Would You Teach Your Child To Write In Cursive?

[amberleadavis]

I once read a book about graphology called Handwritiing Analysis by Andrea McNichol. It briefly mentioned that in the early 80's the president of Mexico had banned cursive writing (it didn't state why, and I have no idea if that's still true today). Since handwriting (and especially cursive writing) is unique to each person like a fingerprint, the author argued that the more tyrannical a society becomes, the more individualism gets squeezed out of the picture. Throwing cursive out is just another symptom of collectivism, which is largely about sameness.

 

 

I think I read an earlier version of that book.

[proton007]

I once read a book about graphology called Handwritiing Analysis by Andrea McNichol. It briefly mentioned that in the early 80's the president of Mexico had banned cursive writing (it didn't state why, and I have no idea if that's still true today). Since handwriting (and especially cursive writing) is unique to each person like a fingerprint, the author argued that the more tyrannical a society becomes, the more individualism gets squeezed out of the picture. Throwing cursive out is just another symptom of collectivism, which is largely about sameness.

 

If you take a look at different styles of handwriting (Spencerian, Palmer etc) they were all designed to be 'taught' in classrooms.

Most would end up with similar handwriting.

Teaching the same subjects to a group of students in the class who follow the instructions *is* collectivism. Our school systems come from the industrial era, meant to create industrial workers, not individual thinkers.

 

If cursive can have variations as you say, so can printing letters.

Edited September 25, 2013 by proton007

[fiberdrunk]

 

If you take a look at different styles of handwriting (Spencerian, Palmer etc) they were all designed to be 'taught' in classrooms.

Most would end up with similar handwriting.

Teaching the same subjects to a group of students in the class who follow the instructions *is* collectivism. Our school systems come from the industrial era, meant to create industrial workers, not individual thinkers.

 

If cursive can have variations as you say, so can printing letters.

 

We certainly do start off with the same model and copy it as close to the original as we can. But eventually, our own styles shine through, especially when it comes to our signatures. Yes, printed forms can show individuality, too. But where graphology is concerned, more is revealed about the individual in joined up writing than in printing.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I once read a book about graphology called Handwritiing Analysis by Andrea McNichol. It briefly mentioned that in the early 80's the president of Mexico had banned cursive writing (it didn't state why, and I have no idea if that's still true today). Since handwriting (and especially cursive writing) is unique to each person like a fingerprint, the author argued that the more tyrannical a society becomes, the more individualism gets squeezed out of the picture. Throwing cursive out is just another symptom of collectivism, which is largely about sameness.

 

Excellent point!

[dms525]

In the long history of written language, the type of cursive writing that has been taught for the past 200 years or so is relatively new. And it is far from the most beautiful or functional form of the Roman script that has been devised. So, I would want children to be taught to write, but I would not be unhappy to see the type of cursive I was taught abandoned.

 

As I read the history of writing styles in Europe, at least since Roman times, there has been a cycle of formal writing which is slow to produce but very legible and very beautiful evolving into more "practical" scripts which are more cursive (sloped, compressed and linked), faster to write and, as the style evolves, more burdened with decorative elements which do not add to legibility or speed but are meant to demonstrate virtuosity. Finally, the dominant scripts become so elaborate, illegible and difficult for the average person to produce that they are abandoned in favor of a return to a simpler, more legible script, often seen as a return to an older, better time. Examples of the "back to basics" scripts include Uncial, Carolingian, Humanist Book Hand and Johnston's Foundational Hand.

 

It is interesting to me that Johnston saw a cursive script developing naturally out of the Foundational Hand, as children matured and experienced pressure to write faster. He felt it would look a lot like the "Italic" scripts of the 15th and 16th centuries. Note that Johnston was opposed to the trend, which was just starting in his day, of teaching young children a separate "printing" script first and then later introducing a cursive script which had no clear relationship to the printed one. In my view, it is unfortunate that what Johnston and Fairbank and, later, Gourdie, Lloyd Reynolds and others and, today, Dubay, Sveren and others have advocated has not been adopted more widely.

 

At this moment, many of the communication functions previously served by hand written language have been assumed by mechanical or electronic devices. This is not intrinsically a bad thing, but it does require a rethinking of the role of hand writing. Perhaps the type of script that is taught needs to change to better play its changed role. I wish I believed anyone is smart enough to accurately predict what today's elementary school pupils will need as adults. Maybe it will be something like Humanist Book Hand.

 

A century later, I think many of Edward Johnston's thoughts about what kind of writing children should be taught are still pertinent.

 

 

We are in a sort of battle which is going on at present between life and machinery. If you educate a boy simply to be a business machine, undoubtedly you must teach him a business writing. It has got to be readable, of course, but above all things, it must be rapid. But, if you wish to educate him so that he is better able to enjoy life, and better able to help others to enjoy it, it will not do to teach him to be a machine even in his writing.

Edward Johnston

Lecture at the London City Council Conference of Teachers

2 January, 1913

David

[amberleadavis]

Thank you for this wonderful and informative post.

[fiberdrunk]

 

A century later, I think many of Edward Johnston's thoughts about what kind of writing children should be taught are still pertinent.

 

 

Edward Johnston

 

We are in a sort of battle which is going on at present between life and machinery. If you educate a boy simply to be a business machine, undoubtedly you must teach him a business writing. It has got to be readable, of course, but above all things, it must be rapid. But, if you wish to educate him so that he is better able to enjoy life, and better able to help others to enjoy it, it will not do to teach him to be a machine even in his writing.

Lecture at the London City Council Conference of Teachers

2 January, 1913

David

 

Awesome quote!

[aalmcc4]

Here's my perspective for what's it's worth......

 

I will never understand a person who says; why would you want to learn that? Whatever "that" is.

 

EVERYTHING that we can learn is of value. The human intellect isn't finite. Your brain can't "fill up", leaving no more room for more knowledge.

 

It seems too may people have no thirst for knowledge. Instead they ask, should we teach our children X, Y & Z. I say hell yes!! Whatever it is.

 

What is the value of learning to play a musical instrument if you will never aspire to be a musician? Why read poetry or literature? Why do schools have art clasess? Because these things and others are what makes us human.

 

Teach your kids all you can. Learn to do something new on your own if you're an adult. Keep adding knowledge. No matter your age.

 

I tell my son all the time, that knowledge is power. The person in the room with the most knowledge has the most power. Always.

 

So, yes, we should teach our children cursive. And Latin, and art appreciation, and how to play a musical instrument. There is nothing more shameful than an uneducated, ignorant person. To coin a phrase, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

 

Technology is no excuse. We're in an age now where we can use voice recognition software and not even have to type. With visual media all around us, should we still teach our children to read? Is it really necessary? You all know the answer.

 

It's not just about utility. It's about beauty, art, expression and the appreciation of all our our "humaness".

 

Edited October 2, 2013 by aalmcc4

[WaskiSquirrel]

It seems an appropriate time to share the sign which is above the entrance to the school in Wildrose, ND.

 

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1195/1466587210_28972ae8cc_z.jpg

wildrose sign by waski_the_squirrel, on Flickr

[fiberdrunk]

Just a quick question to see if some knows: what book would you recommend for an adult to learn/practice cursive handwriting? I just checked Amazon and there are hundreds of them so I am a bit lost.

 

Thank you very much.

 

I like Italic Letters by Inga Dubay. If you want something flashier, there's Spencerian Penmanship (a series of copybooks by Mott).

[fiberdrunk]

 

Teach your kids all you can. Learn to do something new on your own if you're an adult. Keep adding knowledge. No matter your age.

 

 

It's not just about utility. It's about beauty, art, expression and the appreciation of all our our "humaness".

 

Very well said, all of it!

[proton007]

Here's my perspective for what's it's worth......

 

I will never understand a person who says; why would you want to learn that? Whatever "that" is.

 

EVERYTHING that we can learn is of value. The human intellect isn't finite. Your brain can't "fill up", leaving no more room for more knowledge.

 

It seems too may people have no thirst for knowledge. Instead they ask, should we teach our children X, Y & Z. I say hell yes!! Whatever it is.

 

What is the value of learning to play a musical instrument if you will never aspire to be a musician? Why read poetry or literature? Why do schools have art clasess? Because these things and others are what makes us human.

 

Teach your kids all you can. Learn to do something new on your own if you're an adult. Keep adding knowledge. No matter your age.

 

I tell my son all the time, that knowledge is power. The person in the room with the most knowledge has the most power. Always.

 

So, yes, we should teach our children cursive. And Latin, and art appreciation, and how to play a musical instrument. There is nothing more shameful than an uneducated, ignorant person. To coin a phrase, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

 

Technology is no excuse. We're in an age now where we can use voice recognition software and not even have to type. With visual media all around us, should we still teach our children to read? Is it really necessary? You all know the answer.

 

It's not just about utility. It's about beauty, art, expression and the appreciation of all our our "humaness".

 

 

I agree on your take. Nothing is worth 'not learning' in this world.

 

BUT, the child's own personality and interests need to be taken in consideration.

[VAgal]

I keep a journal all about my daughter which I intend to keep going until she is much older at which time I will give it to her as a gift. This journal is written in cursive and sometimes cross-hatch. So if I don't teach my daughter to read and write cursive this would be a useless exercise.

 

+1 - I too have a journal for each of my children, written in cursive. One has learned cursive - even enjoying handwriting more once the cursive lessons started. The other will begin to learn cursive soon.

[GabrielleDuVent]

 

I tell my son all the time, that knowledge is power. The person in the room with the most knowledge has the most power. Always.

 

Ah, but knowledge is power, and power corrupts.

 

So study hard, write cursive, and be evil?

[WirsPlm]

Like other experiences that are vanishing from public schools, cursive writing is coming to mean something beyond just being a choice of input formats. It is an indicator of educational, and, sadly, class background. If it's not done already, the day isn't far off when prospective employers and admissions officers can ask for a handwriting sample and use it to pigeon-hole people into the expensively-educated or the publicly-educated class. Not at all fair, but very efficient and accurate enough.

 

Not really. There are an awful lot of people, from all backgrounds, who use cursive every day whose writing is an illegible scrawl. Now, using handwriting as a personality indicator is already in the cards, even if people outside the field agree that it's mostly bunk, just like fortune telling.

[WirsPlm]

Is learning computer stuff really usefull? Or is it out of date when the kids come out of school?

Argh. Talking about 'computer stuff' is like talking about writing, there's so much in it. Do you mean troubleshooting and investigative skills along with grasping the fundamental principles of design for major OSs? Yeah, that stuff's useful across the board. Typing? Yup. Fundamental features of programming languages? Well, we definitely don't need fewer programmers in the US. The specifics of the lego turtle program / the outdated version of VB / specific details, not so useful.

[rwilsonedn]

 

Ah, but knowledge is power, and power corrupts.

 

So study hard, write cursive, and be evil?

Maybe you didn't need the emoticon: maybe you reduced the proposition to a contradiction. In response, some philosophies have argued that knowledge does indeed corrupt. Others have suggested that knowledge removes the need for power, or pierces its illusion. How's that for getting off-topic?

ron

[amberleadavis]

And here is another article:

 

Putting pen to paper: the case for cursive
Writing cursive may be a dying art, but it is one worth reviving
September 29, 2013 12:12 am


By David M. Shribman / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
NORTH CONWAY, N.H. -- Over the years the residents of this town tucked into a shoulder of the White Mountains have filled the pages of the local newspaper with heated comments about zoning, a bypass highway, a new school and who deserves to win the New Hampshire Primary.
But few issues have prompted such passionate commentary in the Conway Daily Sun as the question of whether handwriting should be taught in the local schools. One day the paper carried 43 opinions on the topic. Most of them screamed: Of course they should. That includes the reader who said it wouldn't make any difference, adding: "They can't spell anyway."
Maybe they can't, but the schoolchildren of this community and of thousands of others scattered around the country aren't being taught a skill so basic that it is almost always listed second in the ancient catechism on the function of schools. Not that the other two -- reading and 'rithmetic -- are being mastered by our young scholars either, but that's for another day and another column.
We have in our time witnessed the shrinking role of the handwritten word. We no longer sign for gasoline at self-service pumps and we write emails on a keyboard. The letter is as dead as a form of correspondence as the gavotte is as a form of dance. The other day I saw someone take out an $85,000 loan with an electronic signature. You would think you might employ at least one of those free plastic hotel pens to borrow $85,000 but it wasn't necessary.
There are loads of romantic reasons -- the kind I like best -- for the perpetuation of the handwritten word, and I'm speaking about more than love notes. (In an age of LOL, does anyone still know what SWAK means? Ask your mom. She will.)
There is real intimacy involved in a handwritten thank-you note, so much more personal than an email thanks, which we all know is often dashed off in a few seconds without even the courtesy of pushing the shift button to employ capital letters at the beginning of the sentence. It is heresy, and very bad manners.
There is emotion that can be loaded onto anything written in cursive, impossible to describe but impossible to miss. And there is the utility of picking up a pencil and writing down a phone number or a personal note on a piece of paper and then tucking it into your breast pocket, where there is at least a 50 percent chance you will retrieve it before it goes into the washing machine and leaches all over your best dress shirt -- in the increasingly unlikely event you still wear a dress shirt. Don't get me started.
All of that is without considering that four of the most important documents in American history were written in forms that resemble script: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address ... and the Laffer Curve that launched the supply-side revolution. Take away the pen and you erase much of American history. It's enough to make you think this entire movement away from cursive is a Communist plot.
Many of us of a certain age remember the torture imposed upon us by the traveling salvation show run by the evangelists of the Palmer handwriting method. These hard-bitten pilgrims -- worse than the volunteer traveling dentists who shoved tongue depressors into our mouths once a year in an often-successful search for cavities -- would drive from town to town, reigning terror in classrooms as they assured there was a little jagged edge to the "F" we wrote in the upper case and to see that the lower-case "z" had the three required precise and distinctive motions.
Today almost every state has endorsed the so-called Common Core, which doesn't require instruction in cursive. My bet is that the modern way of tackling a running back is taught in more schools than the old-fashioned way of writing out a pass for going to the bathroom.
That means there will be fewer concussions, which is a good thing, but also fewer billet-doux, which is a bad thing, and my point is sealed by the fact that hardly any readers of this column will have the remotest idea what a billet-doux is and even fewer have ever received one. (Save this column for its historical value: This may be the last time that compound word ever appears in print. It does not mean the same thing as a French Letter. Look them both up.)
But the rationale for teaching cursive goes beyond the romantic.
"Writing in cursive is more than making letters," says Paula Heinricher, who has taught handwriting for eight years in southwestern Pennsylvania through the Handwriting Without Tears program. "It's putting letters into words and then into sentences. It's not copying. It's expressing ideas."
There's hope. This year a handful of schools in the Pittsburgh suburbs instituted a new initiative to teach pupils in kindergarten through the second grade how to print, and next year pupils from the third through the sixth grades will be introduced to cursive. "It's still a basic skill," says Amanda Hartle of the North Hills School District, "and has an effect on all the other parts of students' educations."
At least the president still signs bills with a pen. For generations it was a sign of special favor to receive a presidential pen used in the signing of legislation, and grown men and women who wrote or conceived of the bill would brag their entire lives of being presented with a presidential pen. For years I admired a display in the White House press room of 50 pens used by Lyndon Johnson to sign elements of the Great Society.
Barack Obama signed the health care law that bears his name with a pen. His rivals on Capitol Hill are living for the day one of his successors might employ a pen to sign legislation revoking Obamacare.
So maybe there's a (ball-) point to this column after all: the identification of one element in American life worthy of bipartisan support. Let's end the Washington stalemate by uniting to save cursive. A nation's sense of itself -- and the accessibility of its founding documents -- depends on it. But if you want to start a petition, please require the signatures to be affixed by pen. It's the least you can do for your country.
David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Post-Gazette (dshribman@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1890).
First Published September 29, 2013 12:00 am

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/david-shribman/putting-pen-to-paper-the-case-for-cursive-705358/#ixzz2ginW5QB3

[GabrielleDuVent]

What surprises me is that for all the "let's learn computers, learning computers is the new age!" hoo-hah, most of the "technology exposure" children have is games. Which has extended to people in their 20's, 30's. Every time a PC breaks, or a network goes down, I am the one who fixes it, not a Geek Squad. In fact, whatever Geek Squad does is usually useless, costly, and has set me back a few hundred without resolving the problem. Typing? All those who claim "computer exposure is always a plus!" have far slower typing speed than I do (I have never received a typing lesson in my life).

 

So, the technology exposure nowadays seems to be:

 

1. Typing skills on the mobile, especially texting

2. Games

3. Surfing the social network.

 

and very little seems to focus on the actual hardware, or programming. Because, you know, these things take some studying. I have seen people who spend HOURS online, and then ask me where the capital of Spain is. Apparently the idea of googling that simple piece of information hasn't entered their heads. Or people who freak out that their internet's down, only to be told that their cable's unplugged. Honestly, I'm not asking them to write a new OS.

 

I'll start seeing the value of computer education in lieu of more traditional lessons in the classrooms if an average 16 year old can program a simple calculation algorithm on C++ or type 60 wpm. Until then, I'm calling it a waste. It speaks volumes when most people around me who can program and build PCs haven't had a minute of computer instruction in the classroom.

Edited October 4, 2013 by GabrielleDuVent

[Gryphon]

If I ever have children I definitely would teach them cursive and how to write with elegant fountain pens and elegant ballpoints (like Watermans). They would grow up this way and probably think doing that was normal along with growing up around wooden gryphons, gothic medieval and baroque decor, and other antiques. I think growing up around art is good if it is all done in an encouraging manner. I would defintely teach my children about artistic things and how to live most of their lives without screens.

Myself I always handwrite and I have good handwriting. I am not good at printing though. When in school after 3rd grade we were forced to write in cursive and with me it stuck. I find it a ton easier than printing! Unfortunately they were not very nice about it and would grade our handwriting in very strange ways. I do think there would have been better ways to teach it. Instead of saying "that is the rule or else" I wish they would have said something like "it is art and it is beautiful" and I suppose that's a big reason why so many shy away from cursive. Schools have tought it in such an authoritarian manner it turns people off to it. And that is sad.

If I have children I would teach them cursive it in a respectful and enjoyable way. One can even teach using games or playing pretend such as playing medieval games with children where the pretend includes writing letters with fountain pens. If one wants to teach anything to anyone they should always do it in a creative way. Learning can be fun and doesn't have to be painful.

And honestly computers can be good for some things (typing a paper, researching, fun things in small amounts) but lately it's been taken too far - especially with ipads and smartphones - neither of which I find necessary. We don't need to strap kids onto computers in classrooms for hours at a time. Then have them read their textbooks on the same computer afterwards. I find this idea really disturbing. Having a screen in your face all the time is really bad for you. People weren't made to be that way. We need variety.

 

We aren't robots.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Gryphon