Education is about many things. The ability to know and use cursive elevate that that have this skill to the position where some will see the connection between communication and art. Cursive is an art form. The ability to merge the most basic of communication tools - writing - with an art form - cursive - is what in some ways makes us not only more human, but ensures that we pass our humanity to other generations. With out this unique combination how dos one distinguish us from the machines?

Cursive is a tool that has reached the end of its useful life.  It is a recent invention, the version we use only dates back to the 17th century. 

Some people still love fountain pens.  Headstone engravers still chisel away.  Cursive won’t disappear anytime soon, but it shouldn’t be taught in schools except as a hobby (maybe using goose quills). 

The point of writing is to capture our THOUGHTS.  Increasingly we execute that capture on electronic media.  Much better to teach typing than cursive.

Judge Judy….I rest my case (both upper and lower) ...http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/30/should-schools-require-children-to-learn-cursive/the-benefits-of-cursive-go-beyond-writing

Cut to the chase -

“Graham said the argument for keeping cursive around centers more on tradition than practicality.

“What I typically hear for keeping cursive is how nice it is when you receive a beautifully cursive-written letter. It’s like a work of art,” Graham said. “It’s pretty, but is that a reason for keeping something, given that we do less and less of those kinds of cards anymore?”

Deborah Spear, an academic therapist based in Great Falls, said cursive writing is an integral part of her work with students who have dyslexia. Because all letters in cursive start on a base line, and because the pen moves fluidly from left to right, cursive is easier to learn for dyslexic students who have trouble forming words correctly.”
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-04/local/38274984_1_cursive-students-districts

“There is spill-over benefit for thinking skills used in reading and writing. To write legible cursive, fine motor control is needed over the fingers. Students have to pay attention and think about what and how they are doing it. They have to practice. Brain imaging studies show that cursive activates areas of the brain that do not participate in keyboarding.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201303/what-learning-cursive-does-your-brain

SImply put - “Better Learning Through Handwriting”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110119095458.htm

“I feel that one must learn new things and technology is growing with leaps and bounds, but some things cannot be substituted and writing is far effective for the development of the brain to be considered a hassle. Handwriting affects our personality, our thought process and brings out our talents, or deep layered fears and study even shows that changing the handwriting has profound effect on the personality, also known as Grapho Therapy. “
http://www.theworldofhandwriting.com/3/post/2012/12/cursive-writing-and-its-importance.html

To end, what would a person do in 2099 cleaning out great grandma’s attic and came across a set of dairies?  If the person could not read script, the person may be tossing a fortune away that reveals where the gold has been hidden or the secret recipe of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The fact that most the students are not well versed in cursives slows us down to a level that is unacceptable.  The pace of the lesson 10 years ago to the pace today is phlegmatic….... I have 25%  students ready and able and the rest clutching their pens   and adjusting digits while writing so…............  slowly….............

We simply cannot get it done.  What is lost in grade three kicks us in grade 10 and up!

Nancy, there are many studies that show students learn better when handwriting, including this Stanovich paper:  http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/82/1/159/ 

They necessarily compare apples and oranges, but I don’t find they do it in a convincing way because they use untrained typists against practiced handwriters. 

The proper test is to compare skilled typists on a word-processor with skilled cursive writers on paper, and then measure something.  I argue that we should measure the the accuracy of representing thought, but if you want to measure speed, spelling accuracy, grammatical correctness, or legibility then I suspect the same technology will win.

Most contributors to this blog are skilled at both cursive and typing, but we all prefer the one that offers easy revision, spell-check, undo/redo, interactive thesaurus, embedded hot-links, and quick fact-checking. 

We should teach typing, the same way we used to teach cursive.

Tom, its grade one students, and I can safely assume that all grade one students are not skilled typists nor are grade one students skilled cursive writers.

In every study, as in Tom’s link concerning spelling instruction - ” The superiority of handwriting was maintained even under conditions where post-training spelling assessment was done on the computer and with tiles.”  I should know, my dyslexic child was a crackerjack in the weekly spelling tests, as my other children. By writing out the words makes for easier memorization, but there is different methods. Unfortunately, they cannot be found in the 21st century public schools, and as such the students becomes the losers not only in spelling accuracy but as well in handwriting and keyboarding skills.

To which many parents and even a few educators can attest to, handwriting and keyboarding instruction are done very badly in the 21st century public schools.

The educators will insist that fluent handwriting and keyboarding skills are not essential for critical thinking to occurred. Reams of studies from within the institute called the public education system, have concluded that it is dubious that cursive handwriting instruction aids in critical thinking,  Ergo, slowly over the years, hand writing instruction was put in the back of the classroom, to join spelling, and taken out from time to time in short mini lessons in the grade 1 to grade 5 classrooms. The vast majority sent home in the forms of spelling word lists and handwriting work books, as part of the homework assignments.

The reasoning among the educators goes along the lines of the New York Times series - Is Cursive Dead? “Adults increasingly abandon cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority, 55 percent, wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When most handwriting teachers shun cursive, why mandate it?”
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/30/should-schools-require-children-to-learn-cursive/handwriting-matters-cursive-doesnt

One doesn’t have to wonder why the grade 12 graduates, the vast majority have illegible script nor do we have to wonder why, keyboarding skills have risen to prominence in the 21st century public schools. Alas, keyboarding skills are taught in the same way as handwriting instruction is - poorly.

The hunt and peck method. Below a video - on the hunt and peck method that would be considered advanced because of the use of all fingers, compared to the 2 to 3 fingers hunt and peck method taught in the 21st century. Its called the hunt and peck method for a reason.  Unlike the touch method, one must stare at the keyboard to hunt for the letters and then peck at the letter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGhLA7Es-1U

Its a good thing that my youngest child, had a mother who was taught back in grade 9, the touch method under an educator who enjoyed saying the words - do it again - over and over again. The typing skills were permanently mastered, and never forgotten. Keyboarding posed no problem

Mind you, I had priorities and typing skills was at the bottom of the list. After all, its pretty hard to teach grade 3 students keyboarding skills, when none of them have fluent handwriting script, nor a strong base in grammar, spelling and writing structure. Even more difficult for students who are having learning difficulties in reading and writing, but nevertheless, I was chided quite harshly by the grade 3 teacher, when I questioned the reason why the emphasis on typing and other word processing skills in computer technology, Insanity at its best, to expect grade 3 students to use 3 to 4 fingers of each hand as the standard by the end of grade 3. My youngest received a D, because she could only hunt and peck with one finger, and made all that more difficult when one can’t string a few words together to form a sentence.

So as Tom has concluded - “We should teach typing, the same way we used to teach cursive.”

Indeed, but as it stands now in the 21st century public schools - all the educators will have to go back to school, and become educated on the science/learning advances, and the technology that aids in fluent and efficient writing. Critical thinking emerges in the process of writing if the children are not stopping trying to remember the letter formation in handwriting, or hunting and pecking at the keyboard letters.

My next post - the handwriting instruction that should be used in the 21st century public schools, but alas is not.

Now that the power in Toronto is back on…

Tom I tend agree with you (as I edit and re-edit this!) One of the most useful skills I learned in grade nine was typing.  It allowed me to work in many various capacities, including typing while being directly dictated to.  In that respect, you are certainly right about the technology being best for quick, efficient work. However, when I send a personal note, card, or letter (and I STILL do) I write it, in ink, with a fountain pen.  Why? because it forces me to think, to take care, and to use just the right words.  In short I do the higher order thinking, not the machine.

The problem that seems to concern parents, et al. about cursive is that the “thinking” of the younger set just doesn’t always jive with the tech skill—AND there are times when you just HAVE to write. (like over the last 18 hours here without power) )

Nancy and Doretta arrive at a similar conclusion, to which I agree.  It’s not HOW you write, it is WHAT you write.  The value of the technology is in helping you compose your thoughts. 

And in a shameless plug for a remarkable scholar of English orthography, here’s are training materials for Chancery script.  http://www.realspelling.fr/Welcome_to_Real_Spelling/Real_Script.html 

(Worth your time to explore this website.)

The loss of cursive$ is incredibly expensive to the system.  Children cannot keep up with lessons as they knuckle grip their pens and print.  Teachers accommodate - it is easier that fighting the good fight.  Notes are posted on line.  Notes are copied and distributed —either way the cost is downloaded to the students.

This is the best case scenario…. where the lack of basic skills is downloaded to the students that lack the basic skills.

Most schools simply hand out—hand outs.  These are notes that transcribe/dumb down textbooks that already cost each department at each high school thousands of dollars. 

Cursives matter.  The lack of cursives is very expensive at the cost of other important resources that would make the system more effective.

Of course Tom, it does matter how you write, because without fluency in the handwriting script, the writing content suffers.

Tom’s link and what he calls English orthography is Italic script.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italic_script

Italic script is what I taught my child, to which the educators took great objection to. They insisted on the looped cursive of the Zaner-Bloser conventional cursive.  http://www.cep.pdx.edu/samples/compare.pdf

““Cursive” comes from the Latin word “currere,” which means “to run.” Cursive writing is literally a “running hand,” but cursive doesn’t mean that every letter in a word has to be joined to the next letter, that the writing must be sloped or that loops should be added to letters.

Cursive just means that handwriting has a flow to it that makes it a comfortable and efficient method of writing.There are actually two kinds of cursive handwriting – looped cursive and cursive italic. Looped cursive has been taught in U.S. schools since the early 1900s and is also known as The Palmer Method, Bowmar/
Noble, Zaner-Bloser or D’Nealian, among other names. “
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/08/yes_its_time_to_stop_one_form.html

As a result, my dyslexic child’s does not have a pure form of italic script, but is very unique that no other student would be able to pass off my child’s work, as their own. It was not until high school, that my child was no longer having marks taken off for having the letters e, h, j, m, n, q, u, v, w, x, y and z in the looped cursive. Quiet something to see when the letter m looked like a double m and the letter n looked like a m, and it would be correct. But clear italic script, legible and easy to read was marked incorrect. I went to war on that one, by using the LD designation, but still it was greatly discouraged by the teachers. Meanwhile, I purchased the calligraphy kits at Scholastic with fountain pens to learned the art of calligraphic writing, where her capital letters became upbeat and had style.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if the public education system insists on not properly instructing the students on handwriting, the least they could do, is to ensured that all children learned to write and write only Italic script. It be so much easier for the children and teachers’ as well to have clear, legible hand writing.

“In the first quarter of the 20th century educators concluded that handwriting would be easier for children to learn if the characters looked the same as ones that were in the books that children used for reading. A few years later educators decided that print-script was not suitable for grown-up writing, so they looked to the conventional cursive of the 19th century. Now many children are taught print-script first. Then in second or third grades educators ignore the complications of retraining young hands, and they introduce conventional cursive, the cursive that joins every letter in words with loops. Some schools teach conventional cursive only, and a few teach italic, neither of which require learning two different sets of letter forms.”
http://www.bfhhandwriting.com/history.php

The public education stakeholders do make it so difficult for themselves, and the children become the losers. http://www.bfhhandwriting.com/about.php

The Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting - Italic script is all over the web, compared to just 5 years ago. I found the former educator at the Huff and Post. Check out the videos, but the first one will suffice to get the gist of her Italic instruction. For the most part, its mostly downward strokes that makes it very friendly for all the primary students, and bonus, the grade 4 educators will be grateful because they can spend their time on spelling and grammar, to aid in their writing.
http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/how-to-correct-conventional-cursive-149490397

Now italic handwriting instruction is likely to be the norm in more schools in Europe then in NA. To which Great Britain leads the charge on it. In the dyslexia files - “The most widely recommended handwriting style is called continuous cursive. Its most important feature is that each letter is formed without taking the pencil off the paper – and consequently, each word is formed in one, flowing movement.”
http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/about-dyslexia/parents/help-with-handwriting.html

The National Handwriting Association - a charity to raised the awareness of the importance of handwriting as a vital component of literacy.
http://www.nha-handwriting.org.uk/

Its too bad, there is no such association in Canada to prod the side of the public education system who thinks in their wisdom, that cursive handwriting has no place in the 21st century schools.

We know from Orton Gillingham research, that incredible body of work that links the learning of language to our human neurophysiology that hearing,seeing and writing the letters and putting them into thought build synaptic connectivity,it`s critical to processing our language effectively and fluently.Skipping that very important step leads to what Mirka has witnessed in her classroom.Also,in round one of learning to print the letters they should be as close to the fonts on the printed page as possible.If cursive is to be taught which I am all in favor of it should be after printing as it shows us a different picture of the letters.
Typing is great and will be learned easily after these processes are mastered.
It`s all important and leads to awell educated human being.We`re way too quick to give up foundational instruction which leads to a fat mess by grade 5 let alone Grade 10.

A typical example of what lies behind the opponents that are against cursive instruction.

“In a public school system with so many problems, do we really need to be wasting our kid’s time with this? As someone who works in the copywriting industry, I see the emphasis on handwriting as a hindrance to the development of the writing abilities in kids. Instead of focusing on the act of hand-writing, our schools should focus on what is being written.”
http://allisonmediagroup.com/why-learning-cursive-is-bad-for-your-kids/

What if your pen could warn you about spelling mistakes, just like your word processor? L
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/07/linux-pen/

Now that is one smart pen!

Its too bad the developers are from Europe, I would have brought the smart pen without hesitation for my kid. Smart pens and the kind that I brought for my dyslexic child, are discouraged by the schools. I was told my child should used a dictionary to look up words. The only trouble was since she had sequencing troubles, in her earlier days - it would take her over 15 minutes to find the word in the dictionary but the smart pen would give it to her within 30 seconds. The older smart pens were great to sound out unknown words and also give the meaning of the words. All done audio, but the teacher would not allow her to wear ear phones, and so the smart pen became a distraction and the ready excuse to banned it from the classroom.

But this smart pen is even better and no special paper to purchase. I am sure it be a hit with non-dyslexic and dyslexic kids alike.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lernstift/lernstift-the-first-pen-that-vibrates-when-u-make

What is your brain knew how to spell because you`d been taught properly and your pen or pencil was aligned with that?

I think we`re going techie mad!

I guess if the kids fon`t get the phonological awareness training to develop phoneme grapheme correspondence you might be right,if it helps them,God bless them.
However,many fine schools that specialize in the problem of weak phonological awareness,the cardinal deficit of dyslexia,don`t use these things,they teach the above.

A lot of these spell cks and grammar cks have errors in them.  Even google doesn’t understand split verbs, and will try to correct you.  (I’ve tried to contact them and was unable to.)  It’s up to the educators to do their job.  They’re shirking their responsibility by not teaching anything.  They no longer teach phonics, grammar and spelling, algorhythms in math (and want little ones to use calculators) nor any sort of drill.  Then because they don’t teach anything to the kids, they socially promote them.  Now they’re getting rid of penmanship—even though, as Mirka says, the ability to write quickly is needed nowadays for high school.  Poor kids!  It’s a cruel waste of young minds.  No wonder there are so many unhappy, stressed children!

I guess we have to blame it on the Ontario curriculum mandates and teacher training at U.-very few teachers want to shirk responsibility,they are forbidden from teaching those things.

Many of them have been sold a kettle of fish,they can see it`s not working and the effects by grade 4 and 5 are devastating.
Teachers ARE brainwashed into thinking it`s about creativity and discovery learning.

Does anyone contend that schools cannot teach both penmanship, including cursive, and keyboarding? If so, I would be grateful if he or she would explain why they can’t.

There do seem to be valid arguments in favour of teaching both - suggesting that perhaps both should be taught.

The reality is that the public schools no longer teach the very things that Jo-Anne and Bev have mentioned. Instead the accommodations are thrown at these kids, who have difficulties in handwriting script and can’t string a few words together to form a sentence, and given a laptop. As for spell check, its only as good as the user. If a user is a poor speller, the average spell check won’t be able to determined the correct word and spelling.

In the public schools across Canada, the laptops are given in lieu of solid instruction, and this is on top of no effective reading instruction. My 18 year old, just shakes her head - its even worse then when she was going to school. My 18 year old is beginning to understand that her old mother was right all along because she use to dread the event, when I was entering the school. It was never to praise the school…........and she believes that parents need to become stronger advocates for their children.

At least there was cursive instruction when my youngest child went to school, and a grade 4 teacher who decided to make it her life mission that year to aid her in her writing. The grade 4 teacher urge me on, to continued on with what I was doing at home, and don’t let anyone stopped you. Its too bad she has passed away, and I missed our chats at the grocery store or the shopping mall. In part, she kept me going and she was also the one that broke the mystery of why my child was not eating at lunch. The kids were stealing her lunch money from as far back as grade 1. I could not figure out why she was so hungry when she came home, and I moved up dinner hour to 4:00.

As for handwriting instruction, she was the one that okay italic script, but she could not instruct my child or any other children in her classroom, because Italic script was not the approved curriculum and the teacher was so closed to retirement.

Also that grade 4 year, I began the march to find the perfect pencil, pen because my child always complained about her hand hurting. Has anyone wondered why the big fat pencils and crayons have disappeared in the primary grades?  It used to be a staple in the primary grades, but not anymore. However the big fat pencils and crayons should be reintroduced back into the primary classes, for the reasons to exercise the fine motor control of the primary students hands, and prepared them for the slimmer writing instruments.

Could not find a big fat pencil back then, but by 2006, I brought my child 3 triangular pencils.
http://www.dixonticonderoga.com/writing/pencils/woodcase/tri-conderoga

“The three sides created by a triangular shape provide wider surfaces for pointer finger, thumb and middle finger. The finger surfaces are also presented at better angles for hand structure. The result is better feel and therefore more relaxation. If your student is pinching and squeezing with multiple finger involvement, select this thicker pencil. A thicker barrel separates the small muscles and allows better gross involvement. It means that the child is able to use the muscle groups that we want to train for fluent writing later on.”
http://www.peterson-handwriting.com/special.htm

My 18 year old, still uses the triangular pencils. Must tell her, they now come in the slimmer version.  The triangular pencils worked like a charm for my child, that enabled her to used other writing tools without her hand hurting her.

Sure both can be taught, but the schools would have to bring something back, that has been missing in action. The big fat pencils of old, and heavens forbid applied the science behind the big fat pencil. No excuse either, because there is a pencil revolution on the go, and the big fat pencils of old along with the 21st century triangular pencils can even be found at the local Walmart store.

http://specialchildren.about.com/od/schoolstrategies/bb/pencil.htm

What Are The Benefits You Can Enjoy From Triangular Pencil Grips?
http://www.pencilgrips.net/what-are-the-benefits-you-can-enjoy-from-triangular-pencil-grips/

And if the schools had italic script instruction and curriculum - there would not be as many students in tears and all can be started in grade 1.

As for keyboarding instruction - a crash course in grade 8 to learned touch typing. Wonderful software out in the market, compared to the way that I was taught touch typing in 1969. We had to put a sheet over the typewriter keys, and keep on practicing over and over again until we did it right. There is better methods now in the 21st century, and I am sure the grade 8 students will be grateful to have a set of skills that will proved useful in their day to day lives and in work places that still requires being able to type at a decent speed. Prior to grade 8, all the other things concerning word processors and all of the other tricks of the computer keyboard can be taught. I found here too, I had to show my youngest all the little tricks, and by grade 6 she certainly knew her way around the keyboard and computer. By grade 10, my youngest was showing me a few tricks as well. Its not taught as well as it should be in the public schools.

Hi Malkin,in my view,they should be taught systematically.
Print,cursive then keyboarding around grade 4.

Teachers claim that they have no time to teach properly; yet they advocate for 10 pd days/year.  With all of their holidays plus pd days teachers are only in the classroom a little over 8 months/annum.  I have a suggestion:  instead of wasting time during these precious 8 months with assemblies and parties and field trips with no educational value, why not teach penmanship and typing?
Oh I almost forgot.  I read that at the TDSB the average number of sick days for teachers is 15, and a great number of these sick days, by coincidence, happen on Mondays and Fridays.  15 sick days over a period of 8 months?  This is another startling example of what a strong union can allow its employees to get away with. Overall, it makes teachers appear not the least bit interested in doing their job, nor having any sense of behaving responsibly. 
Penmanship and typing, during school hours, could easily be taught, but it won’t happen in our current system.  For that matter, it doesn’t seem like any decision that is made by our state, union-run monopoly is for the benefit of Ontario’s children—it’s all about the self-serving educrats. 

Interesting comments quoted from Larry Cuban at Stanford in the article!

http://michaelzwaagstra.com/?p=348

OK, I think this discussion has reached its logical end.

After reading all your comments and thinking about the issue, it seems to me that schools should teach all three: printing, cursive, and penmanship, as all of these skills are useful to have.

When I am composing things, I sometimes do it on the computer, as I am doing this comment, and sometimes I do my first draft by hand, using cursive. The stuff I draft by hand are almost always persuasive articles or speeches - material that needs to flow step by step in a very logical order. This is very hard to achieve, and I find that writing it down on paper somehow is better for putting my brain into gear. It may be that keyboarding is too quick and simple, and my writing ends up glib.

I expect that the people who had only stone chisels to work with had an extremely logical and concise style.

So, anyway, thanks for contributing, and let’s do this again soon.

Bev,  a bit to explain why I get sick on Fridays..  and not Wednesdays…..

The job I have is not a simple thing behind a desk where I deal with one person at a time.  I deliver a complex curriculum to 90 students a day each and every day.  Given that I am exposed to 90 young people and then about 40 staff that support them each day - there are more
chances for exchange of virus/bacteria that makes us all very sick.

I do get sick….... and I stick it out——medicating and hoping for the best through out the week.  At some point my family intervenes and insists that I take care of myself.  I pick my spots in terms of where we are in the curriculum to choose my day of recovery.    Friday works because I am ill and weak, but I also had the time to put something in place that will give my students an opportunity to continue learning.

So Bev— I was sick Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Had I the self entitlement that your post indicate—- I would have been ill and away from my students for the bulk of the week.  The reason teachers are away on Friday or Monday, Bev, is so that they can capitalize on the weekend—which does not impact learning- so that they can get better and continue with their good work.  YUP teachers regularly postpone what they need to serve their students.

Not your fault Bev.  You are not a teacher and cannot understand the dance we dance to support the students in our care.

cheers.  Mirka