Cursive Writing?

[Tree Frog]

Sadly, I am currently going through the public education process. Thankfully I will be done within a few short years...

 

Anyways, when I was in the 3rd grade a large part of our curriculum was cursive writing. Our teachers always told us we would need cursive for the rest of our lives and be actively practicing cursive throughout our "School Careers". However when I reached the 4th grade this was not the case... Cursive Writing has been completely erased from the curriculum  in public schools. After about 2 years all that was learned of Cursive by my peers had been lost, unless parents had been teaching them aside from their normal curriculum.

 

For this I have one question:

 

Why has the state found it fit to stop teaching part of our language?

 

I have thought about this for quite some time... Conservative radio hosts claim that the government is taking away the ability to read The Constitution, While others typically on the "Liberal" (I hate the miss use of this word in american politics so much) side of the argument say that cursive is obsolete and in the way of progress in our computer age.

 

I personally have used my knowledge of cursive writing to read my Grandmothers memoir of her families journey to emigrate from the Weimar Republic to the US, and of their struggles to survive the Great Depression in a poor German community. So for me, cursive writing is a vessel of knowledge and highly revered.

 

What do does Freedomain Radio think? Is the state trying to take away our ability to read and understand our founding documents? Or is it a useless chicken scratch that has no use in the modern age? Maybe something else?

[shirgall]

Because if people can read cursive, they can read the Declaration of Independence!

 

Honestly I think it's because the time it expected to spent on other things, like carbon sequestration fight songs and oaths of fealty.

[Tree Frog]

Because if people can read cursive, they can read the Declaration of Independence!

 

Honestly I think it's because the time it expected to spent on other things, like carbon sequestration fight songs and oaths of fealty.

 

 

Funny you speak of "Oaths of Fealty".... Here is a Fascistic "poem" from the common core standards.

Text genre, features & theme to explore

We learned more with common core.

 

Fractions, decimals, journal prompts galore

We learned more with common core.

 

RUNNER & CUBES are strategies for

Learning more with common core.

 

Vocab words like (clouds, organs, force), & omnivore

We learned more with common core

 

Economy, government, Revolutionary war

We learned more with common core.

 

So many new concepts to explore

We learned more with common core.

 

[Wuzzums]

All I was taught is cursive. Frankly it's a more efficient way of writing, and if you wanna take notes in college (or anywhere) I have no idea how you can do without.

 

It's one of those things schools do to make things harder for you. I've seen some videos how they taught kids multiplication or fractions in the US. I would call it a conspiracy to dumb kids down, but it's far too obvious.

[J-William]

Great isn't it?

 

They tell you that something is the most important thing and you use it forever… And then they don't even mention it ever again.

 

That's the state for you, if it was worth learning in third grade then it should of been worth learning in fourth grade.

 

Honestly I think they came to the correct conclusion but I think they came to that conclusion about 20 years late. If you want to learn cursive, or another quick way of writing then you can do that in your own time, no need to waste everyone's time with that. It's the sort of thing that you could learn in a few weeks if you decided you needed to learn it.

[Songbirdo]

At age nine (third grade) when I started doing the cursive drills in school, we were also being sent to the computer labs for keyboarding drills. There was a short transition period of "If you do this assignment in cursive, you will get extra credit." But by the time I reached junior high all mention of cursive, even as a bonus, was gone. This was due to those writing assignments now being required to be word processed, and any handwritten assignment would have been marked down.

[KevinLonkero]

By the time I was in grade nine, all my cursive skills had vanished. We had a new English teacher part-way through the year who decided to have us submit all our assignments in cursive rather than typed. I could feel the hamster wheel churning in my brain trying to remember how to do some of the capital letters. I wish now that they would have stuck with the cursive as my handwriting (or rather block printing) quality keeps sliding. 

[luxfelix]

The way that I understood the purpose of cursive (and handwriting in general) is two-fold:

 

1) As an indicator of class and education, like some secret handshake or a fancy business suit. And...

 

2) That the benefits of physically writing down thoughts, notes, etc. engages more areas of the brain and increases memory, among other aspects (like the kinesthetic learning from playing an instrument?).

 

Has anyone else heard this as well? 

[AustinJames]

I teach at a charter school, and cursive is part of the curriculum, starting in grade 2.  The reasoning I've heard has to do with the way your brain connects phonograms (letters or units of letters responsible for a single sound, such as "a," "wr," "ng," and "ough") and places them in context with the whole word.  It also aids in the development of aesthetic sensitivity, as it is much more difficult to write legibly in cursive than in print.  Generally, the curriculum is thoroughly research-based, though I have not personally seen the research on this topic. 

 

As to why it was dropped?  I don't know.  When it comes to bureaucrats, however, as a general rule, I assume ignorance, incompetence, laziness, propaganda, or all of the above.