Cursive Writing

I'm not a homeschooler BUT I do see the value of using the hand for something other than gadgets, which is where the world is heading.

My kids were both taught cursive in 3rd grade, and now 2 and 5 years later they've not had to use it for a single thing. Which creates an issue when DD has to sign a document. Printing is not signing. Sorry. When she was treasurer for a club, she had to sign checks. It was like pulling teeth.

As an employer in the financial world, I will not hire anyone that cannot read cursive. Yes, I've had to start testing for this. If you can't read cursive, then you can't read 90% of the checks coming across our desks. And you can't sign a contract or a check on behalf of the company. Most the institutions we work with will not take a printed 'signature' because they are too easy to forge.

An employee who cannot read cursive is also useless in an HR department where employee reviews are hand written. In our company, since most supervisors are older and were taught cursive and still use it because it's more efficient, it's still being used. We need our HR clerks to be able to read what they are writing.

One final thought - LuckyMom wondered if cursive will become the Latin language of our generation? I think one year of Latin should be a requirement for all public school children. Those who don't understand why should look into it. Its akin to studying calculus without a good geometry foundation.

I read an article about it in today's paper. Never thought about the author's point that its more important they have good keyboard skills than good handwriting. Its a different world.

Working in the schools, the girls look forward to learning cursive and the boys struggle. Typically its taught then forgotten. Even the teachers print most of the time.

My 9th grade daughter went to take PSAT tests at her high school. Part required cursive writing. The moderator had to write the alphabet in cursive on the board. Only the home schooled kids knew it.

I wonder if cursive will become the Latin language of our generation? A dying art.

My 5th grader never learned cursive in school, so I taught her at home. My 3rd grader's teacher is somewhat "old-school" and she does teach cursive. I think it's important to be able to write in cursive. Even in the computer-driven era we live in today, there are times when you need to write items by hand, and it's important that it's legible. For instance, we all have to write thank-you notes, condolence letters, notes to our children's teachers. Isn't it better to write in legible, proper penmanship than to scrawl something in printing? I think it is.

it is taught in 2nd grade ONLY in Fairfax County. then it is dropped.

Do we work on it at home? HECK YEAH!!! They are GOING to have to learn how to sign their names on contracts, so we work on it at home.

My seven year old has been copying my cursive for a couple of years. He's been told only twice to NOT do this. I don't discourage any form of learning he does. I also don't let educators tell me what my son cannot learn.

I went into the school and asked them if they could read his handwriting. When they said they could, and sometimes better than his printed word, I told them they needed to leave it be.
Upon discussion of that style no longer being taught, I restated my position, and backed it up with a letter to the principal, and carbon copied to the superintendent. My mother taught me to read and write while she was learning it herself, so I wrote in cursive since five. I believe individuality should be embraced, not lesson-planned out of existence.

It's going to be rather interesting to see how handwriting experts view this a few years down the road.
FACT: It's harder to forge cursive than print. There are some documents that cannot be keyboard-signed, so unique writing is more to your advantage.

Just my 2cp.

Personally, I do value cursive writing. Think about it - writing is one of the skills that sets us apart from all the other creatures here on earth - we are able to freeze our language in place and preserve our thoughts for someone else to read tomorrow or 300 years from now. And writing by hand is a useful skill even in today's world - you will not always have an electronic device charged and available to type on. And the reason why cursive in particular is valuable is that once one has learned to use it it is much faster and easier on the hand than printing.

I do teach it to my homeschooled children, but the cursive they're learning is not the elegant but difficult version I learned as a child. We use the Handwriting Without Tears program, which was developed by a pair of OTs. It is essentially joined lettering - streamlined, unslanted, not hugely different from print, simply faster and more efficient. My daughter, who has fine motor delays, was able to learn cursive this way and to make it work for her. Now that she is older, she has added slant on her own and has copied me to learn a few flourishes that make her handwriting pretty and more individual without messing with readability. My son is just beginning to learn cursive. He likes it because it's "grown-up" writing.

Being able to read cursive is important, too. Kids who never study how to write cursive often struggle to read cursive.

Another reason I value cursive is that drafting a piece of writing on a keyboard with a screen and on paper with a pen just aren't the same. In my pre-child life I taught college composition, and I noticed that my students who hand wrote their first drafts tended to turn in drafts that had better flow and continuity. Computer drafts often look neater, but the student is producing the writing one screen at a time, and their first drafts often read that way. My computer drafters could still achieve good flow with revision, but my paper drafters tended to have better flow from the beginning. Computer drafting IS faster, though. I want my kids to feel comfortable working both ways.

Finally, while we live in the age of the emailed thank you note and evites, there is something special about a handwritten invitation, thank you or sympathy card. I want my kids to be comfortable enough with handwriting to be able to use it socially if they choose.

Our school still teaches it AND they receive a handwriting grade.
I'm happy to know my kid can write out a thank you note, card or letter to someone. Seriously, I can't imagine NOT doing cursive if you homeschool!

I think cursive writing is important because it's faster. In high school and especially college, the kids are going to have to take some notes. Much faster to do so in cursive. I also agree, though, that PE is important as well. The kids how so much they have to learn now - it goes much faster than when I was in school. I think lengthening our school days around here by about 1/2 hour would provide enough extra time so they could do both, cursive writing and PE. I'm sure that won't happen, but it would be good for the kids.

Yes, cursive is important. In addition to the things others have mentioned, the majority of historical documents are written in cursive. In studying history, it is essential to be able to read primary sources including letters, journals, contracts and other legal documents. People who do not know how to write cursive typically don't know how to read it either. Do you want your children to be incapable of studying those things for themselves?

I've done some volunteer work recently indexing old records that include military draft cards, ships' passenger manifests, and marriage records dating as far back as the 1700's. The information was hard to read anyway due to the age, but without a knowledge of cursive writing, it might as well have been a foreign language or just an ink smear on the pages. And while not everyone may value this kind of information, for those who work on their family history, these kinds of records are extremely important.

As for the relation of homeschooling to teaching things like cursive, it was actually the very first thing I taught when I started teaching my kids last summer. It had nothing to do with how they performed for me versus a "professional" but about how it was packaged for them. It wasn't just busy work, and they enjoyed it (especially my oldest, because he felt like he was learning the secret adult language that he had not been able to read previously.)

I don't see the value in spending much time in school on practicing cursive. Fine motor skills can be learned in art class and in other ways. I'd rather they learn how to keyboard (type) correctly, which is by feel, not two fingered hunt and pecking. But, even keyboarding will be old and slow soon. Voice recognition and other technologies will make keyboarding old, eventually.

Electronic signatures are replacing hand-written ones.

My daughter gets a 15 minute recess per day and gym class once every 4 days. This is NOT enough physical activity in her school day. We do what we can to keep her active outside of school.

I do see value in learning cursive, such as hand eye coordination, fine motor strength, concentration and focus.
But honestly it's just not that important to me. I'd rather the teacher focus on strengthening basic reading,writing and math skills. I also think science, music, art and PE should be given priority over handwriting.
Teaching strong WRITING skills (structure, grammar and spelling) is where our focus should be. I'd rather read a coherent and thoughtful piece typed on a computer than a pretty piece of handwriting that's hard to read and full of errors!

It annoys me that schools are eliminating cursive writing. I frankly do not see the point. I will teach my daughters myself if need be.

I am in Canada. My kids start cursive writing in grade four. I do think they need to learn it, so that they will at least be able to read it. (I know my ten year old couldn't read cursive until it was taught in school.) We also have 40 minutes of gym class a day, a 15 minute recess in the morning and afternoon and 40 minute recess after lunch, as well as an excellent music and arts program.

My son learned cursive in 2nd grade. He is an artistic child by nature so it comes easily for him. His cursive is better than mine! I can see why some don't value it , but I do. I think it's important. Especially later when you need to sign your name , not print it.

So, yes, it's important to learn.

My kids learned it in second grade and it's a lot easier to read than their printing most of the time.

I think it is important to have nice penmanship and cursive is just more grown up than printing.

Cursive is a dying art! I actually had a part-time job where I was PAID to write cards & envelopes in cursive for mass mailings. People are more likely to open "junk mail" if it's hand-written with a real stamp. I made pretty good $ doing this -- but had to take a penmanship test before I got the job, and not many people passed the test.

I graduated in 1985 and penmanship was very important when I was in school - of course we didn't do our homework on computers either.

My son is in 6th grade, and he has not learned cursive, daughter is in 2nd and hasn't learned it either. I've requested that both kids get workbooks so they can practice on their own. The school provided them happily, and I'm helping them at home.

My oldest child has had a little cursive instruction in school, but luckily not much! I think teaching cursive writing is a waste of time. It is useful to know how to write a nice signature, but that is it, there is just no good reason for cursive writing.

Wow, I am really surprised at how many people believe that cursive writing is a useful skill, I never would have guessed! I still think it isn't important, but to each his own.

My 9 yo has been learning cursive and is AWESOME at it! I think there is more to learning a skill than simply learning the skill. It is the patience and the way it expands your mind and your "how-to-it" to get it done and learn something new, something outside your comfort zone. It also has a stamp of "big kid" on it. When I learned to write cursive I felt big and somewhat important.
I also believe there is value in taking your time to do something correct and legible. I am so pleased that my son is learning cursive and taking his time to do it right. Working hard at it and relishing in his accomplishments of learning a new skill:)

From someone who had my papers up on the board as an example of 'perfect' penmanship I value cursive but on the other hand most people don't write at all anymore or spell when they text. So do we throw out spelling too? Just do little symbols, or what? I am for keeping things done well. I don't care if they change because it does change but it should be done well. What's wrong with learning cursive and how long does it take to teach it? Not long. I home schooled some of my kids and they did do well on the whole, especially the younger ones. They did perform well and I taught the last 3 to read and they are very good readers to this day. I think one value of home school is teaching your values plus you know what they learn and they aren't lost in the class if they missed it, they can go at a rate where they learn something and if it takes less time move on and do something else. You aren't waiting on others or passed over either way. So in many ways they perform better if you are disciplined and organized yourself.

quick thoughts as my daughter loves practicing cursive and some moms and I were talking about it. I think her teacher isn't really strict about it and that makes sense bc some of the traditional cursive letters look odd to me but we all concluded it's good to learn bc it's faster than printing! At this point, we all write kind of hybrid but when i go to print, it's way slower. So I see the point in it for efficiency reasons.

My first thought when I heard that cursive was being removed from the schooling system was, "Are you f-ing kidding me?!" In 6th grade we had an assignment called 'The Stone Frog'. It was a poem that we had to re-write in cursive, but we had to rewrite it perfectly (In pen)! My teacher actually sat there with a magnifying glass and if the ink went just the teeniest bit below the line, we had to start over. It was an assignment that took 3 weeks on average. So basically we had to go through that torture for nothing!

Cursive isn't that hard and doesn't take that much time to master at a young age, so I don't see why it needs to be eliminated from the curriculum. But they are doing it, nonetheless.

Maybe it isn't all that necessary these days, but it still comes in useful sometimes, when there isn't access to a keyboard.

I don't know, things are going to change, whether I agree with them or not.

I wouldn't want school to focus much on cursive writing. Let's face it, our little ones will write very little in the future. They will be typing!

My older kids can barely read it, I only write in cursive so when writing to them I have to print...and it's a pain for me.

I homeschool, and cursive is part of our curriculum but not something I overly focus on. My dd is learning cause she wants to (8). My son has no interest and his printing still needs work (11) which is where we focus. I've only been homeschooling for 2 years though.

No where does it say a signature needs to be cursive, it just needs to be unique to that person.

cursive writing creates your signature own identity print anyone can print neatly or sloppy

It doesn't bother me that any schools are eliminating cursive. No one from my generation or my kids generation uses proper cursive anymore. I don't know anyone younger than my 60 year old parents that use the same cursive that we had to spend so much time on. I do think handwriting classes are important and in time, each child will more than likely develop a signature of some kind. Mine is almost identical to my printed name, just connecting the letters. Nothing formal about it but it is a legal signature.

I like cursive writing so I hate to see it disappear. My dd wants to learn it so bad. She is in kindergarten. I told her if it's eliminated I will teach her how to write in cursive. I also wondered about signatures. But I guess with so many forms that are on line using signatures will probably be eliminated.

Either way the decision about whether it is used or not should be made across the board in a district. Right now it is mandatory in ours for second grade and then left up to the teachers if they require it or not. So a kid might go 2 years not using it and then in fifth grade the teacher will make him use it.

My son 1 is terrible at printing (and hates doing it). But he's fairly neat with (and excited about) cursive, so personally, I hope it stays around!