Cursive Instruction in the USA - A Review Article

[Chemyst]

ICYMI, Emily Rueb has a nice summary of recent legislative attempts to re-introduce cursive instruction in the USA, the junk science used to promote it and how it’s become a dogwhistle for aged Conservatives.

🖋 📜 🇺🇸

[Deb]

Threw away all my pens, went back to the keyboard.

[VertOlive]

Don't care about the "science", as an Aged Conservative I taught it to my son in 3rd grade homeschool because it is beautiful and I'd like him to be able to read old original documents (or my letters to him) if he has a mind to do so.

[adhoc]

I always considered cursive a part of general education. Like swimming.

[amk]

Judging by what I see around me, 50% of people will learn to write nicely, and 50% will end up with blots and chickenscratch, whether you teach cursive or not.

[although]

I took two classes in celestial navigation (how to use a sextant) when I was in college, back during the dawn of the GPS era. I found it to be a fascinating subject that tied astronomy and math to real world problem solving. To this day, I'm glad that I took those classes. But, I wouldn't suggest that this should be a required subject for public schools. It's just not a skill that a freshly minted graduate is going to need make a strong start as they leave the nest and step into the jungle.

I would like to see public schools focus more on real world skills, like money management, basic mechanical, plumbing, and electrical knowledge. Nutrition, health, and cooking. How to get and keep a job, do taxes, deal with landlords, bankers, and manage the shell game which comprises our healthcare system (for Americans anyway).

I'm not saying that we shouldn't require study in science theory, arts, history, and literature. But, that those subjects shouldn't eclipse the teaching of hands-on skills that we need to function in modern society.

I hear that Germany has a pretty good balance (between art/science/skills) in their public school curriculum.

It makes me sad to see our elected leaders using our school system as a forum for their political machinations.

[AzJon]

I took two classes in celestial navigation (how to use a sextant) when I was in college, back during the dawn of the GPS era. I found it to be a fascinating subject that tied astronomy and math to real world problem solving. To this day, I'm glad that I took those classes. But, I wouldn't suggest that this should be a required subject for public schools. It's just not a skill that a freshly minted graduate is going to need make a strong start as they leave the nest and step into the jungle.

I would like to see public schools focus more on real world skills, like money management, basic mechanical, plumbing, and electrical knowledge. Nutrition, health, and cooking. How to get and keep a job, do taxes, deal with landlords, bankers, and manage the shell game which comprises our healthcare system (for Americans anyway).

I'm not saying that we shouldn't require study in science theory, arts, history, and literature. But, that those subjects shouldn't eclipse the teaching of hands-on skills that we need to function in modern society.

I hear that Germany has a pretty good balance (between art/science/skills) in their public school curriculum.

It makes me sad to see our elected leaders using our school system as a forum for their political machinations.

I, too, have taken classes that were probably not neccesarry, but were interesting and I would happily take them again.

I would argue to the contrary: we need more required philosophy, rhetoric, literature, and history with an emphasis on reading literacy and comprehension. There are plenty of folks that can read, but fewer that are particularly good at it. There are certain hands-on things that are going to the way side partially due to corporations and powers that be forcing our hands. I took an intro to mechanics shop where we learned about how to do our own oil changes, tire rotations, tear down and rebuild lawn-mower engines, etc. and, I have to say, most modern cars are not built to be worked on at home by your average weekend warrior. The tight spaces and computer resets make working on newer cars a pain in the butt, but I digress.

Need to deal with a landlord? You had better have rhetoric skills (which comes from reading broader literature) and a working knowledge of your rights and the law (even broader reading skills). Even then, a particularly petty landlord can just wait until your lease is up and give you the boot.

Do your taxes? At this point, my taxes are complex enough that I would rather just pay someone else to do it (hooray supporting specialized trades!) and for most, doing taxes is not hard and largely has online resources for step-by-step instructions.

Lets not even get into medical stuff (USA). I'm in medicine and get the run-around even when I know how to advocate for myself (hint: reading comprehension and skill in rhetoric comes up once again!).

I had an apartment that barred me from doing any plumbing work that wasn't using a plunger. I had to clear a water filter with the property manager and had to have their guy come and install it. yeah, it was a tube and some screws, but I wasn't allowed to touch a thing.

Nutrition? Eat more fruit and vegetables than meat and never eat until you are stuffed. This sums up 90% of what we "know" about diet and nutrition. The rest is clever marketing and specialized diets for disease management.

I spent half a year in German high-school and two years in German University, there was a remarkable emphasis on the arts: music, art, literature, and language learning as well as required basic sciences, even for those going into trade schools. To my recollection, there were no "life skills" classes in terms of home repair.

As an aside, and more related to the original article: I had a teacher in the 5th grade that required everything to be in cursive because my life would depend so heavily on it. I hated it. In fact, I disliked it so much that as soon as it wasn't required, I went back to print and spent the next nearly 20 years using only print. I relearned my cursive, which I am glad for, but still find that I broadly need to use print if I want to guarantee that whoever needs to be able to read it can. I think it is useful to be taught, if for no other reason than it makes taking hand-written notes easier, but I understand its phasing out, sad as that is.

[arrow]

I don't mind longhand, upright or cursive (I'm not sure if I use the terms correctly). We can be pretty sure learning something like a modified spencerian or english roundhand comes with benefits. When a person sits down just a few minutes a day and practise their writing it coordinates and finetunes alot of connections between eyes, hands, finger, brain and nerves. It's something that needs to be done in a different setting than keyboard and led-screens. Having an alternative to led screens and wifis is probably much more serious than we think. I guess the first writing we learn is a form of modified new-times-roman, and again it's based on renaissance derived carolingian minuscules. The fluent writing styles done to a large degree in one continuos stroke is nice, it's just one step up from the minimal basics. As the decades go by, many of us needs to clean- and firm-up our strokes to maintain a neat writing, regardless of style. We don't need to come up with so called junk-science to justify it, a lot of this has been prooven many times over. Who can be against knowlege about writing as a part of the education?

[Deb]

I agree with the above. My writing wasn't especially good in school but I worked on it later. I write a lot every day and I couldn't possibly maintain the writing speed I do with any style other than a flowing cursive.