IN lawmakers to re-instate mandatory cursive

[Yla]

Relevant news I read today: the elementary in the next town participates in an pilot experiment and teaches the children a variant of print with conjoined letters. As far as I gathered it, they learn print first, as usual, and then are instructed to try and join the letters together, achieving something like a primitive cursive.

I think that's a good idea.

[verasthebrujah]

Zachski:
None were signatures, not even on the signup sheet. It was their kid's name, then what food item they were bringing. I would agree that it would be inappropriate to write in cursive if their cursive was at all illegible, but it wasn't. In fact, the only writing that I was unable to read easily on the entire sheet was in print.

Of the four examples I gave, only the dinner ticket was illegible, and I suspect that it is probably a series of abbreviations that would be incomprehensible to non-employees even in print.

Admiral:
I completely comprehend the difference between "individual" benefit and "objective" benefit, which is exactly why I pointed out that I received little individual benefit from taking biology, yet still recognize the objective benefit of the subject (to use your terminology). I'm not saying that, since I've benefited from cursive, it is universally useful, nor do I believe that you are saying that, since you haven't, it is universally useless.

I don't accept the assumption that all cursive is sloppy and difficult to read, though I admit that it often is. Also, I disagree with the categorization of cursive as art. As I (and others) have already pointed out, it has the practical benefit of increasing average writing speed.

I'm not being anal, I'm being realistic. Today's students will come across cursive in their lives, and they benefit from having the ability to read it. Period. It doesn't matter why people use it, only that they do. Though, is it unreasonable to suggest that people use it because they find it useful? Yes, it is dying, for all of the reasons that you pointed out, and I don't have any expectation to stop or reverse that. In fact, it will likely not only continue but accelerate as laptop and tablet use continues to grow. Talk to me again in a generation, but to me, cursive use is still common enough to justify the small amount of resources necessary to teach it.

[Vene]

I seriously question whether cursive is actually faster. We see from here that print and cursive writing are actually equally as fast (and legible for that matter). The only thing faster is when a hybrid is created by the older students, but that's still not very persuasive because we know from here* that handwriting speed increases with age. Back up your claim that cursive writing is actually faster. Until then, it seems like a better idea to optimize writing by mastering one form.

*The relevant figure for those without access to the full text.

[Dragon Zachski]

Veras, let me put it this way.

If we're talking about cost-benefit, then the stress cost of reading cursive is higher than the stress cost of reading print. (Unless someone is just really really really bad at printing, in which case, they'd be worse at cursive) Sure, you can teach someone to read cursive, and you can also teach them to read hieroglyphics, but you will always be able to read what you were first taught and what is commonly used every where much better than something that is used as a minority.

Books use print (naturally). Sign up sheets REQUIRE the use of print. The business world (which includes jobs that aren't necessarily office work) discourage the use of cursive.

Quite frankly, when you write in cursive something that is meant to be read by someone else, you're being rude. Like slurring your words when talking to someone who needs to hear exactly what you're saying when you COULD be talking much clearer.

[Admiral Lithp]

Cooking has the practical benefit of providing you with food. It is classified as culinary arts. Graphic design has the practical benefit of making things stand out. It is classified as graphic arts. Anything you can make a business out of has the practical benefit of making you money. Doesn't mean that--printing t-shirt designs, writing books, designing logos, etc.--are not art.

I still want to know why students can't self-teach cursive if it's for their own personal use. I developed all of my note-taking strategies on my own. We could also have a class on nationally-recognized note-taking symbols. We do not. But that's different, because it's not the way we did it when I was a kid.

[Vene]

Dec 8, 2011 18:58:17 GMT -5 Admiral Lithp said:

Cooking has the practical benefit of providing you with food. It is classified as culinary arts. Graphic design has the practical benefit of making things stand out. It is classified as graphic arts. Anything you can make a business out of has the practical benefit of making you money. Doesn't mean that--printing t-shirt designs, writing books, designing logos, etc.--are not art.

I still want to know why students can't self-teach cursive if it's for their own personal use. I developed all of my note-taking strategies on my own. We could also have a class on nationally-recognized note-taking symbols. We do not. But that's different, because it's not the way we did it when I was a kid.

We could teach the shorthand secretaries use.

[Dragon Zachski]

Dec 8, 2011 20:37:42 GMT -5 Vene said:

Dec 8, 2011 18:58:17 GMT -5 Admiral Lithp said:

Cooking has the practical benefit of providing you with food. It is classified as culinary arts. Graphic design has the practical benefit of making things stand out. It is classified as graphic arts. Anything you can make a business out of has the practical benefit of making you money. Doesn't mean that--printing t-shirt designs, writing books, designing logos, etc.--are not art.

I still want to know why students can't self-teach cursive if it's for their own personal use. I developed all of my note-taking strategies on my own. We could also have a class on nationally-recognized note-taking symbols. We do not. But that's different, because it's not the way we did it when I was a kid.

We could teach the shorthand secretaries use.

I didn't take notes much during college. Oh, I did take SOME notes, but not nearly as extensive as it could be - mostly stuff that would be hardest to remember due to being unable to access the information at any time.

No, the way I learned in college was... I took the book, laid it on the desk, placed my forehead on it, and absorbed the knowledge through osmosis.

[Admiral Lithp]

I'm also wondering if using predominately cursive can influence your ability to read & write in print.

[verasthebrujah]

Vene:

I seriously question whether cursive is actually faster. We see from h ere that print and cursive writing are actually equally as fast (and legible for that matter). The only thing faster is when a hybrid is created by the older students, but that's still not very persuasive because we know from here* that handwriting speed increases with age. Back up your claim that cursive writing is actually faster. Until then, it seems like a better idea to optimize writing by mastering one form.

The Graham, Weintraub, and Berninger article is pretty interesting. As for providing support that cursive is faster than manuscript, first of all, they cite two other pieces of research which found that cursive is faster, Foster 1957 and Suen 1983, but I don’t have access to either article, so I can’t personally give a take on the quality of their methodology against the quality of this article. Likewise, they cite two articles that found that the increase in older students’ handwriting speed is associated with developing mixed cursive-manuscript styles (Hamstra-Bletz and Blote 1990; and Sassoon, Nimmo-Smith and Wing 1987). Unfortunately, I can’t access those articles either, so I can’t be certain what they mean by that, but I would think that the implication is students who used mixed cursive/manuscript improve writing speed at a faster rate than their peers who use one exclusively over the other rather than relative to their own writing when they were younger. Obviously, if that is the case, teaching cursive does help to increase writing speed, even if not in its pure form. That being said, it is entirely possible that they are comparing the writing speed of each student against only themselves at various points in time, which seems to be how you interpreted the statement. I would need to see the research to know.

Even if they’re right, and cursive isn't different in terms of writing speed, (and your criticism of their conclusion that mixed handwriting styles are superior is correct), then I would still point out that one of their conclusions was, “…strict adherence to a particular style or form of handwriting cannot be recommended and would likely frustrate both the teacher and the child.”

Other parts of the article, by the way, support other arguments that I have been making. Only 31 percent of subjects used exclusively manuscript and only 61 percent used mostly manuscript, meaning that a substantial minority of the population still uses mostly cursive and a very large majority uses some. They also found that there is not a statistically significant difference in the legibility of cursive versus printing (though this goes against earlier research just as their conclusion on writing speed does, but once again, I can’t access the previous articles to make a judgment on their relative merit).

Also, as geeky as this may be, I want to sincerely thank you Vene. The courses I have been enrolled in this semester are crap. I haven’t had the chance to read and critically analyze a scholarly article for the purposes of discussion since last May. I had almost forgotten how much fun it can be. I'm not kidding.

Zachski:

Veras, let me put it this way.

If we're talking about cost-benefit, then the stress cost of reading cursive is higher than the stress cost of reading print. (Unless someone is just really really really bad at printing, in which case, they'd be worse at cursive) Sure, you can teach someone to read cursive, and you can also teach them to read hieroglyphics, but you will always be able to read what you were first taught and what is commonly used every where much better than something that is used as a minority.

Books use print (naturally). Sign up sheets REQUIRE the use of print. The business world (which includes jobs that aren't necessarily office work) discourage the use of cursive.

Quite frankly, when you write in cursive something that is meant to be read by someone else, you're being rude. Like slurring your words when talking to someone who needs to hear exactly what you're saying when you COULD be talking much clearer.

I still disagree with the assertion that cursive is universally more difficult to read than print—that is to say that everyone’s printing is more legible than their own cursive. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that you are right about that. The stress cost of reading an individual’s cursive would be higher than that of reading their print, but that does not mean that it is necessarily high. If an individual’s cursive is easy to read, what difference does it make if their printing would be marginally easier? I agree that it is rude to write illegibly when one has the ability to write more legibly, but writing in cursive that is every bit as legible as the print around it isn’t.

But that’s beside the point anyway. Again, people are going to write in cursive. Maybe, as you've argued, they shouldn’t, but, as a teacher, I want my kids to be prepared for that eventuality. I want them to be ready to read it when they see it.

No, the way I learned in college was... I took the book, laid it on the desk, placed my forehead on it, and absorbed the knowledge through osmosis.

I’ve always found the osmosis approach to be more effective when you put the book on the floor next to your bed. The discomfort of sitting on those hard chairs, especially early in the morning seemed to interfere with the flow of information.

Admiral:

Cooking has the practical benefit of providing you with food. It is classified as culinary arts. Graphic design has the practical benefit of making things stand out. It is classified as graphic arts. Anything you can make a business out of has the practical benefit of making you money. Doesn't mean that--printing t-shirt designs, writing books, designing logos, etc.--are not art.

Okay, art can have practical benefits. What makes cursive an art? Is printing an art? And what difference does it make if it is an art anyway if being an art form had no significance in determining its value?

I still want to know why students can't self-teach cursive if it's for their own personal use. I developed all of my note-taking strategies on my own. We could also have a class on nationally-recognized note-taking symbols. We do not. But that's different, because it's not the way we did it when I was a kid

Teaching cursive provides an extra set of tools to help students to help students develop their own note-taking habits. As cestlefun said, it is good to have both in your arsenal so you can choose what works for you. The article that Vene posted suggested that students developed their own mixed styles by combining the most quickly-written and legible aspects of both styles.

Also, I never said that I would be against teaching note-taking strategies. Actually, I learned it in middle school, at least briefly. Like cursive, it wasn’t its own freestanding class, but my seventh grade science teacher put aside a couple of days specifically to teach us how to take notes more effectively. It was a couple of hours out of science class, but my classmates and I were probably much better off with that information. I don’t even think teaching shorthand, as Vene suggested, is a bad idea. The question that has to be addressed first is how much time and effort would that require? I don’t know shorthand, so I’m not sure how involved that process is, but I suspect that it would take far more time than the handful of hours required to learn cursive. If cursive required a full course over an entire semester to learn, I would agree that the cost would be too high. But it doesn’t. The same similarity to manuscript that makes you question its value also reduces the cost of learning it.

EDIT: Wow that was a long response.

[The_L]

Dec 7, 2011 20:36:54 GMT -5 Dragon Zachski said:

How many of those were signatures? Aside from the envelope, which is really stupid because you need people to be able to read the damn thing.

Because there is no such thing as legible cursive. 9_9

Personally, i dont' see the issue, as long as kids aren't forced to write in cursive after that. It's more of an additional option: you learn print, you learn cursive, you pick the one you like better.

[Admiral Lithp]

The issue is saying one thing & doing another. It is not an "option" in any sense of the word if you're forced to do it. And you know, I think this is why we get teachers who try to force it on kids. We're basically telling them they SHOULD force you to do it, then acting surprised when that carries over in the next few years of teaching.

[lisamariefan]

Dang this is a big thread, and you'll have to forgive me if I haven't read every single reply yet.

I personally use print for everything that's not my name. I can write cursive fairly well, but it's much slower. I much prefer several discrete strokes in forming my words. Maybe this explains why I'm going into programming, where you learn to do make programs modular.

Now having said that, I do have one thing to say about in defense of cursive: It's good for exercising your complex motor skills. Of course, then again, YMMV. I focus on clean writing when I use cursive (read: Never except for jogging my memory just now and writing my signature), so my problem isn't so much the sloppiness that other people have, but speed.

I also don't like having to stop in the middle of a word and reform the letter, as I tend to do when I find that I'm writing the wrong letter in cursive. Luckily for me, I'm not writing in pen, as I'd probably be crossing out every 5th word or something.

[Admiral Lithp]

I got in trouble for doing "too small" letters to, which is great, because they just want you to shrink back down to that size in later years.

[anti-nonsense]

I can't even remember how to write in cursive beyond my name. I haven't used it for anything other then my signature in well over a decade. I can read it, but I can't write it.

[Vene]

Dec 10, 2011 1:28:39 GMT -5 Admiral Lithp said:

I got in trouble for doing "too small" letters to, which is great, because they just want you to shrink back down to that size in later years.

I'll make my letters what damn size I please.