Is cursive writing (aka "real" writing) still taught in schools?

I see a lot of college-age students who print (in their handwriting, I mean) papers before they type them. These are students who may not have computers at home.

And as soon as it was no longer required I dropped it.

Bryant

Electronic communication is not always the most efficient.

It's not a requirement on the standardized tests, so...

she is in 5th grade this year.

- I hated that in elementary school, but was forced to use it: As in "The 2ueen of England"; "the province of 2uebec".

I didn't like that at all. The capital "F" was also a problem for me, because I cross my sevens - they look very much alike that way.

So now my capital "F" looks more like a print "F" and my capital "Q" looks more like the "null" character (zero with a line through it).

How do you make a capital cursive Q now?

(And who makes these decisions, anyway?)

Somebody stop him!

I'm reading these posts and thinking I couldn't write a cursive capital Q or F if my life depended on it..I can't even get a mental image of them either!

he was reading "Luentin went..." :rofl:

A waste of time and throwback to an error when it was faster to scribble than type.

Printed signatures.... actually had to teach one grandson how to write his name in cursive....

It doesn't have to be legible or conform to any standard character set.

That said, a printed signature seems rather pathetic to me.

in a way that it is actually recognizable?

The only time I use anything like cursive is my signature, and that's more like a scrawl. My son went to public school in NYC, he's 19 - I don't believe they were taught script.

Hours of repeatedly writing the same characters over and over again. We were told when taking a history or english essay test that "penmanship counts". Aggghhh. To this day my writing is all printed, all caps.

tend to print instead of write..even the one with great penmanship. Go figure.

I never liked it. I would switch back and forth in essays from cursive to print and was accused of cheating by a 9th Grade history teacher for doing so.

http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/denelian-1/make-d.htm

I was so annoyed. Rather than learn printing, then learning cursive, they had to learn three forms of handwriting - going "backwards" from Denalian to printing and forward from Denalian to cursive. My daughter never learned (or was taught) cursive - that would have taken place about the time they were preparing for the first NCLB tests and got lost.

They also started "keyboarding" in 7th or 8th middle school - far too late for today's kids who are already pretty proficient at two finger "typing." As a result, she prints (much slower than cursive) and does two finger "typing" (much slower than touch typing).

She's 19 now, so that would be the right age for the same crop of students you are seeing.

I had forgotten the Denalian annoyance - thanks for the opportunity for the mini-rant.

Is it human nature to constantly try to reinvent the wheel?

It's one thing to *improve* the wheel, but so many education related "innovations" seem to do the opposite.

I thought maybe it was 'palin-speak' ;)

Kids in our school district are taught keyboarding in 4th grade, at the same time they're learning cursive. I can remember working with cursive in 2nd grade, so timing has changed a lot. Of course, I don't believe we went 2-3 yrs where phonetic spelling was considered acceptable either. UGGGHHHHHH!!!

It also seems that when the day gets overcrowded and something needs to get cut, it's the spelling test that goes first.

My daughter had spelling tests every week at least through the end of middle school - and I actually think it continued through her Junior year in high school - they combined them with vocabulary prep for the word meaning tests on SAT/ACT etc.

pretty friggin' useless.

My mother forced me to take a typing class when I was 19 because I had never learned to type in Junior High school or High school. (Frankly we only had school computers for word processing class on something called PFS write on a Tandy machine which I realize I just dated myself by mentioning but I digress.) The typing never really kicked in until I got my own computer and spent a lot more time using it. Now I type very well and when I write I will hand write in cursive then put into the computer. I save printing for when others need to read it.

She can still become a prolific typer. That Denalian stuff looks like crap to me. :shrug:

I'm 29, and we started a typing tutorial in the 4th grade, when I was 10. We also learned regular cursive as well, starting in the 3rd grade (maybe 2nd).

When you are fixated on preparing 4th graders for the first ever NCLB test, that you don't know anything about because you've never prepared students for one before - and so much rides on it - a lot gets lost in the shuffle.

As to computers - they had students doing things like power point presentations very early- just no formal typing instruction. You are old enough that computers were still a relative luxury in 4th grade - unless you were in a very rich school district, I'm guessing you were working on typewriters.

A year earlier than that I was teaching programming on Commodore 64s - which we had convinced the school to buy a few years earlier since they were "cheap" and we could hook them up to TVs at perhaps a tenth of the cost of IBMs (the only real alternative at the time). (Even so, my lab and the school's data processing lab were protected by an electronic security system, unlike any other rooms in the building.) Prior to that we had one dummy terminal and one live computer, and I was grading most of my students' programs by hand since it was too expensive to purchase machines to actually make the programs run.

The computer that held the school's grade data (and not much more) was the size of a double-wide freezer. In 1990 I was still running DOS on my computer - which I kept running until 1996 (later than most, I'll admit). I had internet dial-up access and e-mail in 1990 on my personal Commodore 64, but I was in the minority. My word processor was one I laboriously entered from pages and pages of lines of four digit numbers from the back of a specialty magazine for Commodore 64s, as was my rudimentary grade database - the computer programming teachers were the only ones who had an electronic means of storing and calculating grades - the rest of the teachers were still using a paper gradebook and a calculator.

The world was significantly different by the time my daughter got to 4th grade 10 years later. Computers were cheap enough that they were available in every classroom (not just in the computer programming lab) but new enough they hadn't figured out what to use them for, in what order (don't know that they've sorted that out yet). They focused on applications earlier and "keyboarding" later - way past the time students had already developed hunt and peck habits that are hard to break.

We had two computer labs full of Apple IIs and they weren't that old. I was 10 in 1990.

D'nealian shouldn't necessarily require three forms of handwriting--like Zaner-Bloser, the D'Nealian method has a print alphabet and a cursive alphabet, and in both programs students need only laern to print and then to write cursive. The key difference is that the print alphabet is slanted, whereas in Z-B it is vertical.

It can cause problems if/when a school district switches programs, so that (as happened to me, for instance) first graders are expected to write vertical print (under the Zaner-Bloser method) and then the next year are expected to learn/write the slanted print of D'Nealian. Sometimes, too, D'Nealian print is treated as an intermediary form between print and cursive, but that's not how it was intended. It was intended to make the transition to cursive easier, but as a *replacement* for the vertical print, rather than as an intermediary step.

That said, there are some problems with the theory behind D'nealian print, because (a) it's often harder for younger students to write than Zaner-Bloser and (b) unlike Z-B, it doesn't really *look* like what students read, so the connection between reading and handwriting isn't as powerful as it could be.

Nothing wrong with D'Nealian cursive, though ...

I understand it is supposed to be a replacement for the vertical print because it is supposed to be an easier transtion to cursive, but students do have to learn at least block (Z-B) printing anyway because there places that require block printing. Learning the Denalian (or D'Nealian) is not a substitute for learning block print because the slanted, tailed letters are not acceptable on forms students begin filling out at least as early as 4th (or perhaps 3rd) grade when they start taking standardized tests and are required to complete the forms using block letters.

No one requires cursive, so if you are only teaching two styles, it is pointless to begin with a transition style that is intended to transition to a writing style not required anywhere when block printing must be learned anyway (and, as you pointed out, is less confusing for younger readers).

It's a stupid idea - like some of the math concepts they began introducing in elementary school back in the 70s. At least with those there is the excuse that those concepts are extremely powerful tools ... for late college/early graduate level math. The problem is that they were being taught by elementary school teachers who were, by and large, completely ignorant of how they might be used in higher level math. I am not aware of (and frankly cannot imagine there is any) such basis for scrapping printing in favor of this transitional step.

the slanted print worked fine on the standardized tests I took :shrug:

At any rate, while it has a few advantages (such as reducing problems with letter reversal), I generally agree with you that the D'nealian slanted print isn't a great idea, though for different reasons.

name, address, etc. be filled out in block letters. Anything that is intended to be read by a computer needs to be written in block print (unless it is uses bubbles or bars.

not truly cursive and not truly printing. my children just basically print. no it is not enforced in these schools that i see. will talk to son. good question to ask

until I looked it up for this thread.

in europe. suppose to be a faster writing from an interview i heard on bbc

or cursive for actual use - making all those extra flourishes, but deliberately breaking between each letter. What we were told (as parents) was that it was supposed to be an easier transition to cursive (which then never happened in our case because of NCLB and the test obsession).

insisting he do it the right way, lol (my way, the old way). and he kept insisting this is what he was taught. i would argue with him cause, .... well he doesnt always hear correctly and is bullheaded adn insists, lol. i told him no way some teacher taught him to make a B like that.

oh the fights we had

on top of that he has a real deficit in his motor skills, both large and fine motor skills and already such a challenge in writing he uses lap top for writing tests, reports ect...

this cursive was suppose to help him and just made it harder for him

i let it all go a year ago.

My third grader brings home cursive practice all the time. So did my older children when they were younger. Some assignments, in fact, must be written in cursive.

3rd grade my teacher had a fit because I tended to write what they then called backhand, slanted backward instead of forward. I even got the "penmanship" award the year before. Well she made it her mission to "correct" my writing, now it's all over the place backward slant, straight up and forward slant, quite sloppy, imo. THANKS TEACH!

"penmanship." Never mind the fact that I was a left-handed person trying to write using a right-handed desk!

It is something you have practiced so many times that it is unique to your hand movements. One guy I knew used a single stroke that looked like a backwards capital C. It still would be hard to duplicate.

I made the mistake of signing my name neatly in cursive on a drivers license (when I was young). This is back when they used to actually LOOK at signatures for a credit card purchase. Nobody would believe the signature on the sales slip was correct until I signed it again neatly to match the drivers license version. After that, I just whip off the signature on the license like I do everywhere else. Now you could sign a sales slip "FUCK YOU!" and they wouldn't notice. They don't bother to look.

I was almost prevented from voting because my signature on the pollbook doesn't even come close to matching my registration signature from 20 years ago. They handed me my ballot, took a look at the signatures and called me back and insisted on reviewing my driver's license signature (which, fortunately, is recent enough to have a signature somewhat close to my current signature).

to use my left as my right when writing - and every time my teacher caught me writing left-handed she made me switch.

Since 6th grade or so I've been using a mixed print/cursive handwriting - the intent was not to be read, but to be written quickly. Had to write quickly enough to catch all the words pouring out of me. Started writing my first novel in my 9th grade algebra class. Forty years later, most of my first drafts are still handwritten - and the handwriting hasn't changed much at all since 6th grade. Still completely illegible. (And still, but for one story, unpublished.)

and it has since I was about nine or ten. The more I'm concentrating when I write something, the more it slants left. I'm right-handed. I also got grief about it, but since my left-slanted writing was very neat and legible they usually didn't go overboard with it. I never used cursive after 8th grade and still don't. It just doesn't feel natural to me, so I always print.

Of course, from the time I cracked opent my first cursive book in second grade, I thought the style of cursive I was taught (Peterson) was really UGLY. Maybe that's why I never liked using it.

Nobody can read it unless it is in that silly flowery script with little hearts over the lower case "i"s. When have you ever filled out a form that said "Name" and had "Please write name in cursive" under the line? I've always been able to print neatly much more quickly than I could write in cursive. That's the skill kids need.

What, exactly, is the point in cursive these days? Seems about as useful as being trained on the use of the buggy whip.

I assumed it was no longer taught.

I just do not write almost at all any more and the skill has evaporated.

No checks, all bills paid online.

No letters, all e-mail.

No documents, all typed on a computer.

I actually have to think about it when I write in cursive.

;-)

Oh, cursive WRITING, not cursive rioting.

and have been working with my son at home. I thought it was part of the standard curriculum but evidently not. They focus all their energies on the standardized tests these days and neglect other things that should be part of a well-rounded education.

I was appalled to learn that the neighbor kid couldn't write cursive because he teachers never made him use it.

I use cursive all the time. It's so much quicker and less stressful on the hand.

I've always admired good penmanship and I'm thankful my son's teachers felt the same way.

but how is learning cursive part of a well-rounded education?

After reading this thread I'm wondering if I am wasting my time trying to get my son to learn it. I thought our district was only one of a few who didn't teach this but I am realizing I was wrong in that assumption.

I think it's faster and easier to write in cursive, but thinking about it now, I guess the days of writing essays and reports out long-hand in cursive just isn't done anymore. When I was a kid we had to use those fountain pens and I remember a few times having to write pages of reports over again due to a simple little error because neatness was part of the grade.

When I mentioned a well-rounded education I was thinking about various things that have been eliminated or almost entirely eliminated so they can spend more time prepping for standardized tests....art and music are 2 that are especially upsetting.

Cursive isn't quick enough to take good notes, imo.

and still use it for my own enjoyment/use.

Can't do any umpteen-wpm, but sometime I can jot down something said on TV or song lyrics. :-)

Is it a computer command?

:hi:

But I know it's a dying skill.:hi:

My son barely was introduced to it in 3rd grade. On 'back to school night' (a meet the teacher thing), she had a scavenger hunt for the 4th grade where everything for the kids was written in cursive. She said that she believed that full immersion was best.

I questioned her sanity that night, but so far my son loves her class. They've been moving at a bit slower pace with some stuff, but the cursive reading is coming along fast, writing it is a bit slower.

because I've always preferred writing in cursive to printing.

To me, it just seems so much less labor intensive than printing. It flows, whereas printing feels (to me) rather choppy and disjointed.


Plus my printing is rather messy and can often be illegible.


I admire beautiful handwriting. To me, it's like Art.

Yeah...I'm strange...

:shrug:

drawings. But her handwriting is atrocious. We tell her she should have been a doctor because no body can understand it.

My handwriting is not particularly beautiful, but there's something about taking the time to handwrite a letter to a friend. It's time consuming but--in my opinion--far more personal than an email or typewritten letter.

That was the sign you were kinda grown up. I think we started in 2nd or 3rd grade. This was back in the dark ages... 1950's. I had awful time learning it and my handwriting even today sucks. I tend to print more than 'real write'

by any stretch of the imagination.

I was just commenting to my husband the other day when my daughter brought home her cursive homework that it was funny that they still teach it because none of us really use it in real life!

was taught to print. My handwriting when I was younger was absolutely beautiful. I still cringe at forms that say Please print.

Just read a Slate article about this not long ago. Really, I don't think the loss is huge, unless kids grow up completely unable to print or write in a legible hand. Cursive's only a means to an end anyway; do you know anyone who writes that after their formal handwriting classes end, outside of grade-school teachers? Everyone adopts a personal form of writing that connects some letters and not others, and usually omits all those goofy loops we were taught to make. And do you honestly know anyone who makes a capital Q the way they teach you to in cursive? You know, like a curly number 2?

its REAL WRITING TOO! lol

When I learned to write in cursive I believe it was in the 3rd grade. Apparently, they don't seem much interested in teaching this skill.

Oddly enough, I print if I want others to actually read what I write.

It's harder to read, and IMO, print looks better.

written in cursive before beginning the exam (some shit about cheating or something).

I discovered I had forgotten how to write cursive - barely finished the 50-ish words in like 10 minutes. :rofl:

whoops

Too hard to read.

I can pick up most official-style documents (land records, census, etc) from the 1800s through the early 1900s and read them without difficulty because there was a fairly universal style for them, at least in North America. When the styles branched out in the twentieth century that became increasingly problematic.

I print for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that sometimes I like to be able to read what it is I've written and that wasn't possible with the cursive writing skills I emerged with after years of training. I find printing much faster too and of course others can read it too. By the way, I got in the habit when I was in the Army, being taught to read code, where every character was printed and by the time you got any good at it the real problem was being able to write fast enough - thus printing rather than cursive script.

in my child's school. I've always heard cursive was faster, since you could connect the letters.

The kids are taught keyboarding beginning in 4th grade, which is about when cursive writing would normally be taught. I live in upstate NY, if that matters.

I love writing in cursive; it's so much faster than printing and cursive allows so much more individuality than printing. However, even kids in elementary school are turning in assignments typed and printed on PCs. JMO, but 50 years from now, I think cursive handwriting will only be taught in order to decipher historical documents.

or just as something interesting to learn to do, just like they still do with calligraphy now. Who needs calligraphy when thousands upon thousands of fonts are available for free? But people still do it for fun, and the books and materials are available in any craft shop.

The moment I wasn't require to use it in school, I dropped it like a bad habit.

I'll have to ask my nephew. I write cursive. It's sometimes too hard to read but print takes too long.

Thanks! Makes my calligraphy business all the more surefire for invitations, etc; when people *want* to read legible, attractive handwriting.

Maybe it's my Asperger's Syndrome talking, but I have great trouble reading even very "neat" cursive, simply too many curvy, complicated lines, it overwhelms me.

I wasn't thinking of Aspies when I wrote my (snarky) reply. You have a good point: there are many for whom reading a cursive hand is just not feasible. And for what it's worth, in ABA my child is learning block writing with no immediate plans to teach cursive; they want us to get him an iPhone and I understand why.

For me, my handwriting doesn't each approach the beautiful of calligraphy, but I know how special a gift it is for a friend to receive a letter handwritten--in my case with fountain pen--on nice paper. :hi:

We haven't taught handwriting for a good 10 years.

cursive wasn't actually taught until third grade, but if we could write legibly and conforming to the alphabet over the blackboard, we were allowed to use it in second

and not enough of it.

I've heard teachers say that the emphasis on keyboarding has left many young adults really incapable of communicating without one.

My kids learned it, but I cannot say for the rest of the schools around here but I think most still do.

have been so since I was probably in the 3rd grade. I love it. To me, it is way too labor intensive to write in print. When our physical hand writing system starts to die from disuse, then we have a real problem on our hands. I really cannot stand how so many people are so ready and willing to throw the printed word and physical handwriting to the wind. Everything we do know is by the computer or some other electronic device. And, yes, manual mechanical typewriters have been used for over a century too, but it did not completely replace the written word. My god, people don't even, when typing or texting or whatnot, even use full words anymore. People are way too dependent on computers. You know, any given day your computer can turn off and your cell phone battery can die. Are we going to be in a position decades into the future where people simply do not know how to write on a piece of paper. It is scary how computers have become the center of our lives and no longer the accessory to assist our lives.

I've lost most of my ability to write in cursive, aside from my signature.

The only time I write in Cursive other than personal use is my signature. I was taught how to write cursive through Denilian. I used cursive until I was in 11th grade. When my English teacher told me not to use cursive on test, because he couldn't read my cursive. So from then on I wrote print on tests. I have some fine motor skill issues, so my hand writing is kind of bad. It is frustrating, because if I want to write something that is some what presentable I have to write really slow. I don't think cursive is really necessary.

printing is supposed to be slower but most people print.

It was required for us secondary education majors at my college after too many complaints about how badly everyone wrote on the board. Interestingly enough, my kids have been taught the exact same style, so I can help them with their homework or at least commiserate with them.

and they are going over it again this year in the 3rd.

He'll probably have a hard time with it until I explain that his writing will flow faster.

Beautiful bursive writing is a dying art, I'm convinced. I'm pretty good with it when I take my time, but who has time to concentrate on handwriting?

still taught.

I hope not. What a waste of time that was. They ought to show you how to sign your name and that is it. All you'll ever need.

over time. For example, my grandfather(b. 1865)learned a style called Copperplate. When well done, it is beautiful.

Father(b. 1900)also learned Copperplate.

I started school in 1940 and began writing a style called the Palmer Method in about 3rd grade. Palmer is a very simple style.

All three generations learned to write in ink...at first with cheap dip pens(had built in inkwells in the desktops). You sorta felt grown up when you got your first fountain pen with a good nib in it.

Neither Copperplate nor Palmer can be decently written with ball point pens which made their first appearance about 1946. The early pens leaked more than cheap fountain pens.

In both Copperplate and Palmer, you had to choose your nib type which had to match your writing style. Students were strongly encouraged to develop attractive and legible handwriting. Many, but not all, did.

A well-written letter can communicate better than a quick email or text message. As can be seen from the above posts, we are losing the ability to communicate with each other.

Good writing, calligraphy if you prefer, is definitely an art form.

Typing is a great skill, and I'm a little proud of my WPM, but I would be more proud if I had excellent calligraphy.

However, it is a thoroughly useless endeavor that should not take up valuable school time. Just the reading and signature.... though that may require a similar amount of time to teach. I guess we still need signatures.

The thing that replaces cursive is not typing but printed writing.

and my cursive writing is perfect.

I like the way that it looks and am glad that I was taught the proper way to write.

When I went to middle school for the 6th grade it was mandatory school policy that every paper written has to be cursive. Then I went to elementary school/junior high system from 6th-9th and print was standard and cursive was usually never taught. At first it was hard to break the habit from going back to standard but I adjusted. High school all papers were standard writing and I last attended school in 2003. I can't imagine the policy changing at my local schools since.