I may be stepping on a lot of toes with this question. But, I need help thinking through this.

What is the purpose of making an upper grammar (and above) student write their assignments in cursive?

My background is that it is absolutely necessary. My dad was a teacher for almost 40 years. He insists that kids 3rd grade and above write all assignments in cursive. This is the way I was raised and I've taken it as a given. (It also came easy to me and I always had nice penmanship.)

Now, my gr5 ds fights it tooth and nail. He has very nice writing; he just prefers to print.

My husband claims that he never uses cursive except to sign his name. (You'd never know it to read his signature. I'm sure he spent hours as a teenager crafting his illegible, but consistent signature. )

Now that I'm being challenged, I'm at a loss to the purpose of it. I think all kids should know how to read it. That seems like a given since you never know when someone's going to hand you something written in cursive. But, why should they write in cursive?

Thanks for your input, in advance.

Jagfish,

HA! I am with you on this one! I've always seen the need to be able to at least READ cursive, but I have been unable to find a really solid reason for insisting that my children use it daily.

For a couple of years, I thought that notetaking would be a great reason for cursive and perhaps it is. It certainly can be faster than printing. I thought it interesting, though, that the local junior college now offers many lectures as podcasts...do you think that furious notetaking in Economics 101 may be a thing of the past?

It will be great to read how others approach penmanship.

Have a pleasant day,

Jean

I'm with you on this one too. Both my kids learned to write cursive at a young age but I never make them write it. I use my own mix of printing cursive, but more than anything I use the computer. That is a much more useful skill.

As long as they can read cards from their grandparents (the only cursive they see), I have many more things for them to learn!

Cursive writing is often faster, once you get good at it. I think it would certainly be a reasonable choice to require kids to work at it for a while (in order to let them develop their speed at it), but at some point (high school maybe) to stop requiring a particular method. It's much easier to learn a new method of writing at age 8 than age 18, if you later discover that you need a faster method.

One thing to add to this discussion is that for kids with dyslexic tendencies, cursive writing is much, much easier than printing. I know this isn't the case with the people who have posted so far, but I figured that others might read it, and I just wanted to get this in there. The reason I'm sensitive about this is that when my own daughter was 8, her printing was so poor that I decided not to teach her cursive until her pencil control improved. She was well into the fourth grade when I decided it might never happen, and I tried cursive instead. What a difference!

Beth

Thanks for all your input. Beth, I particularly appreciate the comment about dsylexia. I've been doing some research, and while I can't site specific studies, the sites I've visited have talked about how cursive writing uses both sides of the brain at the same time which is a valuable and transferable skill to other activities. Many of the brain research sites talked about benefits of cursive. It can be faster than printing as well as good for eye-hand coordination. Samuel Blumenthal (and a host of others) recommend that as kindergarten writing instruction rather than printing.

All that to say, I'm thinking that it is valuable for specific reasons other than tradition. But, I'm certainly not pushing it on anyone else.

Anybody else want to chime in? THanks again!

Thanks for this post. I fought with my now 19 yo son all the way through school. He had beautiful cursive penmanship in 4th grade, but hated it and always wanted to do his papers in manuscript. Now, having finished his freshman year in college he claims to be able to print faster than write cursive and takes all his lecture notes printing. He is a math major and types papers he has for core classes on the computer. My 17 yo daughter is very artistic and doesn't mind cursive. My 6th grade daughter literally cries when I tell her a paper has to be in cursive. She is more math/science oriented. Does that make a difference?

For what it's worth I used Blumental's AlphaPhonics to teach my children to read but always disagreed with him on the cursive only issue. Especially with so much computer stuff now it's important to be able to print legibly so that the scanners can read it.

Oooo...almost thirty years later, I can still feel my blood boil as I read this thread! I just hated writing in cursive, and the day the teachers no longer required it, I went back to print. But, my writing has morphed into something more italic-y as I've matured and needed something faster. Funny--I'm a math-science type.

I really fell in love with the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting series. It seems like a good compromise. Anybody else using it?

Here's a little irony: After committing to myself that I would never MAKE a child learn cursive, my ds started NAGGING me to teach him cursive. Go figure.

When I look at old school papers that I wrote, I can see that I needed to care more about presentation. The content was always good, but my papers were MESSY--and so was my handwriting. I wonder if my aversion to learning cursive was all tied into my lack of appreciation for an attractive presentation.

Just some thoughts.

Peace--
Julie in AZ

quote:

I really fell in love with the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting series. It seems like a good compromise. Anybody else using it?

After "battling" for 3 years over cursive, I found the Getty-Dubay Italic series. It is wonderful. The kids enjoy it and I have seen great improvement in their skills. They actually practice without being nagged.

I love Getty-Dubay, and actually made something of an effort to switch over to their system myself. (I gave it up, though - too hard to change at this point!) But my kids didn't do well with it, especially my dyslexic daughter, who only responded well to old-fashioned, connect-every-letter cursive. That kept her fingers moving and she never had to ask herself, "Where do I put my pencil down?" - a question which really seemed to throw her. When printing, she would make the same letter in a different way every time she wrote it, but cursive made sense to her and she learned to make the letters more of a set of muscle reactions than trying to figure out where to start each time.

Nothing works for everyone!

Beth

This is funny, Beth. I DID switch over to Italic. I figured if I was going to teach my kids to do it, I was going to have to know how myself. Last week, my oldest (13yo) was in the kitchen making something from a recipe card that I had written off one of my mom's before I got married. My handwriting then was quite difficult to read, and his comment was, "Who wrote this? I can't read it at all!" When I told him I did, he couldn't hardly believe me because my handwriting looks nothing like that now!

My two older boys still prefer printing. It will be interesting to see how the next four do. I do think Italic cursive is easier to learn than traditional, simply because you don't have to learn new letter forms. But I decided I have bigger battles to fight than whether they write in cursive or not!

That's just our family, though!
Michelle

I, also, have heard that cursive uses both sides of the brain and thus, helps encourage integration of thought and higher level thinking. I have also heard that correct pencil grip does the same. (Something about the index finger being that one that should be contrilling the pencil because of nerve connections to the brain.) My son also had terrible handwriting in print and improved greatly with cursive writing. After learning cursive, his printing improved as well. My daughter, who has shown some signs of dyslexia, has been interested in cursive and I believe I will teach it to her this year (2nd grade) because of some of these issues.

What do I use?? A mixture of both, as many others have said!!

I taught my older son the Cursive Italic system and loved it so much I changed my handwriting then as well. I now regularly get comments on how beautiful my handwriting is! I think I am more an art-sy type since I used to spend hours as a young girl practing my handwriting to perfect a particular loop or whatever! LOL For me it was a very simple switch to the Cursive Italic system, to which I have added a small swirl every now and then! My little one is begging to learn cursive and is even attempting it all on his own without any instruction! I guess I should break down and buy him the book! DH and I discussed it and he thought it would be best for us to start out with the basic cursive writing. That we could switch over to the Cursive Italic later if we wanted to.
Blessings,
~Evelyn Mae

I would be so interested in talking with any of you about your experiences with a dyslexic child, especially using a Classical based curriculum. My daughter is moderately dyslexic. I completely agree with the teaching of cursive for the dyslexic child, not Getty-Dubay b/c letter reversals are too easy. I would be interested in finding what sources are working for you in math, as well as spelling. My daughter has inconsistencies (inherent in dyslexia) in mathematics and getting her thoughts to paper is such a challenge. Any suggestions?

Research shows that the fastest and clearest handwriters join only some letters instead of joining them all. They make only the very easiest joins, skipping the rest -- also, they use print-like (rather than cursive) shapes for those letters which notably differ between printing and cursive.

For handwriting resources fitting those requirements, visit http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com and follow its links.