Sen. Leising continues to push to make cursive a mandatory part of the school curriculum with SB 113. Paige Clark, writing for the IBJ, reports that the bill has passed out of committee.
Sen. Leising has been tilting at this particular windmill for years since the State Board of Education made cursive discretionary for schools to teach. Advocates of cursive come up with post hoc rationalizations for why they care so much. It’s for the children, of course. But the justifications are specious:
“They need to be able to sign their name.”
Fine, spend a few hours one day teaching them to sign their name.
“It affects brain development.”
You get the same development from printing.
“They need to be able to read the original Declaration of Independence.”
When they get to this point, proponents of mandatory cursive are grasping at straws.
The fact is that cursive is the slide rule of writing. Nostalgia is the motivation for hanging on to it. The world is changing, and that’s upsetting. The offered rationales are pretexts to justify the underlying nostalgia. If we just discovered cursive today, we would be in no rush to force it on our kids.
If teachers and schools decide to spend limited class time on this mode of manufacturing letters, it’s not the end of the world, but making it mandatory is not a useful or necessary use of the General Assembly’s power.
Actually, you don’t get the same development from printing. The concentration needed to produce a document in cursive focuses the brain and produces more sophisticated thought. For those of us that are kinesthetic learners, there is no better way to commit things to memory.
Further, it’s a test-taking (and note-taking) skill. If you’re not aware, there is a writing section on the SAT and even AP’s are starting to incorporate more writing-oriented exams. Why? Because it better reflects understanding as opposed to memorization. The better a student writes, the faster and more confident he or she will be. They’ll have a significant advantage over others. If your child does an IB program, all of his/her exams will be writing-oriented. I required cursive in my (English) classes.
This is a topic people love to hate on, probably because they didn’t like learning it. Can a student reach the same level of sophistication in their analyses without it? Probably, but why make them take the long road? More likely, as analytical ability is stunted, the same parents will just complain about the level their child is expected to master. Standards will be lowered, the kids will receive better marks and be that much less prepared for life after school.
Really? I’m a Ph.D. student in history–quite possibly the most writing-intensive academic discipline out there. Probably 3/4 of the students in my program are inveterate printers, and I suspect that that’s the case elsewhere as well.
And? Cursive isn’t a requirement there.
Their loss. Alphabet soup doesn’t make you smarter.
We examined the issue prior to making the decision. You can explore it on your own. In the end, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal we found to be particularly persuasive and provided that article for each of our students and parents. I had one parent object out of about 50.
Ask yourself why you’re so fired up about it. Is it because you think you’ll look bad if cursive is considered “smarter?” I refuted Doug’s contention you get the same development from printing. If your refutation of my point of view is an anecdotal survey of graduate students, there are probably better statistics to find.
Actually, there is a book called something like “Each in Their Own Way” about the different ways different people learn best according to their strengths, and for one category at least, the recommendation is to have them start writing learn to write before learning to read as it will prepare the brain for putting the letters together in reading processing. This book is used on a number of schools, so it not some far out theory.
There is just no proof that cursive is better for brain development that print-script. For those striving for proof, I suggest you do the research yourselves. Maybe you will come up with a solid reason to keep cursive. Then again, maybe not!
Writing in cursive is at best marginally faster than printing, Chris. And printing is inevitably faster. Frankly I don’t buy that writing in cursive somehow aids brain development more than printing. I totally agree with Doug on this one. The utility of learning cursive is so limited that we shouldn’t spend time in school on it anymore.
I meant printing is inevitably NEATER.
This is subjective and not true across the board. Maybe for SOME people, their own printing is neater than their cursive, but in my personal experience, good cursive is not only neater, it tends to stay more level across the page, something that keyboarders do not have to be concerned with. That may also be why it can be claimed it is faster, but if you are used to writing cursive, cursive is faster, because you don’t lift the pencil or pen after each character.
My husband was required in high school to switch from cursive to italic. Italic looks to me like a hybrid of cursive and printing, is faster than printing, is “neat” looking. There is a beauty to practiced cursive that I hate to see be lost. Italic still retains the flow and, therefore, some of the beauty of cursive. I think perhaps it’s the PRACTICE that it takes to produce “good” cursive that people don’t want to take the time to engage in. Unfortunately for a fast-paced society, things of beauty do take some effort. I do hate to see the beauty of “good” cursive lost.
No skin off my back, Paul. Just FYI, don’t let your kids take French, either. They might be forced to learn the slightly different script (to our cursive system) used there.
The legislators feel that they must micromanage education while refusing to adequately fund it. Deciding the curriculum, determining how to assess and evaluate achievement and the quality of teachers and all the rest, they probably think that is the one thing they know because they attended at least 12 years of it. I don’t know if this is a bad thing or a good thing, because when they try to make decisions about something else, they make such a horrible mess of it, too. Teachers will continue to do what is in the best interests of kids, regardless of the nonsense spoken and acted on by our legislature, but attracting new and outstanding ones will be the problem, because the legislature clearly sends the message: we do not respect you or what you stand for.
Hmm how would the The Declaration of Independence look signed in Print? Think about it guys! I would say gals but there were none that signed it! ;)
It would look very sovietized.
God help us we wouldn’t want that! At least every kid should learn to write their name cursive!
It’s probably more “I had to do it, so by god these kids will suffer through it too.”
the difference between that and nostalgia is one of subjective perception only
Handwriting matters — but does cursive matter? The fastest, clearest handwriters join only some letters: making the easiest joins, skipping others, using print-like forms of letters whose cursive and printed forms disagree. (Sources below.)
Reading cursive matters, but even children can be taught to read writing that they are not taught to produce. Reading cursive can be taught in just 30 to 60 minutes — even to five- or six-year-olds, once they read ordinary print. (In fact, now there’s even an iPad app to teach how: named “Read Cursive,” of course — http://appstore.com/readcursive .)
Why not teach children to _read_ cursive — along with teaching the other vital skills, including some handwriting style that’s actually typical of effective handwriters?
Educated adults increasingly quit cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority — 55 percent — wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When even most handwriting teachers do not themselves use cursive, why revere it — let alone mandate it?
In each of Senator Leising’s two previous attempts to mandate cursive handwriting (2012 and 2013) she has publicly made erroneous statements in order to gain support. These statements were made to the Indiana media and, in at least one instance, were made under oath to her fellow legislators during her testimony in defense of her cursive bill.
Details:
/1/
In 2012, Leising’s erroneous claim to her fellow legislators was that cursive was supported by an Indiana University research study (“Neural Correlates of Handwriting” by Dr. Karin Harman-James). The senator had handed out this study to her fellow legislators as she introduced the bill — after adding to the study a front-page statement (or “abstract”), written by her and replacing the study’s original abstract. Senator Leising’s added material, and her description of the study as she introduced the bill, asserted that the study had compared printing with cursive and that it had found advantages for cursive. The fact, however, is that the study had not even involved cursive. When legislators and other recipients of her claims went beyond the first page, then looked up the study themselves, they quickly found that the study had been a comparison of printing with keyboarding (and that printing had come out ahead).
/2/
In 2013, her second attempt, Leising stated in the legislature (in a dramatic assertion that was picked up by her state’s media) that research done by “the SAT people” (her phrase) had shown that SAT examinees who used cursive on the test’s essay section got 15% higher scores. Again, a check of sources (in this case, inquiries to the SAT/College Board administrators, made by me and apparently by other persons) swiftly revealed that Leising’s claim diverged from the facts.
The score gap between print-using and cursive-using examinees, it turned out, was not 15% or anywhere near that —but was a mere one-fifth of a point (0.2 points) and was on the essay portion alone: so small a difference that it is, for instance, less than the score difference between male and female students taking the same exam. (The only “15%” anywhere in the research was the percentage of students who used cursive rather than in some other form of handwriting.)
It remains to be asked why Senator Leising has allowed her two previous efforts to rely on misquotation and mis representation.
Let us focus on this year.
What has she claimed _this_ time?
/a/ While she still talks about “research,” she has stopped providing any traceable source. Perhaps she is finding it easier to make statements without an identifiable source than to use traceable sources (whose misrepresentation, too, can be identified).
/b/ She has now started claiming that cursive writing is important because (she tells her audiences) joining letters is what causes us to read from left to right. It would hurt her case — perhaps it would hurt her feelings — if her audiences recollected that the left-to-right direction of our alphabet existed for centuries (at least) before handwriting began to join. Certainly, children are taught to read (and often become very good at it) years before they are taught to join letters: even texting, which is definitely not cursive and whose practitioners are often life-long print-writers, goes as thoroughly left-to-right as any other form of the written language.
/c/ Further, Senator Leising has now stated that she doesn’t care whether children (or, presumably, other people) can write their own names decipherably, as long as they are doing it in cursive.
When she learned that half of the cursive signatures on a college petition supporting cursive were indecipherable, she did not think that this detracted from her trust in cursive as a literacy cure-all.
She merely noted — correctly, as it happens — that even an illegible signature is legally valid: the point of a signature, as she says, is to produce “an identifiable mark.”
Unfortunately for Senator Leising, this fact — and her recognition of it — demolishes one of her own arguments for cursive: the argument which she used throughout 2012 and 2013, and is using this year too.
Ever since beginning her cursive crusade, Leising has publicly asserted that an important reason for cursive was to make signatures legally valid. That is a common supposition about cursive, because it is a supposition that is taught as fact by many of the people who teach cursive.
However, as Senator Leising has now herself admitted, what legally matters is not the form of the handwriting used — cursive, printed, or one of the many hybrids, good or bad — but whether the signature is “an identifiable mark.” (That’s right — no state or Federal law requires cursive for signatures. Leising, to her credit, knows that. It is less creditable of her to have stated otherwise in her two previous cursive crusades.)
Printed handwriting — or the print/cursive handwriting hybrid that so many good writers form, and that some are taught from the beginning — is as identifiable a “mark” as anything festooned with loops and ceaseless joining.
Examiners of questioned documents, for instance, inform me that the most identifiable and individual signatures are the plainest — including those that are printed, or partly printed, in form.
_All_ writing, not just cursive, is individual — just as all writing involves fine motor skills. That is why, a few months into the school year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from print-writing on unsigned work) which student produced it.
Senator Leising is, at any rate, persistent. When one misstatement will not serve her purpose, she easily drops it and finds — or creates — another.
Let us assume, for the moment, that her repeated misstatements, and her scooting from one to another, may be entirely acceptable to the legislature of Indiana and to the citizenry whom they represent. Even so, in this third year of Leising’s efforts her case remains singularly devoid of evidence. Her assertions on research have changed from the documentably non-factual (in 2012 and 2014) to the undocumented and presumably undocumentable. Her assertions on signatures have changed from endorsing a popular error (the belief that signatures must require cursive) to admitting that a signature is an “identifiable mark” (yet deciding, somehow, that her case is supported nonetheless.
Good handwriting is a rare thing. Good handwriting in cursive — or even reasonably legible, reasonably fluent handwriting in cursive — is rarer than it is in any of the other forms of handwriting in use today. The rarity of good handwriting, in cursive, is no argument in favor of requiring schoolchildren (or anyone else) to write that way.
Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.
SOURCES:
Handwriting research on speed and legibility:
/1/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May – June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf
/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September – October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf
Zaner-Bloser handwriting survey: Results on-line at http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H2937N_post_event_stats.pdf — the cursive/printing question is #2.
“Neural Correlates of Handwriting” by Dr. Karin Harman-James of Indiana University: https://www.hw21summit.com/research-harman-james
College Board research breakdown of SAT scores (the cursive/printing information is on page 5)
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2006/cbs-2006_release.pdf
Background on our handwriting, past and present:
3 videos, by a colleague, show why cursive is NOT a sacrament:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CURSIVE —
http://youtu.be/3kmJc3BCu5g
TIPS TO FIX HANDWRITING —
http://youtu.be/s_F7FqCe6To
HANDWRITING AND MOTOR MEMORY
(shows how fine motor skills are developed in handwriting WITHOUT cursive) —
http://youtu.be/Od7PGzEHbu0
[AUTHOR BIO: Kate Gladstone is the founder of Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works and the director of the World Handwriting Contest]
Yours for better letters,
Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
and the World Handwriting Contest
http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
I looked around all over this blog and interestingly, didn’t find any handwriting. I also clicked all the links, nothing written by hand there, either.
Nobody writes stuff by hand any more — at least nothing important. If they do, they’re part of a dying generation.
People rejected the printing press, too. History always repeats itself and the old folks always try to reject change.
We can find time to discuss environmentalism, recycling, self esteem, gender equality, global warming and other soft-thinking nonsense, but we can’t find the time to teach the basic skills to compose a respectable letter or postcard? Cursive isn’t a separate subject. It’s taught concomitant with all writing classes.
Precisely what caliber of underpowered “educator” are these ed schools graduating?
If our children were becoming smarter, and if the time spent on cursive was restraining them from learning more advanced Physics and Chemistry, perhaps there would be a point to this curriculum revision. Sadly, the drive to remove cursive is rather an admission that schools are incapable of teaching absolutely anything of merit.
I personally think a good teacher, given the influence they have on the economy and government spending for decades to come, should get paid six figures at least. It should be an occupation that draws the best and brightest, and pay has to be a part of that.
And yeah, help your kids cheat on the tests to keep your job, you’re done. One strike and you’re out.
So that likely means no teacher’s unions. Fine with me. I’d rather teachers have agents fielding calls from other school districts trying to poach them to come work for them … rather than union reps.
I’d also like to see more boarding schools. Give those in awful home situations a chance to get out, get some structure, and get back on the right track.
Yes, it all costs money. I figure I’m either paying up front for better educations or on the back end for welfare and prisons. I’m paying either way.
* Yes, I realize I’m a nut on this one.
Joe, if teachers begin to understand just how powerful they could become as a group, your system would work. Remember that they elected Glenda Ritz with almost no support from the Democratic party, just using social networks, and Ritz got more votes than Pence. If teachers harness that power, Katie bar the door. After all, who knows almost all the parents, are everywhere, reaching everyone and stand for kids and doing right, the whole works including God, mother and apple pie, but teachers. Frankly, I can totally understand why Pence and many legislators want to bring them down and treat them like dirt. If teachers actually fall for that line, Pence and the crazies will win. But…..
Let us never forget Rachel Jenteal and her utterly embarrassing admission “I don’t read cursive.” She is not an example of academic success, and her development ought to terrify all observers of education.
That’s like claiming a sailor is incompetent because he can’t use a sextant.
Times change. Once-essential skills become useless.
But reality and thinking about things have never been your strong suits.
A sailor IS incompetent if he can’t use a sextant. Celestial navigation is still taught in all quartermaster and piloting schools. If GPS and Loran go down, you still have to navigate. There’s a sextant aboard every aircraft carrier. At sea, the Quartermaster will occasionally plot legs celestially, in parallel to all the advanced navigation, just to keep proficient in the art.
We agree on this, Freedom. (but not on cursive).
Astronaut Jim Lovell (a navy man) tested using a sextant on Apollo 8 and actually had to use it on Apollo 13, even while in radio contact with some of the smartest people on the planet.
Backup plans are a good thing.
FWIW, Apollo 13 flew 44 years ago.
Writing is not a life-and-death situation. It doesn’t need archaic backup plans.
We do agree on the uselessness of cursive, I just couldn’t help going off-topic.
Hmm how would the The Declaration of Independence look signed in Print? According to Freedom It would look very Sovietized. God help us we wouldn’t want that! At least every kid should learn to write their name in cursive! Of course every child in Lafayette should know how to write and pronounce ‘Masson’ because he writes the best blog in the city! ;) There was also a French artist with the last name.
The meaning of the Declaration does not depend on the form of handwriting that was used to write it or sign it. Print does not “Sovietize” a document, any more than using the Declaration’s cursive to transcribe some Soviet document would have “Americanized” it.
The proper pronunciation of Lafayette would be nice to ;) that would be French like Masson…
To the extent that writing _does_ require any “backup plan,” why must the “backup” be in cursive? Simpler styles work as well, or better: see examples at http://www.BFHhandwriting.com, http://www.handwritingsuccess.com, http://www.briem.net, http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com, http://www.italic-handwriting.org, and http://www.studioarts.net/calligraphy/italic/hwlesson.html .