Curses! Writing Again!



etsy.com



Those of us who are of a certain age remember being in early elementary school and learning how to do cursive writing.  Cursive writing was a major milestone, akin to having learned the multiplication tables or how to tie your shoes.



Cursive writing and multiplication tables were drilled into my brain in the 3rd grade.  I had a teacher who was probably a former nun (my mom tells me that the good Sisters in the parochial school she attended all had beautiful penmanship). Her handwriting was beautiful, consisting of fabulous loops and swirls, all looking very artistic and like calligraphy as she chalked each letter on the board (yes, with actual chalk. I was in 3rd grade back in the 1970s) for her students to attempt to imitate on their paper.

It was a wonderful thing for us to finally be able to actually write our papers, instead of printing them. We begged. We looked forward to it so much.  We would pretend we knew our cursive letters and scrawl squiggly and loopy notes to each other.  By the end of our third grade year, all of us were proficient with cursive writing.

Being able to do cursive writing meant entering the adult world.  Grown-ups wrote in cursive.  Now, I could read Grandma's letters without help. Reading cursive writing went hand in hand with learning how to write in cursive.  Until that point, anything written in cursive was pretty much a mystery.  Learning to read and write in cursive opened up a whole new world for a kid.

In today's world, cursive writing tends to bring on more curses from kids than anything else.  Well, they'll groan and complain a lot, but I'm very sure they're cursing under their breath as they wait for one brave soul to raise a hand and ask, "Do we have to write it in cursive?" 

During my first year spent with upper-elementary kids, I was aghast at this question.  "Are you kidding me?" I thought.  "Why wouldn't you write in cursive?"  Turns out many of the kids weren't too fond of cursive writing.  Many of them found it difficult, and had trouble connecting the letters, one to the other. 

imitation of student handwriting


Apparently, more emphasis is placed on "technology skills" than on the practice of cursive handwriting.  This is understandable to an extent, because kids have to learn to be computer savvy at an early age.  Computers are in classrooms, schools have computer labs, many libraries have given up that dinosaur called a card catalog in favor of having everything on the computer system. 


A real, live card catalog used to live in
that big brown set of drawers.
See libraryhistorybuff.com



Even photo reprints are done with the help of a computer.  Rarely does one drop a canister of film in an envelope and hand it to the clerk behind the counter.  Now, you use your disk (or whatever) to reprint your own photos - via computer.  Businesses shut down when the computer sysem is down.  Nothing is done "by hand" anymore.

All that aside, cursive writing is going by the wayside.  I'm sure people had qualms about handwriting when the typewriter came along, just as people wondered about the fate of the handwritten letter (and the U. S. Postal Service) when the Internet came along and e-mail became the way to communicate.  Now, people complain that texting has taken the place of face-to-face commnication (but that's a blog for another day). 

Somehow, the doom of handwriting never happened after popularity of the typewriter waned.  I wonder, though, if cursive writing is doomed to become a thing of the past - like walking uphill both ways to school, barefoot, in the snow.


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When Big Sister started elementary school, I looked forward to the day she would learn cursive writing.  At her school, cursive writing was a sporadically taught subject, at best.  Only some of the 2nd grade teachers taught it.  Others waited until 3rd grade to begin instruction. As a result, Big Sister got some instruction in grade 2, and next to none in grade 3 - because the grade 3 teacher thought the grade 2 teacher had covered all of it.  Pity the kids who didn't have a 2nd grade teacher who taught cursive writing.



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When Fuzzy began 2nd grade, there was no talk of cursive writing.  That, I was informed, was a 3rd grade activity.  Sure enough, Fuzzy is now bringing home cursive writing drills. You must remember the worksheets with endless loops of lowercase "l" and so forth.  Those currently grace the refrigerator door, a place of pride for all good schoolwork.

Still though, there are far too many older kids who say, "I can't read that," when instructions are written in cursive writing.  I believe this is a function of too little practice with the skills of cursive handwriting.  When you practice the formation of the letters, practice words, write sentences and - gasp - entire paragraphs using cursive writing, you learn how to read cursive writing.  

Cursive writing is not taught as an actual subject in many elementary schools.  I suppose there isn't time for it in the curriculum, because much more time is devoted to the "three R's."  This is all well and good, devoting more time to reading, writing skills, and arithmetic - and it's also fine to devote time to learning technological skills.  I just wish that kids, by upper elementary, would have a solid grasp of cursive writing and the reading of cursive writing.



handwriting hybrid



According to one article, a kid's handwriting legibility peaks by about 4th grade, and most adults write in a printed letter/cursive letter hybrid.  That is, most adults mix the printed letters with the cursive ones.  Think about it. When you sign your name to something, does that pen tip lift from the paper before every letter is formed? Are you using that cursive "S" to begin your name, or the printed "S"?

Whatever your signature style is, I'd bet you have some printed letters mixed in with your cursive ones  - unless you're really old-school, and have stuck with the "everything cursive" mode of handwriting!



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johnhancock.com

I would be sad to see cursive writing disappear entirely.  To me, there is something elegant about it - even in its hybrid form - and there is something to be said for an actual, handwritten, cursive-writing signature.  Would you take seriously, on your bank loan or your divorce papers, a signature that was printed? Might as well just put an "X" and be done with it.  Seems like a cursive-written signature is the official way to sign something important. How dull it would be to have an autograph book full of celebrity autographs, printed. Would anyone ever have said, "Put your John Hancock here," had Hancock simply printed his name? 




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civisions.com

 What fun is an autographed baseball full of printed names? Autographed photos? Baseball cards? Probably, I'll have to appeal to the kids' sense of vanity when it comes to cursive writing.  "When you're a famous athlete/author/actor," I'll say, "You'll need to know how to do a signature right."  For a while, this will result in ridiculously scrawled names, done in "doctor style," so as to be illegible. But at some point, a seriously nice signature will appear.  I hope!

Do you think cursive writing will go the way of the dinosaur?  What are your thoughts and memories of cursive writing?