"The latter are kind of fun, and you have to know them to … well, for me they were for reading what the year was on 'Looney Tunes' opening credits, and I guess one might want to be able to know what year a building was constructed without having to ask someone. But just as those aren’t enough to impose learning Roman numerals on all schoolchildren, cursive’s time is up, now that all people will spend so much less time writing by hand."
Types John McWhorter, in "What’s the Point of Teaching Cursive?" (NYT).
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158 comments:
Because it is faster than printing, and one needs to sign things, at least occasionally. Is there anything progressives don't kill?
In theory cursive is faster and they're going to need it to write their exam essays.
Teachers are on to that ChatGTP thing now. Kids have glommed onto it for their homework. Lol.
That my kids could neither read nor write cursive made it impossible for them to fake sick notes to school, so there's that.
Handwriting is a skill that requires and develops fine motor skills. It takes a while to develop, and lets one do things like write a signature and read the handwriting of others.
Learning Roman numerals takes XV minutes, tops (and then you can count Suprerbowls). The two things are not comparable.
And just use an X for your signature, right John? How about the ability to read something written in handwriting, isn’t that useful? Should only scholars and researchers have the special skills of reading handwriting? Will you force everyone else to use block letters?
What's the point, of Teaching?
well, for me they were for reading
and I guess one might want to be able to know
But just as those aren’t enough to impose learning
Teachers are Busy enough.. What with the Grooming, and Molesting, They have NO TIME FOR Teaching
Because my kids were homeschooled and we never taught them cursive, they write the alphabet from the bottom up. I never realized that the practice of starting at the top is determined by the efficiency of connecting letters, not by an innate understanding.
""By my lights, it is about as important for modern kids to learn cursive as it is for them to know their Roman numerals.""
I agree. Language has changed and new things are more important.
Kids today are learning cursive because elementary teachers don't know Python or Typescript.
Adults forcing kids to learn things because they did is just silly.
Roman numerals are in alphabetical order up through 8, so there's that.
Purpose of learning cursive in addition to learning drafting style printing is because both are primary art forms that create a mind-body connection to words. It's an important learning process especially to those of us blessed with the superpowers of dyslexia and ADHD.
We need cursive because people need to sign documents, and others need to be able to verify that that is, indeed, your signature.
We need Roman numerals because “friendly number” arithmetic more or less reinvents Roman numerals and it’s part of Vommon Core. If you want to add 49 to 73 that’s 50 - 1 + 70 + 3 = 120 - 1 + 3 = 120 + 2 = 122.
Or CXXII
My cursive has never been good. The wife laughs at it.
But not teaching cursive seems like not teaching multiplication tables to kids because calculators and computers exist.
Howard said...
Purpose of learning cursive in addition to learning drafting style printing is because both are primary art forms that create a mind-body connection to words. It's an important learning process especially to those of us blessed with the superpowers of dyslexia and ADHD.
Mandarin is a better option for this.
Every now and then the earth's orbit gets out of sync with the earth's rotation and they add a leap roman numeral on building dates.
I dunno, in the future, it might be important for people - kids even - to be able to read important works in the original, written, cursive form.
Like, say, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution.
Or, you know, we could just trust our betters to continue to manipulate language, i.e., meaning, the way the Merriam-Webster dictionary 'improves' it for us.
One important aspect of learning cursive is the development of fine motor skills in young students. I don't have experience teaching elementary school students, so don't know how important cursive is for that purpose or if there are other means by which fine motor skills can be developed.
In my career as a Physics teacher, I once had a fine Pashtun fellow who was a Physics professor back home, and needed classroom hours to get his teaching license here. The first time he was presenting example problems to the class, he used cursive. A lower case 'r' or 's' in cursive looks nothing like the printed version, and these were single letters used as variables.
My students were smart and polite, so tried to follow along. He was very good at reading the class, so realized something wasn't working. I had faith in my students and him, so stayed out of the discussion as they figured it out. They initially thought he might be writing in a foreign language and it never occurred to him that cursive would baffle them. That was fun. I wish I had video of them working it out.
I had to learn to get down on paper everything some law professors said in their class. We were warned that on the final (only) exam we were responsible for everything the professor said in that class. It instantly became apparent that printing was at least three times as fast as cursive. Nor to mention easier to read, as rapid cursive quickly degenerates into a scribble.
This knowledge came in handy at trial and hearings where you're listening to a witness you have to stand up and immediately cross-examine.
I sign my name in cursive. That's the extent of my cursive use for the last 40 years. My view: Don't waste time teaching it anymore.
Most schools don't teach cursive anymore. My older kids got it because we were at a no tech charter school and kids need to learn how to write quickly. My younger kids have not been taught at school, but they're still in early grades. My middle child was taught by me in homeschool.
I'm not overly attached to cursive but I do think it helps fine motor skills. By skipping printing and cursive, we might have some unintended consequences.
I love cursive handwriting. I get compliments on my beautiful handwriting. I love handwriting so much I learned how to do calligraphy. It is an art form and the lack of interest in the arts in school has suffered with the push for stem learning. Offer a wider variety of life skills in schools. Teach rudimentary cursive and those who excel, offer advanced classes as one might take an art class.
I was taught to write cursive early on at school in the Dominican Republic. I remember trying to get better at it because that’s what the other kids were doing. I learned what we were doing had a name. It was called calligraphy. That spilled over into coming up with my own unique signature. And again I was influenced by what people around me were doing. Having an impressive signature seemed to be important. I went thru several styles until I settled on my own, roughly 20 years ago, and use to this day.
Banks used to check your signature as evidence of your identity and one time I had trouble reproducing a discarded signature style.
The point of teaching cursive is to develop hand-eye coordination. Teaching the Roman numerals is neither difficult nor wasteful. (I was shocked to discover than they are not taught as a matter of routine anymore)
Kids today are NOT learning cursive because elementary teachers don't know Cursive anymore than they do Python or Typescript.
fify!
Seconding the comment about reading original sources. My parents have a copy of the Declaration of Independence framed in a wall - have since I was born, as far as I know. The cursive style has changed, but I could puzzle it out, mostly, from fourth grade on.
My own kids, who weren't taught cursive in school, sometimes ask me what their grandparents wrote in their birthday cards.
Birthday cards - there's another thing to get rid of...
I feel sorry for teachers these days who have to attempt to interpret the chickenscratch of their students - yes, printed too - but they kind of created the problem, didn't they?
I grew up writing and reading cursive. The problem is that I cannot read my cursive. Back in the 80s before I did it on computer, I'd be cruising along lecturing my students, turn the page in my notes and come to a dead stop unable to even get a sense of what was on the page. Not frequently and most times I could fake it but occasionally it would bring me to a dead stop for a minute or two.
Or taking notes in meetings, or writing notes about plant visits, there would be entire pages that were just lost.
About 12 years ago I started studying the Bible by writing, longhand, 4 composition book pages every night. I set myself the goal of printing, not cursive. I also set myself the goal of printing everything I do, no cursive.
Still not 100% legible but mostly OK and getting better every year.
I think one of my problems with cursive is that I can write much faster than printing. And I can think even faster than I can write cursive which makes me write way too fast. Printing must be done more slowly by its nature. I think it also slows down my thinking at times and allows me to make more sense of my thoughts.
So other than my signature, I almost never write cursive anymore and I do write a lot, taking copious notes by hand when visiting a client. Often 50-75 letter size notebook pages. I then type them out each night. (Yeah, tried tablets, they just don't work for me in this)
My father (passed in 82) had a very distinctive signature. Very different from mine and illegible. You could tell it was his and only his signature but could not have guessed what it spelled. I have noticed that gradually, especially over the past 5-10 years, my, totally illegible, signature is morphing into looking like his. Cats in the cradle?
John Henry
A friend of mine was a bank branch manager. He had a very illegible scrawl for a signature. He told me that he had been required to develop an illegible but distinctive signature when he took his first banking job. Something to do with forgery/security.
He used the same signature at multiple banks where he worked.
John Henry
My seven-yar old granddaughter knows her Roman numerals. Thank God for Catholic school.
Why do we need Roman numerals or even arabic numerals? What is wrong with 0 & 1? With those two numbers we can do anything we need to without any excess baggage.
My grandson, 5 in April, was showing me a week or two ago that he knows how to count and went to 10. I asked him if he could go to 20? Turns out that he could. Then he went through the 20s, 30s and so on and was at about 150 when I told him I believed he could count and that was enough.
Now I have to teach him how to count in 0/1.
John Henry
Blogger Howard said...
Purpose of learning cursive in addition to learning drafting style printing is because both are primary art forms that create a mind-body connection to words
I was thinking something similar. I think there have a been a few studies that show students retain more information when they take notes by hand rather than typing them on a laptop. The mind and body are more linked than many believe. I suspect there is a pedagogical benefit to attaching a somatic experience with writing a word in cursive, which is frequently one long extended movement, versus printing or typing out that same word in a series of discrete letters.
Next to go ... Long Division!
Kate at 8:06 AM
they write the alphabet from the bottom up
I must not be the only person here who does not know what that means.
John has to say things like this to convince people that he is still "up-to-date" and "liberal" and "modern" and not a conservative old stick in the mud.
Signature verification may be going away with facial scans and retinal scans, but that world is still a little hard to imagine.
And what's next, getting rid of math because everyone has a calculator on them at all times?
I'm surprised to see John McWhorter's name attached to this. He's geeky and sensible and the kind of person I would expect to see the value of preserving cursive simply because it's a more attractive style of writing (plus there are some advantages, as other here have pointed out).
The comparison to Roman numerals is strange as well. Sure, there's not a lot of practical need for it, but you can learn the basics of how to use them in one class session. Little would be gained by eliminating them from the curriculum.
My mother learned shorthand in high school and used that to keep us from understanding the Christmas lists. We just did cursive to hide info from our kids. One problem my son ran into was having a mail in ballot challenged because he has difficult making his “signature” match over time.
I'm stunned by all the comments here that printing is faster than cursive. The whole point of cursive is that it's faster---thus the etymology from the Latin for "run."
is cursive = calligraphy
I have seen reporting about teaching sign language to animals
have there been any attempt to teach cursive? then challenge game for kids
My kids, in public elementary school, are learning cursive. I haven't used cursive except for signatures since I was in elementary school in the early 80s.
gilbar said...
Kids today are NOT learning cursive because elementary teachers don't know Cursive anymore than they do Python or Typescript.
fify!
Oh I know.
My kids are in private school and I am receiving an object lesson in what is not being taught in schools and what subjects the teachers understand.
My wife did some substituting for the local school districts because they were offering substitutes more money per day than she could make as a nurse.
She couldn't do it because the kids were so lost in class. It was too depressing for her.
Not just that they were behind in subject matter.
The kids could not focus enough to do basic math when given the answer. They couldn't even work out what they were supposed to be doing. The kids were so behind in social skills and basic human interaction they couldn't even function in the classroom on the most basic level.
This was 1st through 4th grade after 2 years of Covid Lock down classes of course.
when did Bible printers go from using Roman to Arabic numerals?
result in Trump-crogglement for I Corinthian v 1 Corinthian or something etc.
People still write in cursive script so you at least need to be taught how to read it.
Second grade is not so demanding that learning this skill is a huge burden. But there are videos that need watching so we need more time for that.
Mike Sylwester said...
Kate at 8:06 AM
they write the alphabet from the bottom up
I must not be the only person here who does not know what that means.
I believe she is talking about where the writing utensil starts when writing a letter.
Most people start at the top of the letter because this is passed down from the person that taught you and in standard script each letter is treated individually.
In cursive you do not start at a new point with every letter but rather where the last letter left off, and the start point is different based on the previous letter so there are some interesting combinations there.
I never liked cursive and dropped it as soon as I left high school. It was quicker and more legible to print. Made it through law school taking notes and exams without cursive.
For my signature, I only use cursive for the first 3 letters of my first and last name. Something between an initial and a signature. I started doing it as a teenager and then had to replicate when it was on my passport and other documents.
As for kids, teach them more useful things than cursive. Like how to make and repair things, cook simple meals, balance a budget and logical reasoning.
Blogger Mike Sylwester said...
Kate at 8:06 AM
they write the alphabet from the bottom up
I must not be the only person here who does not know what that means.
==========
easy to understand >>> just try doing it! start on/close to the line instead of coming down to it.
Everyone else’s kids can stop learning cursive, and math, and Latin, etc. but I want my kids to know it all, then they will be more competitive. In education when they take something out, they don’t add anything new, you just sit around more.
Sounds like just another hopeful sop to the low achieving crowd.
Surprising from McWhorter.
Digital clocks in elementary school rooms and hallways, replacing the analog clock face of 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 12 hours, can be seen as a precursor to the anti-cursive movement. The argument then, about 20 years ago, was that a Babylonian-based clock face had been replaced by the "time" on most clocks & computers. I didn't buy that BS then, and don't buy this BS now. It is much more simple. Keep the kids ignorant, they're easier to wrangle thatn if they know things.
It takes about 5 minutes to learn Roman Numerals.
I is 1
V is 5
X is 10
L is 50
C is 100
M is 1,000
You start with the larger digit and go to the smallest. Digits other than 5, 10, 50 .. are formed by combining numerals. A numeral following a major numeral means add. A numeral preceding means subtract.
So to count to 10 -- I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X.
Fifty is L. Forty is XL. 60 is LX. 61 is LXI
One hundred is C. 101 is CI, 111 is CXI.
1941 is MCMXLI.
2022 is MMXXII.
You'll notice that these numbers are all easy to form if you don't have pen or paper and have to chisel the figure into wax or stone.
So there, was that hard?
It takes about 5 minutes to learn Roman Numerals.
I is 1
V is 5
X is 10
L is 50
C is 100
M is 1,000
You start with the larger digit and go to the smallest. Digits other than 5, 10, 50 .. are formed by combining numerals. A numeral following a major numeral means add. A numeral preceding means subtract.
So to count to 10 -- I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X.
Fifty is L. Forty is XL. 60 is LX. 61 is LXI
One hundred is C. 101 is CI, 111 is CXI.
1941 is MCMXLI.
2022 is MMXXII.
You'll notice that these numbers are all easy to form if you don't have pen or paper and have to chisel the figure into wax or stone.
So there, was that hard?
Print an "S". We start at the top and curve down. My children start at the bottom and curve up. Same with a "T". They make the crosspiece last and draw the vertical line up from the bottom.
My children are all amazing artists because they spent their entire childhood drawing. I'm sure their fine-motor coordination is equal to any child required to learn cursive. As someone said, Mandarin lessons (and other options) accomplish the same goal while teaching a more valued skill.
Mike Sylwester said...
they write the alphabet from the bottom up
I must not be the only person here who does not know what that means.
i *think* she means, they write their LETTERS* from the bottom up.
LETTERS* wow! more confusion!! Their Alphabetic Characters
The Vault Dweller said...
Blogger Howard said...
Purpose of learning cursive in addition to learning drafting style printing is because both are primary art forms that create a mind-body connection to words
I was thinking something similar. I think there have a been a few studies that show students retain more information when they take notes by hand rather than typing them on a laptop. The mind and body are more linked than many believe. I suspect there is a pedagogical benefit to attaching a somatic experience with writing a word in cursive, which is frequently one long extended movement, versus printing or typing out that same word in a series of discrete letters.
When you are learning something you are building circuits in your brain. The more you use a circuit the more that pathway is reinforced and the easier it is for you to access that skill, memory, or movement.
One book I read on the subject but forgot the name of detailed how they learned about the brain's ability to rewire and process information through studying different traumatic injuries. It detailed how some people learned things differently because they no longer had sight or a part of their brain was missing.
I find that reading the notes out loud and then trying to explain the subject to another person is also effective in reinforcement.
Also it seems that caffeine is stimulative and aids in learning and memory reinforcement.
RigelDog said...
I'm stunned by all the comments here that printing is faster than cursive. The whole point of cursive is that it's faster---thus the etymology from the Latin for "run."
That takes practice though.
In 8th grade I wrote my last research essay final draft in pen/cursive. 12 pages single space.
There is a reason why we have moved on from cursive.
I think there have a been a few studies that show students retain more information when they take notes by hand rather than typing them on a laptop.
My method of studying in medical school involved writing everything down. No highlighting. We didn't have laptops then. I would summarize the book chapters, then outline the summaries. Now, I am told that students skip class since the lectures are all online. I guess that will work as long as they keep dumbing down education and inflating grades.
Face it, cursive is for managing runny ink used with quills and fountain pens. I took a typing class in middle school. Now "keyboarding" is introduced quite early.
The French did a better job of teaching small-muscle motor skills than we ever did, and they are able to read Barbar books in the original cursive.
"It instantly became apparent that printing was at least three times as fast as cursive."
Is it? Not in my experience. Mind you, my cursive handwriting is not elegant or "pretty" at all, and I frankly haven't used cursive in some time, as most of my written communications now and in recent years have been via digital media. However, it always takes me longer (and is more tiring) to print very much data by hand than by using cursive.
"What’s the Point of Teaching Cursive?"
Hand eye coordination? I've seen graduate students write in all caps hand printed letters, it does not impress. Maybe they should just call it calligraphy, the old quill written documents are beautiful.
Oh, for fuck's sake! The same could be said about the basic math operations- everyone has a calculator with them at all times. Or why bother learning to read, when you can have Siri read it out loud to you?
People who can write cursive are going to be people who can print better, by the way, and unless we are going to a world without timed essay writing, the ability to write quickly is still a necessary skill since you can do it faster. We are well on our way to a world where we will lose the ability to maintain our civilization.
So if the public will no longer be able to read cursive, will all logos be changed to print?
As governments strangle power generation for Gaia, cursive will prove itself quite useful after the lights (and your printer) go 'offline' for good. Knowing how to communicate without using an electronic devise will become a thing once again.
I read the McWhorter piece earlier, and I'm tepidly on his side. (He's kind of tepid in his conclusion, so that's appropriate.) I think we need to teach a couple of forms of typing now. That's much more helpful in communication, and just as helpful in fine motor skills. The one concern I have is that cursive readable by other people is faster than printing, but the fact is that when I'm taking notes my sloppy hybrid style is faster than either and serves me well.
Many standard editions of classic literature divide chapters and sections using Roman numerals. Just look up a translation of Augustine's City of God as an example.
Printing involves less strokes than cursive, so it is faster (especially if you don't care about neatness). I write fastest when I use a combination of printed and cursive letters.
Mystified that no one has commented on how learning cursive and roman numerals prepare the mind for the idea that the same statement can be represented in multiple different ways. Understanding that has to be fundamental to the ability to learn a foreign language or learn computer programming.
Mystified that no one has noted how learning cursive or roman numerals primes the mind to understand how the same statement can be represented in multiple ways. This is the first encounter many American kids would ever have with this concept. It is fundamental to the ability to learn a foreign language or computer programming language.
More knowledge is also a fundamental benefit to society. People arguing against cursive and roman numerals are in favor of ignorance.
Yah- I too utilized them for analyzing Looney Tunes...
Roman numerals are quite useful! Several years ago, we were required to fill out a stupid form with our run numbers that could have easily been pulled up on the computer in the office. The first day they gave us the form to fill out, I did so... In Roman numerals. There was no second day.
Why do teachers spend their time finding things to not teach?
When I was working as a land surveyor I often had to read old handwritten deeds. It was not easy because the styles have changed over the years and old 1940-50s copiers did a lousy job.
How about lawyers researching old property ownerships, deeds, wills? Shall we just pretend nothing before 1990 ever happened? What a ridiculous idea.
@Mike Sylwester
When kids are taught to write they're taught to start the letters from the top and then their pencil travels down. One particularly popular writing curriculum says something like,"start at the top and dive down" to teach kids how to print a T. Kate's kids start from the bottom and go up which becomes complicated when writing cursive.
You need it to take proper notes. Printing is too slow, and keyboards don't imprint the material in your mind.
Leading the list of the outdated things young people don't need or use are newspapers.
Our elementary kid has been taught cursive, and we've learned that learning cursive improves kids' ability to write legibly in both cursive and print. They spend so much time on computers that they need specific, focused time practicing their handwriting.
Roman numerals were not in any way a consistent decimal system.
For all their variability, alphabets are CONSISTENT in their letters for the same language. The difference between cursive and printed is really no different than that amongst computer fonts. The real issue ios intellectuual laziness.
It used to be that you went to medical school because your handwriting was too bad to be a lawyer.
Well hah! I couldn't stand the sight of blood, so I went to law school--and my handwriting is worse than your average doctor.
All kidding aside, I wish that my skill in cursive writing was better than it is.
add 49 to 73 that’s 50 - 1 + 70 + 3 = 120 - 1 + 3 = 120 + 2 = 122
you have to be kidding
49
+73
------
9+3 = 12
carry the one
4 + 1 + 7 = 12
122
Would seem to require fewer steps 3 vs 4 and takes advantage of knowing about place value, a pretty important concept.
My brother and I went to very different schools (5 years age difference and we moved quite a bit). Strangely our cursive handwriting is almost identical. His is a little messier but I was always able to sign his signature! Fortunately I never found a use for that skill - he was a lawyer. My wife and her two half sisters also have similar and almost identical handwriting.
My brother and I also have very similar voices. One time when he was a teenager he spent 10 minutes on the phone with my mother and the whole time she thought she was speaking with me!
I majored in genetics and psychology at university (early 70s)at a university that had an outstanding molecular and human genetics department and an outstanding behavioral psychology department. It was a bit schizophrenic and quite strange dealing with the nature/nurture dilemma with one area being on the far side of the nature position and the other area being very much on the nurture side. I came away with a firm nature orientation and that genetics is much more important in the molding of human beings than nurture. That got reinforced by observations like the ones above. But its not a popular position to take in todays world where everyone strives to be a victim.
Cursive has never been "necessary," unlike standard numerical formatting. Cursive fosters care and attention in writing. I'm sad to have lost the skill, and don't think that more "practical" writing skills have improved much of anything.
Or why bother learning to read, when you can have Siri read it out loud to you?
I recall reading a science fiction story positing just such an eventuality. I read the story back in the 80s so it wasn't Siri reading the story but computers/video/voice recognition had rendered reading obsolete and it had become a lost art. Over the centuries people had forgotten the concept of reading.
Cursive writing is not only a utilitarian skill, but also a form of graphic self-expression. Peter Greenaway's film "The Pillow Book" centers on a character who judges the suitability of her lovers by how their calligraphy feels upon her skin. Maybe that would spark some interest in cursive writing.
They don't NEED to learn major scales either, but I would imagine that John's own kids will be adept at cursive as well as their major and minor scales and arpeggios. I'd be interested in revisiting this with McWhorter in ten years and see what he thinks.
For me, cursive was non-stop torture. And much slower than printing. I still remember the day in college when I realized that no-one was making me write in cursive anymore. I could just stop. The relief was like a religious experience.
They spend so much time on computers that they need specific, focused time practicing their handwriting
Me too :) As to Roman numerals, the Romans used an abacus for calculation. Now if only they had double entry bookkeeping. Pinging Ezra Pound.
Inga said...
I love cursive handwriting. I get compliments on my beautiful handwriting. I love handwriting so much I learned how to do calligraphy. It is an art form and the lack of interest in the arts in school has suffered with the push for stem learning. Offer a wider variety of life skills in schools. Teach rudimentary cursive and those who excel, offer advanced classes as one might take an art class.
We are in 100% agreement. It's a Festivus miracle!
'Like, say, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution.'
Why? Nobody seems to give a fuck what it means anymore.
Like WK, my mom knew shorthand...was a secretary out of high school in the '50s...how she met my father in a roundabout way...
"What’s the Point of Teaching Cursive?"
Speed of AI-assisted note-taking on tablets.
At one point, you needed cursive and a fine, legible handwriting to get a clerk's job. Given the energy situation, that may be the case again. It's probably too much to hope that candles, quills, and sealing wax will also be coming back.
Someone still teaches this?
Not only is cursive good for speed of writing, but it also is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.
Not only is cursive good for speed of writing, but it also is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.
Not only is cursive good for speed of writing, but it also is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.
Not only is cursive good for speed of writing, but it also is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.
I dropped cursive in college when I couldn't read my own notes. Hasty printing or semi-cursive is better. My cursive signature is totally illegible most of the time, and for years I have signed many legal documents in big, bold FIRST M. LAST style. Distinctive AND readable.
I spent a lot of time at work and for school deciphering and transcribing cursive handwriting from the 19th and 20th centuries. Sometimes I had to scan or copy the original in order to bring out the faded ink or pencil marks from long ago. At least almost everything was in English--there are a few dozen family letters in a box behind me in that godawful German fraktur script, which need specialists to decode.
Not sure if my son learned cursive or not. Probably did (HS 2004) but doesn't use it. And he's a very talented draftsman and graphic artist either way.
Reading Roman numerals is a party trick. I'm good at it, but their utility nowadays is almost nil.
OTOH, nothing McWhorter or we say will affect what and how the young learn, going forward.
OK Boomers you can see it happening: everything we learned in grade school that helped us prepare to be productive knowledgeable citizens is being replaced by tasks that frustrate the excellent students and bore everyone else. Reliance on technology is replacing the art of thinking and the less we use the brain for complex problem solving and pattern recognition the more empty space there is to stuff in the ideological BS the teachers are eager to impart. The less we as a free people are able to problem solve independently the more we want someone else to tell us what to do, cognitively. For some reason the same teachers pushing CRT and transmania and Social Activism in schools are the same people who fail to teach to grade level already, the same people who are ignoring their primary mission to teach.
Public schools are a threat to public health.
I learned Gregg shorthand. Did you know that wh- words have the h pronounced before the w? Gregg does.
Once my generation (Me: b. 1946) and maybe that of my kids dies out, one will need "research guides" (like at the attached links for German Sutterlin and Kurrent scripts) to read all kinds of historical documents in their original form: letters, legal & land documents, ledgers & business records of one kind or another, etc. If that's not of concern to the greater part of the population, then who cares? "Script" professionals will have a new skill to market.
...believe me, it's a bugger to try to decipher outmoded handwritten documents.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Germany_Handwriting
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/img_auth.php/8/89/Kurrent_Font_Help_Wiki.pdf
Never mind Roman numerals. Do today's kids even know that there were Romans?
One of my clients has a long hallway with 1,000-1,500 small (@8"x8"x12" deep)lockers in it for employees to keep small personal items that they can't bring into their work area.
All that are in use have company combination padlocks. Many, perhaps a 1/3rd of the locks are closed but the shackle is left unsnapped.
I asked about this and was told that many people have problems with combination locks and getting them open. Thus they prefer not to place anything valuable and trust the good nature of the fellow employees.
It ain't that hard folks. Certainly easier than cursive. I learned how to use one in 4th grade gymn.
Blogger Sebastian said...
Speed of AI-assisted note-taking on tablets.
I do that a lot on my Samsung tablet. Occasionally on the phone but the keyboard is too small.
But is swiping the same as cursive? I'm not forming any characters, just swiping from character to character without lifting my finger. Is it really even a form of writing?
One benefit of getting rid of teaching the art of handwriting is that the 7 and 8 year olds get to work on identifying their true gender in class, and whether or not they want to be a top or bottom.
few of the winners do cursive
this discussion shows that in merikka teachers can make anything that could be easy into insurmountable and need for more funding etc.
I agree that it's sort of like Roman numerals.
But I tend to think that if you don't know Roman Numerals, you're likely (not certainly, but more likely than not) either generally uneducated or a dumbass.
It's a rebuttable presumption sort of thing.
So sure. Cursive is like Roman numerals.
Manual dexterity, for one.
My mom saved my dad's letters in college and the service before they wed. He had beautiful cursive, thanks to the nuns, and it enhanced the enjoyment of reading them. My instruction from the nuns was stopped prematurely when I moved abroad in third grade where cursive not on the curriculum. I only got criticism for my handwriting.
Inga
Good for you. You ought to try Spencerian. Requires a certain nib and there are loads of practice books
Reading letters of ancestors who were educated around the turn of the last century I am amazed to see their beautiful writing.
As a real estate lawyer, from time to time, I had to read old deeds and other title-related documents that were handwritten. They're in the records, and all our title chains are based on them.
“The Missing Ink:The Lost Art of Handwriting” by Philip Hensher. Worth a read
Michael Lopez. I associated knowledge of Roman letters with learning Latin. Ubiquitous when and where I grew up but not elsewhere.
Learning cursive is an important part of the way the brain gets wired.
One benefit of abandoning cursive writing is that no one will be able to read any historical documents. Since the young all think history began last week, it will be less painful than knowing what they have missed.
I only write in cursive when using a fountain pen.
There is something elegant and thought provoking when I write that way.
I tried a case way back when as a young insurance defense attorney, in which the plaintiff’s hack doctor’s typed treatment records didn’t make any reference to the injury being claimed (neck or low back, I forget which), even though the doc’s final report and testimony said it was caused by our accident and treated by him. I confronted the hack doc with this on cross, and he claimed it was in his notes. Which of course consisted of pages and pages of absolutely unreadable and indistinguishable bumps and humps. Which I am certain was deliberate on his part.
So the jury got to decide, because the judge couldn’t exclude it.
They agreed with me, fortunately.
I’ll do McWhorter one better. Why do we have to know words when we have emojis.
Michael said...
Never mind Roman numerals. Do today's kids even know that there were Romans?
ummm Nope!
Tiktoker Says The Roman Empire Didn't Exist
As a 10 year old, my cursive handwriting was so bad that my father demanded that I start every summer day by copying the first few paragraphs of that day's NYT "Sports of the Times" into a composition book. My handwriting never improved, but the exercise taught me how good writers create sentences and paragraphs. There is something about writing in cursive that makes the words you transcribe into something you own, something internalized. This is in contrast to memorializing words with a keyboard, a process that is far more evanescent, and a process in which the meaning of the words is more detached from the physical process used in making the letters into sentences.
The unit of cursive writing is the word. The unit of typing is the keyboard strike.
why bother learning to read, when you can have Siri read it out loud to you?
I'm in a "book club" in which I'm the only one left who actually reads the books.
I hate audiobooks.
"Printing involves less strokes than cursive...."
No, it doesn't. Cursive allows one to write an entire word with basically one elongated stroke, with only dots (over "i" and "j") or cross strokes occasionally needing to be added. With printing, every letter (in general) requires several separate strokes, (e.g., "E" requires the vertical stroke and three horizontal strokes, a total of 4 strokes).
What will writing on electronic devices, in any font, do to history?
Without cursive, much history will be inaccessible to the average person, making those people utterly reliant on what the professionals tell them or fail to tell them, which may be the ultimate goal. Reliance implies compliance.
What percentage of folks on earth write in languages in which cursive irrelevant? Through history?
Well, beyond being able to read almost anything more than 120 years old, there is evidence that not only is learning enhanced by taking note by hand, but that cursive being a bit of drawing also enhances the retention and learning. I would guess because it engages the right brain along with the left brain.
Sorry, Michael K. I'm making the same point as you did before me.
Robert Cook also makes an important point. Cursive is a transparent shorthand. It's a form of handwriting that can keep up with actual speech. Imagine trying to transcribe an ongoing conversation handwritten print.
The worst part of this is the authorship. I usually admire John McWhorter's work, but this one is subpar.
Yancey Ward said...
One benefit of getting rid of teaching the art of handwriting is that the 7 and 8 year olds get to work on identifying their true gender in class, and whether or not they want to be a top or bottom.
12/14/22, 12:06 PM
You made me spit out my lunch. Now THAT is funny. Thanks for the laugh...although, the way things are going, it is true enough.
Hannio said...
Printing involves less strokes than cursive, so it is faster (especially if you don't care about neatness). I write fastest when I use a combination of printed and cursive letters.
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This sums it up for me very well. I took my class notes in 80% printing, 20% cursive, scrambled together into whatever was fastest.
This highlights an increasing difficulty between the modern world and what kids need to learn. Many things are now handled well by technology, but the human needs to learn about and have basic proficiency in things if they hope to not become prisoners of their devices. Cursive writing, being able to do math in your head, basic hand tool skills, etc. are all mostly not needed day to day, but students should learn them to a level of familiarity to understand not how reality works now but to comprehend the past.
Consider this description of the horse culture in the US prior to the advent of cars:
"But horses were everywhere, pulling surreys, democrats, buggies, cabs, delivery wagons of every sort on Main Street, and pulling harvesters on the tractorless farms out in the countryside.
The sights and sounds and sensations of horse-and-carriage Iife were part of the universal American experience: he c!op-clop of horses' hoofs; the stiff jolting of an iron-tired carriage on a stony road; the grinding noise of he brake being applied to ease the horse on the downhill stretch; the necessity of holding one's breath when the horse sneezed; the sight of sand, carried up on the tires and wooden spokes of carriage wheel, spilling off in little cascades as the wheel revolved; the look of a country road overgrown by grass, with three tracks in it instead of two, the middle one made by horses' hoofs; the special maIe ordeal of getting out of the carriage and walking up the steeper hills to lighten the load; and the more severe ordeal, for the unpracticed, of harnessing horse which could recognize inexperience at one scornful glance. During the Northern winter the jingle of sleigh bells was everywhere. On summer evenings, along the tree-lined streets of innumerable American towns, families sitting on their front porches would watch the fine carriages of the town as they drove pst for a proud evening's jaunt and the cognoscenti would wait eagerly for the glimpse of the banker's trotting pair or the sporting lawyer's 2:40 pacer. And one of the magnificent sights of urban life was that of the fire engine, pulled by three galloping horses, careening down a city street with its bell clanging."
Is that utilitarian today? No, but if you have familiarity with it, you can understand pre-1900 books and writings. Same as the modern student studying real literature of old, needs familiarity with Christianity and the Bible at a historical level.
This make even more to the point a statement by Elon Musk that students are never told why they are being force to study math, or literature, or whatever. So the thinking student questions the utility of how they are being force to "waste" their life learning these things when all that is really needed is an adult to give context and the relationship of the subject to the whole. Instead, students are told some faceless functionary has decreed and they are only to comply and accept that rewards, i.e., good grades, come to those who don't question Big Education.
I agree. An unpopular position among homeschoolers.
Though my kids did learn cursive because they wanted to.
For lawyers, classical hierarchical headings of legal documents start at the first level with roman numerals, then capital letters for the second level, then numerals for the third level, lower case letters for the fourth level, and then romanettes for the fifth level. In many instances, it's no bueno if you cannot work fluently with that kind of formatting.
While we use a different style scheme, romanettes are frequently used in fourth or fifth level lists and sometimes, into large numbers.
However, for the X'ers and Z'ers, I suppose we can use multilevel emojis.
- Krumhorn
I'll worry about this the day the schools produce a large majority of students that know basic reading, writing and math skills. [Critical thinking is a bridge too far to even dream.]
I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.
I really doubt that any time NOT spent on cursive will be dedicated to my preferred outcome.
Doc K mentions historical documents. Those will always have specialist interpreters, and are of interest only to a percent or two of the populace anyway.
It heartens me--who spent my working life in humanities education--that people still imagine the past is important or relevant to most other people. History is always a minority taste and a hard sell, and given what I see of public school teachers and admins it's just as well they leave the past alone.
As others have suggested, if subsequent generations cannot decipher our present form(s) of cursive, historical records such as legal documents (i.e., court, probate, land recordings) will be the exclusive fields of professionals and hobbyists. Which may be ok, as judged by most people. By way of example:
I have done a boatload of genealogical research into German civil and church records written in Sutterlin and Kurrent script, and printed Fraktur typeface, and have spent uncounted hours extracting meaning and information from them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur
If those who follow us need to research cursive records, they may find themselves doing the same w/er/t efficient use of time.
Does that indicate that we should teach all for the sake of some? I dunno....
Oops. I think I doubled up on my commenting. When comments don't post immediately, I tend to forget if/what I've written. Apologies. :(
Japanese writing has gone in the opposite direction over the centuries, beginning with the adoption of Chinese characters (kanji) that became more and more cursive.
Then some characters were simplified even more, evolving into "hiragana" and "katakana" syllabic alphabets.
The thing is, you have to be able to read kanji, hiragana and katakana to be considered literate in modern Japanese, and "well-educated" to read cursive styles of kanji (there are at least three).
As for writing, ballpoint pens have resulted in many kanji becoming more cursive over time.
When I lived in Japan I sometimes asked my Japanese friends to write down a phrase I picked from a text. More than once I couldn't read what they wrote!
He has a point. The same logic applies as for proper use of abaci, and of sliderules. All great inventions of their day, but the need for them has passed, and it is time to move on and teach children more important things. Like touch typing. Replace teaching cursive with teaching touch typing, on a dvorak keyboard, and it would be actual progress.
People should learn Roman numerals though. They are routinely used and easy to learn.
Many years ago I taught myself German cursive, just for fun. People who don't see the value of traditional/lost arts aren't worth knowing.
"Well, beyond being able to read almost anything more than 120 years old, there is evidence that not only is learning enhanced by taking note by hand, but that cursive being a bit of drawing also enhances the retention and learning. I would guess because it engages the right brain along with the left brain."
I've read interviews with writers about their working processes, and a good number prefer to write their early (or even all) drafts by hand, as the slowness of it, compared to using a typewriter or computer, as well as the hand/mind connection that results helps them get into a state of mind more conducive to their writing. Probably a greater right-brain/left-brain engagement, as you state above. (There are writers, of course, who prefer using typewriters or computers.)
Speling is next.
NFL trying to teach Roman numerals. Up next, LVII.
In my elementary years, 1976 to 1981, handwriting was one of around 11 areas where a grade was received. I never made an A.
I have read that women generally have better handwriting than men because fine motor control develops later in boys than in girls, and so the boys are unable to master it at the time it is taught. Certainly true of my hand-writing.
The only thing children are really, really good at learning is language. I certainly wish that the time which was spent "teaching" me cursive had instead been devoted to Latin and Greek instead. I use cursive exactly never. My signature is a completely illegible scribble.
"sliderules"
Before I retired it was usual for newly hired engineers to be squired into my office to let me show them what a slide rule looked like. I kept one as wall art.
And, no, I did not still use it on the job. Not THAT old, yet. But get off my lawn anyway.
Tim shows that at least One of us, is Really confused, when he said...
Replace teaching cursive with teaching touch typing, on a dvorak keyboard, and it would be actual progress
WHAT, on EARTH? are you talking about?
By "touch typing" i guess you mean texting? Which students ALREADY know
A "dvorak keyboard" ? What ap would Even use what ever on earth That is?
Maybe you're being sarcastic? And pretending to want kids to learn some obsolete and esoteric things?
I learned cursive in elementary school. Worked fine until I wrote an essay about Woodrow Wilson and my teacher couldn't understand "concurrent resolution." My consecutive r's looked too much like an 'n.' "Concunent"?
After that, I switched to a mixed cursive/printing, which I still use today. I disagree with McWhorter (a rare thing with me): This is a skill that remains useful, and perhaps especially so when you can't see the point of it. Cf. Chesterton's Fence.
My handwriting is so bad, reading old census records is a snap. Reading a note I wrote last week, not so much.
Tim,
I don't think the time for slide rules has passed at all. That is a decidedly minority among the engineers in my family. Neither my daughter nor granddaughter wanted anything to do with my 55 year old K&E 12" when they went off to learn to be chemical engineers.
But I think they should be taught in high school and college. Punching in numbers to a calculator or computer and then trusting that the answer is right is a formula for failure. It is why I can give a clerk a $10 for a $6 order and get $7 in change. The cash register told them to give me $7. They have no sense that something is wrong.
A slide rule forces you to think about the problem, how to set it up and a very rough estimate of the expected answer before you even pick it up to work the math.
I'd be happy deleting cursive if they replaced it with slide rule drill.
Having said all that I have not used my sliderule on a math problem since the late 60s.
I feel similarly about GPS and maps. I love using GPS on my phone when traveling. I never get lost. I like all the other features too. On the other hand, all the GPS tells me is "Keep straight for 5 miles then left" It tells me almost nothing about what is around me. It doesn't even tell me (though it could) whether I am headed north or south.
That is why I always travel with road maps of the area. Not always the newest, not always the most local. But a road map gives me a sense of place. I wonder how many kids can use road maps these days? Or have even seen one?
John Henry
"By 'touch typing' i guess you mean texting?"
Have you never heard the term "touch typing?" It means being able to type proficiently without looking at the keys, a key skill when transcribing written notes into typed documents, or just to be a speedier typist.
I can understand the joy of pens and ink and cursive, but I'm glad that typewriters and typing classes have become largely a thing of the past. All that trouble and aggravation, for something people can literally pick up without any lessons at all.
Some writers love their typewriters. Some older writers would type their stories over and over again from the beginning and say that it really put them into touch with what they were writing. That reminds me of the stuck keys, smudges, smears, letters above and below the line, ribbons wearing out, papers getting put in crooked, carriage return skipping a line, having to hyphenate at the end of the line, messing up and having to use whiteout, and all the other horrors of the old days.
People should learn Roman numerals though. They are routinely used and easy to learn.
My Dad went to memory care before he passed-on. The keypad by the door of the memory care facility included the exit code, but in Roman numerals, and backwards.
I was really kinda surprised that Dad never figured it out. He definitely wanted to get away from that place.
I use fountain pens for nearly everything. I write in cursive or print - depending on my mood and the paper/pen I'm using. Being an artsy fart - I am very keyed into how it *** feels *** to make marks on paper or other surfaces depending on the tool used.
Cursive is more relaxing in that you put pen on the surface of the paper, and it stays there longer. You engage in a more loopy, rhythmic motion with cursive. Printing feels "stabby" to me at times, always lifting and putting down the point of the pen.
When using particular shading inks, printing will bring out the shading better than cursive owing to the 'stabby' motions described above.
My widowed mother--who had learned basic typing in high school but not used it much after her first job at the Army Depot (1944-45)--taught herself speed/touch-typing in the '70s and got a job at the IRS.
I was signed up for a typing class my first semester of college (Bus. Admin. major haha) but didn't go after the first day. Eventually I had to get proficient on my own at E2F* typing, as used here.
*Enhanced 2 Finger
The research on the benefits of handwritten vs. typewritten note-taking is absolutely overwhelming--as obvious as anything you ever get in social sciences / education research. If you are a fast typist you just end up transcribing too much of what the teacher is saying, but no one writes that fast in longhand, thus forcing the student to put in the cognitive effort to boil things down and express key points in pithy and memorable ways. Printing is too slow for that kind of note-taking; cursive is just right. And there seems to be something about writing ideas out by hand that makes them easier to remember.
In middle school my daughter insisted that taking notes on her computer was better than hand-writing, but my wife bribed her in some way to try multi-colored handwritten note-taking just once: daughter aced whatever test it was, and she has never looked back.(She graduated from Princeton last year, so it seemed to work out for her).
Cursive is one of those things like times-tables, Roman numerals, memorizing poems that in isolation seems antiquated or arbitrary but in context actually enables a lot of other learning. (Memorizing times-tables up to 20x20 gives students an intuitive grasp of numerical relations that they'll need for more abstract math--and long division is close to impossible without memorized times tables. Roman numerals aren't intrinsically important, but they are an easy way of embedding important concepts that make place-value, decimals, and fractions easier to learn--all needed for calculus or linear algebra. Memorizing and reciting a reasonably long poem gives you a built-in pronunciation guide for a language that you can use to help read unfamiliar words and to spell words you have heard but not seen. Learning to read and calculate on an analogue clock teaches modular arithmetic).
Almost all the things taught in the legendary "one-room schoolhouse" turn out to be both useful and effective for "scaffolding" more advanced learning, which makes sense if you realize that those curricula and teaching methods were under immense selection pressure to impart maximum learning in minimum time. Tradition and evolution are both smarter than you, or me, or Horace Mann.
Imposing the Prussian educational model on American schools was an enormous step backwards. The distributed genius of generations of American women had evolved some of the most effective means of teaching that have ever existed, but, as usual, our elites ignored what had been built by people lacking credentials and imposed centralized European models. Then they turned around the blamed visible inferiority of the results of the Prussian approach on the supposedly racially inferiority of that generation of immigrants. It should surprise absolutely no one that many education "reformers" were, or later became, eugenicists.
As a southpaw, cursive was a much more difficult task as we have to push against the pen rather than pull.i was fortunate that I had a parent who was also left handed so as to show me the correct way to hold a pen. Even with that, I practiced diligently to make sure my hand writing was legible.
It's sad that this skill is being marginalized. The ability to write beautifully is an advantage and in this day and age sets you apart. I hate to be blunt but it's the difference between being perceived as a slave or a free man.
Robert Cook,
I'm with you. "Touch typing" is just as you say, and that people don't even understand it is another sign of the decay of our civilization -- er, sorry, something else that we have lost.
Even character-based writing systems develop various cursive alternatives for people who need to write fast. Someone above mentioned Japanese, but there are Chinese cursives too, though not in formal education. Scribes used them. Children in China now are taught to read in pinyin, and gradually transition into characters over the several years it takes them to learn enough characters (1,500 to 2,000) to read a newspaper comfortably.
Now with ubiquitous cellphones, "character amnesia" for characters one seldom needs to write is becoming far more extensive and widespread.
I wonder what this means for handwritten "thank you" notes and how they (and their authors) are perceived by people under 30.
John McWhorter said..."I hope that the time once devoted to teaching cursive can now be diverted to teaching students about the content of their writing rather than its physical form."
Dream on, pal. Dream on.
As an aside, I thought it was interesting how McWhorter continually referred to "scrip," always in quotation marks. I grew up in the NYC area, and the word was used as a common informal alternative to "cursive," but it was always written and pronounced as "script," with a hard "t." I'm not going to admit how much time I just spent comparing "scrip" and "script" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
"Scrip" I know only as a synonym for pseudo-currency, such as that issued by "company towns," or by Heinlein's Luna Authority in his The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
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