The ongoing out of control evolution of the species proceeds. Yes we are picking up a few more insights in how we operate, but it is amazing just how a trait like writing if put into evolutionary perspective becomes just another minute drop out point.

It is an excellent insight that we have very little understanding of the unintended results of the cessation of cursive writing.  One might accurately observe, it has come and is going quickly.  What is clear is that real time digital communication with its emphasis on reflex rather than reflection has our species in a thrall presently. Until we have a coherent, scientifically based, cognitive development map that is intelligently mapped to our education system, we continue to fly by the seat of our pants leaving the farm gates wide open for the hired help to leave the barn gates open.

Go with the flow decision making prevails for better and for worse.

On other close fronts, libraries are more and more slipping out of their bricks and mortars confinement as well.

http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/22/welcome-to-the-future-of-libraries-no-books-required/

We are on one heck of a ride in our brief lifetimes.

Some would say, along the way we also lost Roman numerals, slates, hickory sticks, the abacus, straight rows, dunce caps, religious training, .....

Things change. Things progress. You guys are all for technology right? Computers are killing cursive writing.

The case for the development of handwriting skills.

A policy update from the National Association of State Boards of Education.
ools.utah.gov/CURR/langartelem/Core-Curriculum/The-Handwriting-Debate.aspx

“But the strongest arguments in favor of teaching cursive are emerging from a growing body of research from the last 10 to 15 years that points to the educational benefits of learning to write and read cursive.”

The following are the findings -
1. Cognitive and Motor Skills Development

2. Literacy Development

3. Brain Development

4. Memory

5. Written Expression

6. Learning Disabilities

The last category namely learning disabilities.  Students impacted by learning disabilities, benefit greatly by handwriting instruction to improve cognitive and motor skills, literacy skills, memory processes, overall short-term memory processes and language, and improved written expression writing longer and coherent thoughts on paper.

On Bright Solutions - learning disabilities, including dyslexia have handwriting difficulties. For the dyslexic child more so. The signs of handwriting difficultuies are here at this link -  http://www.dys-add.com/dyslexia.html#anchorSymptomsHandwriting

In 2013, the movement away from handwriting instruction, as it is occurring in Canadian public schools, have once again put the students with LD difficulties between two hard places and a rock. Instead of providing handwriting instruction, the students are tossed a laptop, and other assistive devices as the accommodation. The trouble is, without remediation of the core cognitive and motor skills of the child, as in handwriting instruction, it is unlikely quality of work will steadily improved over time. It leads to the class system of have and have-nots within the school. The ones that received the dumb-down work and the ones that don’t, based on quality of work.

My dyslexic child is very creative, filled with all kinds of ideas and academic strengths, but it does not do a bit of good, if the child cannot expressed herself in writing in clear, coherent writing. The benefits in effective explict handwriting instruction, helps all students and their long-term academic futures. But try telling that to the educationalists and educrats of the public education system…...far too busy sealing,  nailing the future doors of students before they even get out of grade 3. In the same way, it is being done to the LD students, who remained at the bottom of achievement charts. Handwriting instruction? Don’t be silly Mr. Parent, we will accommodate by giving a laptop, and pushed the pen to Mr. Parent, urging him to signed the IEP form.

I am glad, I spent some of my time and effort on my child’s handwriting skills. The school was unwilling, and rather have provided the dumb-down education for my child, than to provide effective handwriting instruction for my child. 

Hi Edda,yes,the patients are running the asylum!

I work with the L.D./Dyslexia kids and they are thrown off by cursive because they can`t handle font changes.

But,saying that,the brain needs to read ,spell and write to process language.We teach them to print prior to keyboarding ,we also teach them to spell prior to keyboarding-another skill set that is becoming more and more extinct!

It`s not easy to watch the literacy deterioration of these last 20 years!

With all of these barriers to overcome it is amazing that we are able to keep our status as the worlds most educated nation.

I was waiting for that quip!

In 1994-95, Canada participated in the first multi-country, multi-language assessment of adult literacy, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS).[21] A stratified multi-stage probability sample design was used to select the sample from the Census Frame. The sample was designed to yield separate samples for the two Canadian official languages, English and French, and participants were measured on the dimensions of prose literacy, document literacy and quantitative literacy. The survey found that 42.2%, 43% and 42.2% of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 65 scored at the lowest two levels of Prose Literacy, Document Literacy and Quantitative Literacy, respectively.[21] The survey presented many important correlations, among which was a strong plausible link between literacy and a country’s economic potential.

In 2003, Canada participated in the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL). This survey contained identical measures for assessing the prose and document literacy proficiencies, allowing for comparisons between survey results on these two measures and found that 41.9% and 42.6% of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 65 scored at the lowest two levels of Prose Literacy and document literacy respectively.[21] Further, Canadians’ mean scores also improved on both the prose and the document literacy scales.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is expected to produce new comparative skill profiles in late 2013.[22]

1) Canada has the worlds hghest rate of post secndary graduates and is the only nation on this Earth over 50%

2) Pisa says Canada has one of the worlds highest rates of reading for 15 year olds and the highest in the English speaking world.

Adult literacy is neither here nor there. It includes people not educated in Canada, old people in the hinterland, etc. Mainly it includes people educated under more traditional education systems in larger classes without ADK.

Concentrate on the 15 year olds. They are Canadas future.

Should not be bragging Joe. The data streams of outcomes some are saying over 60 to 75 % of students are not reaching their full academic potential after 12 years of school. The potential lost of academic multiplies ten fold in adult society, resulting in major drags to the overall macro and micro economies of a province and national.

The economists, at least some of some are working on and it will be a big significant number that should turned some heads inside the public education system who insist on running things like it was the 19th century.

Earlier today, I had to copy out the link that I provided because it would not allowed to paste and copy. Just a hour ago, my youngest cruises pass my desktop and I burst out laughing to her response on The Handwriting Debate. She said, never mind about the handwriting debate, its about time to begin handwriting instruction in the schools.She went back upstairs, grumbling about the state of her friends’ handwriting script.

Suffice to say, my youngest was glad I put in a lot of effort and time on handwriting skills and drawing skills. Drawing skills, another item that is on the extinct list at public schools. Self-taught from the web and what I remembered from my school days. Not all dyslexics pulled the drawing card gift, and I had a kid who could not draw a straight line, let alone cut straight. Thanks to another dyslexic who happens to be Canadian that I found on the web, he had the same problem as my child, although his was severe. The school give up on him, but he was determined with a mother who believed in him. He is a successful, very successful and one of the top guns in NA in fonts. He never be out of a job, but try telling that to the educationalists who was content to give up on him. All he needed, just like my child good old fashioned explicit direct instruction with lots of practice.

The lost academic potential number is tied up with literacy and numeracy deterioration. But try telling that one to the educationalists, and part of it is the constructivism pedagogy embedded in the classroom, and e-learning web sites being operated by the education system. Constructivism pedagogy does not allow neuro-science and cognitive field findings get in the way of the shock and awe lessons of constructivism. If anything that I have read, including this afternoon spending another fruitless afternoon looking for a change in the focus where cognitive and neuroscience research is guiding the public schools.

Across the globe, the public education systems are on a fast track to rushed to lower levels of education quality, for minimum of delivery of education services at the highest salary threshold that governments can withstand. Been doing some really interesting reading, and a who’s who at the Davos conference. I supposed that the unionized educators will get first dibs on Africa, which is one of the goals to fix up Africa.

Early days in Davos, but just like handwriting instruction - it may very well make a return to the classroom sooner than one might think. The education of youth is one of the topics. One of the many facebook pages for Davos -  education to employment seems to be the focus on the discussions at Davos.
http://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum

Want to Improve Children’s Writing?: Don’t neglect their handwriting.
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/winter2009/graham.pdf

A few web sites

1.http://www.pennygardner.com/italics.html

2.  http://www.cep.pdx.edu/titles/italic_series/excerpts.shtml

3. http://www.bfhhandwriting.com/author.php

Joanne stated in her first post, “I work with the L.D./Dyslexia kids and they are thrown off by cursive because they can`t handle font changes.”

And for good reasons, that are nicely explained in the paper, Want to Improve Children’s Writing?

That said, it struck me thinking back the tears shed by my youngest, and the instruction methods of handwriting. So unkind to the cognitive minds of children with learning differences. No matter how hard they tried, no matter how carefully constructed the teacher’s lesson was, my youngest would make a big mess out of it. It happens when instruction methods are geared to the right-handed. So the left-handed and kids like my child, who should have been left-handed, and ends up writing with her right-hand using a left handed grip do in the class that is geared to the right paws, are left out in the cold.. The only good point for my child’s strange pencil grip,  that no one could cheat off her, or as she pointed out, should could hide her work so no one could laugh at it.

I found italic handwriting. This is the ticket, and I quickly gathered the resources eager to get to the school, and for a purchased of $6.00 for the first work book - start to repaired my child’s handwriting. Of course it was quickly dashed, by the tsk tsk of the principal who stated Italic handwriting books are not the approved handwriting books, and what my child must meet the approved curriculum outcomes in handwriting. Where the cursive Ms look like some sick W or the Ns looks like Ms and Ws looked like Ms or Ns. One could forget about the K or if the X was a Y or the Y was a X. Her Hs brought problems, as well as her As and Os. Instruction was not on the menu, but 15 minutes or so, usually at the end of the day was set for the children to open up their handwriting work books. And yet, the school would not spend $6.00 for an Italic handwriting work book.

So I undertook the task at home, and the school undertook the task of undoing everything that I was doing at home. Insisting to have her Ms and Ns like all the other children. Capital italics was a no-no, and therefore marks were deducted when the rule was in place - only the approved cursive writing. No printing or italics allowed. The school really thought I gone off the deep end, purchasing Calligraphy and Handwriting kits from Scholastic book fairs. My child could not even draw a straight line, much less write from left to right and keep in between the lines. The art lessons commence, and my youngest enjoyed so much her calligraphy lessons. The other classmates at lunch, were eager to play with her new found passion of calligraphy writing.

Something magical took place - all the lessons of art and handwriting started to gel. Next thing I knew her handwriting, very unique I might add was legible with fancy capital italic letters, and she even found time to used her punctuation symbols. Holy cow, she was putting periods at the end of the sentences as she wrote. What was magical, turning the letters into creatures, and became a world class doodler. Doodling is her pastime in the class, when she is bored, but these days no one is deducting marks because she is not using the approved handwriting of the school board. The teachers are glad that her handwriting is clear and legible. Plus being unique, the teachers know it is my child, without her ever having to put her name on the exam.

Compared to the handwriting of her classmates, chicken scrawl I would call it - at least when my child applies for a job - the employer won’t have to worried about my child’s handwriting legibility.

No matter what, whether 100 years from now - handwriting is a skill that will never go out of fashioned. Just like the navigation skills of guiding by the stars and using the outdated sextant, a ship’s computers can and have come crashing down where the stars of the crew are the ones who know how to do things the old fashioned way. Just like a business, a grocery store when the lights go out, handwriting skills and knowledge of arithmetic skills come in handy, to keep the store open, collecting extra profits on the purchases of batteries and flashlights when the lights go off.

But handwriting skills like other fundamental skills should remain a must for all students, and not as a class system, where only a few have the required set of fundamental skills when the lights go out, and the computers come crashing down.

All im saying is that Canada has the best education system on Earth. One thing is for sure, we have zero to learn from south of the border.