(no subject)

[zaichikarky]

This comes from a facebook discussion I had this weekend.

As some of you might know, cursive is becoming a dying art. It has been, for the last decade or more, optional to teach it in schools. Most elementary school teachers are not comfortable teaching it to children because they lack the skills themselves.

I'm an archivist, which means that I NEED to know how to read cursive for my job. Historians also must learn it. However, I have never been a fan of it and am overall quite pleased that it's dying out. Arguments in support of it have been the following:

It teaches children to be patient, it teaches children coordination and proper penmanship, and it is faster once you are proficient. However, I think it's safe to assume that the person who argued in favor of it hasn't taught children penmanship before. I have, to 6 year olds who are first learning how to write. Just teaching penmanship and writing in general accomplishes all of this. When I taught kids how to write, some of them (usually the girls) were more talented and accomplished with their writing. The young boys tended to be more impatient and sloppy. It was important to teach the boys that they needed to learn to take their time and learn the letters properly.

As for the quicker part, yeah that's probably true, however is that really a good thing? Once you write faster and faster, your writing becomes more and more illegible. This is the biggest problem I have with cursive. It is a pain in the ass to read! Especially when someone was writing naturally. Short hand simply does NOT have that same problem. Even if someone is a sloppy writer, their writing is generally comprehensible, especially if they know someone else needs to read their handwriting. I can't say the same with cursive.

Some people are disappointed that it's becoming quickly archaic, but I don't anticipate it ever making a comeback.

[Poll #2051437]

Comments

[phenomenal.livejournal.com]

I actually hate cursive too, but I still think it's important to know how to read it.

[tanyareed.livejournal.com]

I don't think we're ever going to agree on this one. I'm one of cursive's biggest fans. I do all of my story writing in cursive. That's the way I think, and that's how my brain works. I can write cursive as fast as most people can type (I know this because my friend and I used to have word wards during nanowrimo), and I normally don't have any problems reading cursive. I like how it's individual to each person, and I like how quickly it allows me to create. I'm really sad that it's dying out.

[oxymoron67.livejournal.com]

My cursive is awful, and I acknowledge that it is important in certain circumstances, but I generally don't care.

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

My cursive looks like chicken scratch XD

[secondmezzanine.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed reading this because I'm usually on the side of "They should continue teaching it!" but really, when I think about it, why? I don't even really enjoy reading it. One of my coworkers always writes all her reviews in cursive and I find it tedious to read. More and more we just type everything, and I think we can safely say that learning to actually write isn't in danger of dying out, so...? Good post!

[majesticzaichik.livejournal.com]

You know, that was something I have been thinking about too. Whether in 50 years there will be some new fancier technology which will render the pen/cil and paper obsolete so they might not even want to teach writing in schools anymore. I think it will happen eventually... maybe even in our lifetime : ).

[giallarhorn.livejournal.com]

I had to learn it in elementary school, and holy shit that was painful. Like, my penmanship still isn't that great but as a kid, it was awful.

Plus, reading it? Especially when people start using short hand and abbreviations for things? That's hard enough to read in print, but when someone has a note that goes LONNC and writes that in cursive, yeah.

[ellakite.livejournal.com]

I'm not voting, because my position isn't represented among the choices listed:

I *HATED* my cursive exercises in my youth, but that's because my hands shake slightly. Thus, my handwriting has always looked ugly, no matter how much I practiced. I would practice my cursive script for an hour or more each day, getting horrific hand cramps in the process... and would see absolutely no improvement despite my efforts.

So: I have always hated the act of writing cursive script, and thus I am biased against it. That being said, I will be the first to admit that these days schoolchildren are not encouraged to practice artistic expression anywhere near as much as they did when I was in school... and I consider truly fine cursive script to be a form of art. So while my personal experience with it was very bad, I still would say that it should still be taught in school, at least at a most basic level.

[eicnan.livejournal.com]

I always think about things in meetings that are important enough to merit writing them down. How do you write fast enough if you don't know cursive. One could argue you could type it faster if you used a laptop instead but the brain retains better if you write it.

[ccangel42.livejournal.com]

I love that they taught Alexandria cursive in Montessori kindergarten.

I like that Emma can read it because well, her grandparents write their cards in cursive so they should at least be able to read it...but she never uses it.