them normally, which I find hard to believe.
It's pretty useless, I don't even use it for my signature.

 

[Bigsmith]

First time I heard that word used was when speaking to Americans. In England we just get taught hand writing; not only does 'cursive' make work look nice I also find it quicker to write.

It's all well and good saying that we need to focus on typing but, as an example, I'm on a Computer Science Degree course and the lecturers don't like/ want us using laptops/ tablets in class for note taking. So I'm glad that I was taught how to write quickly and neatly.