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The necessity of cursive writing was brought home to me when I
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Friday, January 23, 2015
The Handwriting Debate
Today is National Handwriting Day and I thought it a good time to take a look at cursive handwriting. Did you realize this style or writing is dying a slow death, largely due to technology? Some argue that with the wide use of computers, pads, and cell phones cursive writing is no longer needed. They say that if young students learn manuscript or printing, so that reading comes easier, then that's enough. At some point in time, I might come to agree with them, but not yet.
We might get by with only signing our names in cursive, which doesn't even have to be legible, for the most part. Yet, I find myself using cursive writing every day, as I write in my faith journal. I have four large ring binders full already, and, although I could print them, that's much slower.
The necessity of cursive writing was brought home to me when I
enrolled in some traditional university classes for the first time in decades. In almost every class, I took a timed midterm and final
exam, which was either all writing or heavily so. If I had not known how to write in cursive, I would have been greatly hampered. I noticed that most of the students still took notes on paper, too. So, for now, I vote to teach cursive handwriting skills.
The necessity of cursive writing was brought home to me when I
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Handwriting matters; does cursive matter? The research is surprising. For instance, we've learned that legible cursive writing averages no faster than printed handwriting of equal or greater legibility. (Sources for all research are available on request.)
ReplyDeleteIt turns out that the fastest, clearest handwriters avoid cursive — though they are not absolute print-writers either. Highest speed and highest legibility in handwriting belong to those who join only some letters, not all: joining only the most easily joined letter-combinations, leaving the rest unjoined, using print-like forms of letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree.
Reading cursive still matters — but simply reading cursive is much easier and quicker to master than writing the same way too. Reading cursive can be taught in 30 to 60 minutes, even to five- or six-year-olds (once they read print. (There's even a free iPad app teaching how —called “Read Cursive.”)
Teaching material for a more practical, fluent handwriting abounds: notably in the UK and Europe, where such handwriting is taught at least as often as the accident-prone cursive which is venerated in North America.
Examples, in several cases with student work also shown: http://www.BFHhandwriting.com, http://www.handwritingsuccess.com, http://www.briem.net, http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com, http://www.italic-handwriting.org, http://www.studioarts.net/calligraphy/italic/curriculum.html
Educated adults are quitting cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers across North America were surveyed at a conference run by Zaner-Bloser, a cursive textbook publisher. Only 37% wrote in cursive; another 8% printed. The majority — 55% — wrote with some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive.
When even most handwriting teachers do not themselves use cursive, why revere it?
Thank you for your comment. There are definitely two sides to the issue.
DeleteIf you wish to take part in a current, ongoing poll of handwriting forms — not hosted by a publisher, not restricted to teachers — visit poll.fm/4zac4 for the One-Question Handwriting Survey. As with the Zaner-Bloser survey, results so far show very few purely cursive handwriters — and even fewer purely printed writers. Most handwriting in the real world consists of print-like letters with occasional joins.
ReplyDelete(Some teachers of cursive tell me that, because of the occasional student who finds the survey results on the prevalence of non-cursive fluent handwriting — or the research results on its speed and legibility — as teachers they choose to redouble their efforts to inform students that cursive is fastest and that it is universally employed. Given the facts, this is like informing students that our president is Richard Nixon.)
So far, whenever a devotee of cursive has claimed research support, the following has become evident when others examine the claim:
/1/ either the claim cites no source,
or
/2/ if a source is cited, and anyone checks it out, the source turns out to have been misquoted or incorrectly paraphrased by the person citing it
or
/3/ the claimant cites a source which itself indulges in either /1/ or /2/.
Cursive devotees' misrepresentation of research has substantial consequences; the misrepresentations are commonly made — under oath — in testimony before school districts, state legislatures, and other bodies voting on educational measures.
Cursive mandate bills are, without exception so far, introduced by legislators or other spokespersons whose misrepresentations (in their own testimony) are later revealed — although investigative reporting of the questionable testimony does not always prevent the bill from passing into law, even when the discoveries include signs of undue influence on the legislators promoting the cursive bill?
(Documentation on request: I am glad to be interviewed by anyone interested in bringing this serious issue before the public.)
By now, you wonder about signatures.
Will our signatures still be legally valid if written in any other way?
Brace yourself: in state and federal law, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind. (Hard to believe? Ask any attorney!)
Questioned document examiners (specialists in identifying signatures, verifying documents, etc.) tell me that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest. Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls: the rest, if they follow the rules of cursive at all, are fairly complicated — making a forger's life easy.
All handwriting, not just cursive, is individual — just as all handwriting involves fine motor skills. That is why any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from the print-writing on unsigned work) which of 25 or 30 students produced it.
Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.
Kate Gladstone
DIRECTOR, the World Handwriting Contest
CEO, Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
handwritingrepair@gmail.com
From personal experience and as an elementary teacher with a Master's degree in the teaching of reading, I don't quite agree with you on all points, but I do agree on some. It is certainly an interesting subject. Thank you for taking the time to comment.
ReplyDelete