New Law Today

[Ted F]

In the great state of Arkansas, U.S. of A., a new law just went into effect today that requires all schools to teach cursive to students by the end of the third grade.

[PAKMAN]

Good news indeed!

[TheRealScubaSteve]

They should mandate fountain pens too, but one step at a time.

[Tasmith]

Awesome!

[PS104]

Ye-ha-a-a-a-h!

[haruka337]

Wow--great news! Hope this trends towards the west coast!

[elysee]

Hooray for Arkansas! Every state should enact such a law!

[Dragonmaster Lou]

My only question is which script they'll be teaching for cursive? I've seen a bunch of folks proposing newer scripts that are not quite as "loopy" (for lack of a better term) than traditional scripts and therefore allows an easier transition from printing to cursive.

[Ted F]

In all of the articles I've seen about this they don't mention a specific style script.

[akustyk]

I appreciate the enthusiasm for the "script" but I'd much rather see a law requiring kids to learn to touch type and learn a programming language, starting in 4th grade.

[Ted F]

That was also addressed in another bill that also went into effect at the same time.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

I appreciate the enthusiasm for the "script" but I'd much rather see a law requiring kids to learn to touch type and learn a programming language, starting in 4th grade.

 

Touch typing, programming, and cursive are all very useful skills to have (and I'm speaking as a professional programmer who is a very good touch typist here). They are not mutually exclusive, but they also don't overlap identical areas either.

[cattar]

I'm glad for this. I want future generations to be able to read the Declaration and the Constitution and their great-grandparents love letters.

 

I'd rather coding be taught at age 12 or later, when children can anticipate and consider consequence.

[haruka337]

Touch typing, programming, and cursive are all very useful skills to have (and I'm speaking as a professional programmer who is a very good touch typist here). They are not mutually exclusive, but they also don't overlap identical areas either.

+1

[Sabin]

God bless America!

[httpmom]

I appreciate the enthusiasm for the "script" but I'd much rather see a law requiring kids to learn to touch type and learn a programming language, starting in 4th grade.

Agree with touch tying 100% but I still want kids to learn cursive.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

I'm glad for this. I want future generations to be able to read the Declaration and the Constitution and their great-grandparents love letters.

 

I'd rather coding be taught at age 12 or later, when children can anticipate and consider consequence.

I think this is a rather hollow reason to teach kids cursive, if only because the script used in those historical documnts is vastly different than any script taught in the past 100 years. The great-grandparents love letter script is probably closer to whatever modern script is, but still may differ.

 

The main benefit of learning to write cursive is not to read old documents (and heck, reading different scripts is much easier to learn than writing them, based on my experiences in taking Japanese a few years back). It's mostly with learning a more efficient method of hand writing that also has at least some aesthtic appeal. Combine this with the fact that, for many people, writing things down helps in the learning process.

[brunico]

Pupils should be taught to write legibly and at a decent speed - and the teaching should start with the parents. What Americans mean by cursive isn't necessarily the best style for this, though I think joined-up handwriting is the right start.

 

As Dragonmaster Lou says, writing cursive is a rather laborious way of learning to read it. And there are other historic documents besides the Declaration and the Constitution - written in different styles - so learning cursive isn't going to help anyone read Yeats's manuscripts or Elizabeth I's letters or twentieth-century records written in Sütterlinschrift or French cursive. In any case, palaeography is a different skill from handwriting.

[Cal_D]

Good for them. I guess I grew up at that bad time in the early 1990s. I did not learn cursive, because it was a "worthless skill" because of computers, but I also did not learn to touch type, becaus ethe school could not afford to teach us. I later learned cursive, because of my mothers insistance, but I stil lhunt and peck. Sad, seeing how much time I spend in front of a computer.

[Jerome Tarshis]

I taught myself touch typing before my school got around to it. Wasn't difficult. Probably still isn't. As one who wasn't entirely good or entirely comfortable at the handwriting Americans tend to call "cursive," and was happy to walk away from it when I could, as did many other people, I am no great fan of teaching that in particular. My parents were good at it. My sister is good at it. I am somebody else, and I'd like schools to do better at educating the somebody elses.

 

What I do agree with is that it is a general good thing for children to learn how to make marks on paper in a felicitous way. Not necessarily the same way for everyone. That applies not only to writing, but to drawing. Once upon a time drawing was considered a rather ordinary thing to learn in school, whether elementary school or the national military academies.