Jessica Bennett: We should stop making kids learn cursive writing
... The folks who want to make us script conscripts have formulated all sorts of rationalizations. Chief among them: education. Some studies have shown a link between good handwriting and improved academic performance. A recent one found that the majority of primary-school teachers believe that students with fluent handwriting produce better work, though it seems just as likely that the teachers might "believe" that because legible handwriting makes their jobs easier. And you could just as easily argue that cursive can be a disincentive to learning for Q-phobic kids like me (though even I believe kids should still learn block lettering). That was the case for Anne Trubek's 9-year-old son, who struggled so much with penmanship that he now hates writing altogether. "His school's policy is that you must learn cursive because you need to learn how to write and read it," says Trubek, who is a professor of English at Oberlin College. "I understand that you need to know how to write, but I think cursive could really just go." Teachers seem to think so, too. Penmanship was once taught for close to an hour each day; it now warrants less than 15 minutes, according to a 2007 study. Keyboarding has replaced cursive as the priority in most schools, and most kids don't use it when they have the chance: in 2006, just 15 percent of SAT takers used cursive on the written test.
Then there's the history argument: if we can't read script, we'll lose a link to our past. How will we study the Declaration of Independence, or make sense of letters from the Civil War? Will we no longer be able to translate the diaries of our ancestors? They're valid concerns, except that no ordinary person is hitting up the original text of the Declaration anyway. And if reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" in translation is good enough for most every student in America, what's so wrong with a pocket-size transcription of the Founding Fathers' words? Sure, handwriting can be a form of individual expression; if there were no cursive, John Hancock would be just another name on a legal document. Yet if Princess Diana—who was accepted into secondary school on the strength of her penmanship—were alive today, she'd probably be typing in a lovely custom font.
If you think about it, penmanship has been edging toward oblivion for years. Between the printing press, the typewriter and now, of course, the computer, it's a "historical blip," as Trubek puts it, among writing technologies. By the 1890s, even Henry James was dictating his novels to a secretary. The fact is, the push to save cursive isn't so much historical or educational as it is emotional. Which means there's a reason people such as Florey are worrying about handwriting's disappearance right now. As historian Tamara Plakins Thornton, the author of "Handwriting in America," explains it, penmanship represents a simpler, prettier way of life—slower and more personal, much like the handwritten note. In times of particular anxiety—war, recession, change—we tend to cling to these simplicities of the past as a way to maintain order over the present. So if loops and swirls make you feel better, be my guest. In fact, go buy a fountain pen. The economy needs all the help it can get.
Read entire article at Newsweek
Then there's the history argument: if we can't read script, we'll lose a link to our past. How will we study the Declaration of Independence, or make sense of letters from the Civil War? Will we no longer be able to translate the diaries of our ancestors? They're valid concerns, except that no ordinary person is hitting up the original text of the Declaration anyway. And if reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" in translation is good enough for most every student in America, what's so wrong with a pocket-size transcription of the Founding Fathers' words? Sure, handwriting can be a form of individual expression; if there were no cursive, John Hancock would be just another name on a legal document. Yet if Princess Diana—who was accepted into secondary school on the strength of her penmanship—were alive today, she'd probably be typing in a lovely custom font.
If you think about it, penmanship has been edging toward oblivion for years. Between the printing press, the typewriter and now, of course, the computer, it's a "historical blip," as Trubek puts it, among writing technologies. By the 1890s, even Henry James was dictating his novels to a secretary. The fact is, the push to save cursive isn't so much historical or educational as it is emotional. Which means there's a reason people such as Florey are worrying about handwriting's disappearance right now. As historian Tamara Plakins Thornton, the author of "Handwriting in America," explains it, penmanship represents a simpler, prettier way of life—slower and more personal, much like the handwritten note. In times of particular anxiety—war, recession, change—we tend to cling to these simplicities of the past as a way to maintain order over the present. So if loops and swirls make you feel better, be my guest. In fact, go buy a fountain pen. The economy needs all the help it can get.