The Associated Press has an article on the loss of cursive. Basically, kids aren’t learning cursive because they don’t really need it. Most communication is typed any more, and printing gets the job done for the tasks that need to be written.
As might be expected with any change, there are those who see the loss of cursive as a significant loss. But, for me, this goes in the buggy whip column. It served a purpose and, with that purpose fading, the need to learn it also fades.
I’m biased though. My cursive was never any good. I went back to printing as soon as my teachers stopped caring. I regard it as the Victorian gingerbread house of writing.
Doug,
Something you and I have in common! My cursive is awful and I’m not disappointed to see it deemphasized either.
Amen Doug,
I never quite got the point of cursive anyways. It’s not like it was easier to read.
I remember from my teaching days that cursive writing was something girls took seriously,and I think many praticed it as part of their over all, dress/make-up routine.
Boys on the other hand just wanted to be’ one of the guys’ and printing was seen as a natural manifesation of masculine traits.This was mostly subconscious on their part,but thats my judgment looking back ‘
But printing ca be just as distinctive and personalized as cursive script,and varies a great deal person to person.I used to see a divide in printing into the ‘jock type’ and the ‘scientist/academic types’,but of course there was overlap. As much as I try, I just cannot remember many girls printing as a normal way of expression.
Until around 1900, students didn’t learn to print at all; they just learned cursive because that was “writing.” In about 1900, the US and England started teaching kids to print because they thought that it would help literacy if the kids could write letters that looked like the letters they were reading. I don’t know whether this had much effect; other European countries don’t teach kids to print, however; they only teach cursive.
I’m not sure how different the experience in the article is from my experience in school in the 70’s, though. We learned cursive in the 2d grade, but I don’t think we spent any class time on it in later grades. And you would read articles then lamenting the decline of penmanship, with examples of beautiful cursive writing from the past that looked nothing like the chicken scratch we produced.
But cursive was useful for the papers we had to turn in; while I knew a couple of people who tended to try and print most things, cursive was generally much faster.
The idea of a gender difference for cursive is intriguing to me. I can definitely see where there could be a gender bias as between printing and cursive. I wonder if one gender prefers keyboarding more than another.
Hey – I’m a guy with beautiful cursive. I use it quite a bit – especially when addressing envelopes or sending thank you cards. A “gender bias” is rather a silly idea since (as pointed out above) it wasn’t until the last few decades that schools even taught either gender how to print. For the vast majority of years, schools only taught males – and they taught them how to write cursive.
Well, I’d say thank you cards and nicely addressed envelopes are also, unfortunately, becoming obsolete, if they aren’t already. And then we will have lost something civilizing. I’m torn about cursive. On the one hand it may seem obsolete – but on the other hand it teaches the value of practicing for improvement. When it’s gone, then we will miss it. I think we do (or some of us anyway) note the difference between “nice” handwriting and messy handwriting and there is a little judging that goes on there.
That said, my husband, who went to school in the 50s, was first taught cursive and then when he changed schools, was required to write using italics, sort of like simplified calligraphy without the fancy pens and inks. Much nicer than printing, and it did require practice — because there were standards. He remembers this as part of their “classical” education including Greek and Latin. They also learned Russian for practical purposes (this was the cold-war era). He still has very distinctive handwriting, a cross between italic and cursive, I suppose. His keyboarding isn’t worth a damn, though.
Our family homeschooled and I didn’t worry about whether my kids learned cursive or not. My daughter decided to buy some workbook at Target at some point and had some fun with it.
But my son was not interested, he wanted to use computers and keyboards. Fine with us.
However, around age 13, he did decide that he wanted to learn cursive because he had found a reason for doing so: he said he needed to learn it so he would have a nice autograph in case he ever became famous one day. :0
In all reality you are right, I am biased towards cursive. It must be a gay and female thing since both Bil and I have the bias towards the gentler text. The realization I came to regarding the younger generations is when I wrote a curriculum religious objection note for one of my parishioner’s son’s schools; both the son and the teacher had to call me for a translation of the cursive text to print. That is pretty sad as I know that anyone older than me and at least 7 years younger than me, could have read it fine and I have my mothers handwriting so I know it’s legible. I also know from other experiences that the cursive training I received is different from most other people so I have had to relearn certain capital letters as through the years people have rather sloppily adjusted cursive writing to look like print. Some of those letters are D,R,A,F,T,S,O,I,L, and what is really scary is most people never know the difference between a cursive G or J versus print, and a lot of people confuse a Z in cursive with the & sign and lets not even get into the differences between lower case y,z,p,q,d,b. and the importance of 2 humps for n and three for m otherwise its just an r, that is a lost cause. Cursive is a lost art form that someday most kids and adults would wish they had learned.
It appears that those who are terrible at cursive are glad to see that yoke of shame removed from the curricula, while those who are good at cursive are not.
For me, I can make my cursive legible, if I must, but prefer a hybrid of cursive and printing when I am writing normally (which I suppose is more scribblely, than not).
Still, I have some humorous stories (to me, at least) concerning cursive writing from my youth, which would show that there have been problems with people learning/using cursive for a long time.
Cursive varies by country also,and anyone who has received foreign correspondence can immediately recognize British cursive , French or German cursive writing.So I assume beyond that, every one learns and reflects his official nationality model of cursive.After ww2 Germany changed their national cursive writing taught in schools in a bid to rid themselves of their former image.
I remember in grade school we printed in first and second grade and then in 3rd grade we learned to write cursive.And I remember the frequent penmanship testing.After that,it wasn’t an issue..maybe Indiana has a more stringent cursive control than Illinois?