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by plytheman
3147 days ago
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Personally I (30 years old now) went to Catholic school (K-12) and learned cursive somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade and was forced to write in cursive until I graduated 8th grade. Most of the time as a kid I hated it and wished I could write in block letters and once I hit freshman year of high school I never looked back. Fast forward through four years of high school and three gap years when as a freshman in college I realized I really missed writing in cursive. After a pretty rocky few weeks of abysmal looking script I got back into the groove and took four years of notes in handwriting and continue to journal and write notes and letters in cursive. I've always been somewhat artistic and take a lot of pride in my handwriting as I would a drawing. I look at others' writing to see how they draw letters I like and try to incorporate it into my own style. I take my time writing each letter and word and try to make it as consistent and beautiful as I can (and while others compliment me on my writing I'm always a bit dissatisfied) and generally take a lot of pleasure in the simple act of writing. For me it's a means of expression for myself. Despite all that, I've tried really hard to come up with defenses for teaching it in schools much like I was taught and I generally come up pretty empty handed. Other than reading some random bits of cursive here or there in our society there really is little need for it. I'd like to think that its artistic merits are enough to justify it, in giving kids a chance to express themselves, but I doubt most kids appreciate it for that - even I hated it as a child. I'd like to say it will help improve people's writing, but frankly most people's writing I see, cursive or otherwise, looks like, as Sister Anne back in 7th grade would say, chicken scratch. As a piece of tradition which unites us as a thread through previous generations I do like it, in a way it's a cultural link to my parents, grandparents, and beyond, but that doesn't necessarily stand as a great argument against more practical skills that could be taught in that time. If the opportunity cost of teaching it can be ignored, though, it doesn't seem otherwise harmful to keep teaching it for the sake of tradition. Maybe keep teaching it but not spend as much time on it to satisfy all camps? |
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And instead of teaching people pure block letters, teach them some form of italics or D'Nealian. That offers some of the aesthetic advantages of cursive without the unreadability.
(interestingly enough, my elementary school in the early '90s taught D'Nealian and cursive, but no pure block letters)