Kansas may halt cursive education

[StBishop]

Wow.

Just wow.

I'm amazed and appalled by this thread. Are you people serious? You still use printing to write? If you cant write in cursive in Australia by the age of 10, then the teachers start looking at you like there's something wrong with you.

I...
I just...

I cant type any more. I have to leave the computer. This is just so brain exploding.

I can tell you that you're straight up wrong.

As a pre-service teacher in Highschools (as in I've been working in highschools the past 2 years) I've seen cursive once.

It was a British kid who had recently moved to Australia.

I don't recall a single person using cursive at my schools in Queensland (I went to 3) and the majority of people I know who I went to school with in the Northern Territory didn't use cursive.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

While I do agree that cursive are being less these days but I do feel they hold some important heritage wise.

Maybe, but we don't exactly have lessons dedicated to knowing how to convey thought and emotion through cave paintings.

OT: Cool, I guess. I haven't used it since the first years of middle school where we were forced to use it because it would be how we would write for the rest of our futures. What a load of bullshit that was. Mine was always illegible and I'd still spend more time focusing on the style of my words than what I was actually writing, a pointless exercise really.

 

[Lunar Shadow]

Due to a disorder regarding my finer motor skills, I can't write legibly in cursive anyway. Or print for that matter, though it is easier to figure out.

 

[blackrave]

People, there are things you MUST learn in school
Writing is one of them.
What next? Ditching books and replacing them with magazines, because most of the people don't read books anyway?
Schools should make more educated people, not less.

Maybe, but we don't exactly have lessons dedicated to knowing how to convey thought and emotion through cave paintings.

OT: Cool, I guess. I haven't used it since the first years of middle school where we were forced to use it because it would be how we would write for the rest of our futures. What a load of bullshit that was. Mine was always illegible and I'd still spend more time focusing on the style of my words than what I was actually writing, a pointless exercise really.

I'm not sure about your education, but most people learn "knowing how to convey thought and emotion through cave paintings"
But instead of caves we use paper and canvas, and techniques are various (i think that is called Arts in english)
Also I drew my own cave paintings for History lesson (for presentation- just to prove a point that paintings as basic communication technique is fairly effective)
But once again, maybe your education was different

 

[Flames66]

I write things with a pen on paper almost every day, I find it difficult to understand how people wouldn't.

Could you help me with something? Is "cursive" handwriting in general or just when the letters are joined? If it is the latter your statement makes perfect sense to me.

It actually refers to the latter. I as well write nearly everything by hand but I did not use cursive since the third grade (Germany here). I really can't think of any situation where I would have to use cursive, I don't even use it to sign things, I just do what my teachers did, the first two letters of my name and some gibberish afterwards. Not only that but cursive is discouraged at my university because what you write has to be readable by many people.

That makes perfect sense to me. When I write, my handwriting is not neat, but it is readable. I do not join my letters and haven't since I realised at primary school age that is just made things awkward and hurt my hand.

 

[orangeapples]

The important part of any non-verbal communication is the transmissions of ideas using symbols. That includes the reading of those symbols as well. It is important for students to be able to understand what those symbols are.

However, cursive is not only an art lost on students as it is one lost by the teachers as well. Many teachers don't have the patience to decipher student's writing anymore and now say "If your handwriting is hard to read then type it." Schools have been encouraging the idea of not improving the student's handwriting in favor of uniform block letters.

I think that students should learn how to write as well as type. Cursive should die and schools should focus on getting students to have legible handwriting. Computers don't use cursive because block letters are easier to look at.

There is one benefit I have to using cursive, and that is that in my normal handwriting, my [a], , [g], and [y] all look the same. In cursive they're all pretty different only because I have to take more time to write in cursive...

 

[Willinium]

Back in my elementary school the students including myself were told that if you didn't write in cursive than your work wouldn't count. So to this day I have trouble not writing in cursive.

 

[Coppernerves]

People, there are things you MUST learn in school
Writing is one of them.
What next? Ditching books and replacing them with magazines, because most of the people don't read books anyway?
Schools should make more educated people, not less.

We're not talking about handwriting, we're talking about cursive, when you join the letters up instead of taking the pen off the page, it's hard to read, and with modern pens which often only mark when you press down hard, often slower than writing letters separately.

The uses of handwriting in day to day life in the western world are mainly taking notes, and writing reminders and calendar entries, all of which are only read by the person who writes them, as a memory aid.

Nevertheless the skill of handwriting clearly should be preserved in case of electromagnetic pulses or attacks on electrical infrastructure.

 

[blackrave]

People, there are things you MUST learn in school
Writing is one of them.
What next? Ditching books and replacing them with magazines, because most of the people don't read books anyway?
Schools should make more educated people, not less.

We're not talking about handwriting, we're talking about cursive, when you join the letters up instead of taking the pen off the page, it's hard to read, and with modern pens which often only mark when you press down hard, often slower than writing letters separately.

The uses of handwriting in day to day life in the western world are mainly taking notes, and writing reminders and calendar entries, all of which are only read by the person who writes them, as a memory aid.

Nevertheless the skill of handwriting clearly should be preserved in case of electromagnetic pulses or attacks on electrical infrastructure.

Then please describe difference, because apparently I don't understand what you mean by "cursive writing" and "handwriting"
Aren't these things the same?

 

[Sidmen]

People, there are things you MUST learn in school
Writing is one of them.
What next? Ditching books and replacing them with magazines, because most of the people don't read books anyway?
Schools should make more educated people, not less.

You seem to have missed the entire purpose and subject of the thread, my friend. Cursive is the method of writing in which you make a bunch of illegible squiggly lines on a piece of paper, whereas printing is the method of making letters that look like those on a computer screen or printed document.

Nobody (outside of England, apparently) uses Cursive handwriting anymore, and schools are only now catching onto the fact that people would rather be able to read something instead of just looking at the squiggles and going "yep, that's a report alright".


*The preceding may include some sarcasm and exaggeration.

^^ This is Cursive writing, and a relatively good sample too. Only took me 3 extra seconds to decipher it into English.

 

[Yopaz]

Cursive have really screwed over my handwriting so I can't see this as a bad thing, though I still think that being able to write a proper handwriting is incredbly important. Typing may be big, but for almost anything that has to do with math, chemistry or physics it's quite unpractical. I am quite skilled at writing equations on a computer, yet I use more than twice as long as I would when using good ol' pen and paper.

 

[sethisjimmy]

Cursive relies on the assumption that linking your letters together is somehow faster and more efficient than writing them normally, which I find hard to believe.
It's pretty useless, I don't even use it for my signature.

 

[Bigsmith]

First time I heard that word used was when speaking to Americans. In England we just get taught hand writing; not only does 'cursive' make work look nice I also find it quicker to write.

It's all well and good saying that we need to focus on typing but, as an example, I'm on a Computer Science Degree course and the lecturers don't like/ want us using laptops/ tablets in class for note taking. So I'm glad that I was taught how to write quickly and neatly.

 

[Flames66]

Nobody (outside of England, apparently) uses Cursive handwriting anymore, and schools are only now catching onto the fact that people would rather be able to read something instead of just looking at the squiggles and going "yep, that's a report alright".

I don't know anyone within England who writes like that either apart from one of my college lecturers whose handwriting looked like his arm was attached to a heart monitor, and another whose writing was just a long, slightly squiggly line with occasional hills and valleys. We used to make a game out of trying to read a single word they had written.

^^ This is Cursive writing, and a relatively good sample too. Only took me 3 extra seconds to decipher it into English.

Can't read that. I can translate maybe three words.

 

[BNguyen]

While I don't necessarily think it would be a good thing to completely erase it from use as very few people actually can write anymore besides using awful computer text shorthand but right now, I barely use it for my own signature.
My family likes to use the whole ancestry.com thing and everyone back then used really hard to read cursive writing that can't hardly be read at all.

That, and if you aren't taught all of the letters in their cursive form you aren't going to be able to read it anyways.

 

[blackrave]

You seem to have missed the entire purpose and subject of the thread, my friend. Cursive is the method of writing in which you make a bunch of illegible squiggly lines on a piece of paper, whereas printing is the method of making letters that look like those on a computer screen or printed document.

Nobody (outside of England, apparently) uses Cursive handwriting anymore, and schools are only now catching onto the fact that people would rather be able to read something instead of just looking at the squiggles and going "yep, that's a report alright".


*The preceding may include some sarcasm and exaggeration.

^^ This is Cursive writing, and a relatively good sample too. Only took me 3 extra seconds to decipher it into English.

By "Nobody (outside of England, apparently) uses Cursive handwriting anymore" you mean that americans don't use it anymore, right?
Because most in places I have ever been and in all languages I know (with latin and cyrillic writing) this is called handwriting

So am I right to assume that american handwriting is simply drawing printed letters?
Man, you ARE degrading :/

Can't read that. I can translate maybe three words.

That's because it is only part of the text- if it would be full, then it would be much easier
(for example, first 3 symbols are end of some word "-ted". It is vertically chopped text that makes things really bad at reading)

 

[Gavmando]

Wow.

Just wow.

I'm amazed and appalled by this thread. Are you people serious? You still use printing to write? If you cant write in cursive in Australia by the age of 10, then the teachers start looking at you like there's something wrong with you.

I...
I just...

I cant type any more. I have to leave the computer. This is just so brain exploding.

I can tell you that you're straight up wrong.

As a pre-service teacher in Highschools (as in I've been working in highschools the past 2 years) I've seen cursive once.

It was a British kid who had recently moved to Australia.

I don't recall a single person using cursive at my schools in Queensland (I went to 3) and the majority of people I know who I went to school with in the Northern Territory didn't use cursive.

Queensland and NT. 20 and 30 years behind the rest of the country. Nuff said.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

proper handwritting is an art! Silly America

I'd rather they just focus on teaching everyone to have legible handwriting. If eliminating cursive means more people use printing I can read easily, that would be good enough for me. Anything in the realm of "art" can go straight to elective art classes, like where I learned calligraphy.

 

[Sidmen]

By "Nobody (outside of England, apparently) uses Cursive handwriting anymore" you mean that americans don't use it anymore, right?
Because most in places I have ever been and in all languages I know (with latin and cyrillic writing) this is called handwriting

So am I right to assume that american handwriting is simply drawing printed letters?
Man, you ARE degrading

The below is printed handwriting. And so far in this very thread we've heard from Germans, Australians, Irish, and Canadians that have confirmed that Cursive handwriting is all but gone from their areas too. Once people understood what the word cursive meant, they started confirming it.

Edit: and apparently an English fellow or two.

 

[StBishop]

Wow.

Just wow.

I'm amazed and appalled by this thread. Are you people serious? You still use printing to write? If you cant write in cursive in Australia by the age of 10, then the teachers start looking at you like there's something wrong with you.

I...
I just...

I cant type any more. I have to leave the computer. This is just so brain exploding.

I can tell you that you're straight up wrong.

As a pre-service teacher in Highschools (as in I've been working in highschools the past 2 years) I've seen cursive once.

It was a British kid who had recently moved to Australia.

I don't recall a single person using cursive at my schools in Queensland (I went to 3) and the majority of people I know who I went to school with in the Northern Territory didn't use cursive.

Queensland and NT. 20 and 30 years behind the rest of the country. Nuff said.

I'm teaching in WA.

The stupidest people I know are all from Melbourne without exception.

Also, your argument is flawed. You said "If you cant write in cursive in Australia by the age of 10", not "If you can't write cursive in NSW, Vic, ACT, Tas, and WA..."