Fox News Debate To Keep or Curtail Cursive
Is Teaching Handwriting a Waste In Today's E-World or a Core Skill?
Mar 19, 2009
Brian Rodriguez, founder of Gatorworks.net believes cursive is an nostalgic,outdated practice and that the time teachers spend on it should be used to help kids become proficient in electronic communication. Teacher and Occupational Therapist Todd Misura, feels the ability to write cursive is not only a foundational writing skill but a pragmatic one.
Cursive Outdated, Steals Valuable Teaching Time
Kids, argued Rodriguez, need to learn to be “technolgically literate” so they can compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. With the advent of PDA’s and tablet PC’s he feels “note taking is a thing of the past” and that teaching cursive takes time away from teachers who need to prepare students for state mandated tests.
"Cursive writing is really a dying art form,” Rodriguez said to Fox News during the debate. “It serves no real function in our business community that is surrounded by emails, text messages and social networks like Facebook.”
Gillian Browditch in her article entitled, “Writing is on the wall for long-hand,” (TimesOnline, June 8th, 2008), suggests supporters of cursive are stuck in the past. “Instead of worrying about their handwriting, we should be promoting children’s learning through the media with which they are most familiar. The written word will survive a generation of kids with messy handwriting. Every generation has its techno-fear. Three millennia ago it was handwriting.”
Cursive Foundational, Practical, Improves Communication
During the debate on Fox & Friends, reporter Steve Doocy agreed that while the world has long gone the way of e-communication, not everyone owns or even wants to own electronic note-taking devices. Moreover, he said, scrawling quick cursive notes on a sheet of paper remains fast and practical.
Mr. Misura said he doesn't argue the usefulness and predominance of electronic communication in today's fast-paced world, but that cursive is a “foundational skill upon which they (kids) are going to build all sorts of written expression and how to get their thoughts on paper.”
Some experts in the field of handwriting agree.
“There are a number of reading specialists who are now convinced that cursive should be taught in the beginning, explains handwriting instructor Rand Nelson in his article, “What Is It About Cursive?” They believe it offers advantages over print writing for reading skill development.”
Nelson explains that the movements of cursive, joining letters, presents the "non-visual advantage," offering a more fluent production of letters. It’s a faster, more efficient movement, given that lowercase cursive alphabet is produced with just three movements, vs. six in lowercase print forms.
Like Nelson, Samuel Blumenfeld a handwriting educator, believes kids not only need to be taught cursive, but that they should learn it before they learn how to print letters. ("How Should We Teach Our Children to Write? Cursive First, Print Later!" The Blumenfeld Education Letter, 1994)
In addition, some worry new generations won't be able to read historical documents written in long hand or know how to sign their name.
Schools Vary On Cursive Curriculum
According to a 2007 nationwide study on handwriting by Vanderbilt University, cursive is still widely taught in U.S. public and private elementary schools. Although while some schools spend 60 minutes a week teaching cursive, others offer little or no instruction.
Steve Graham, the study’s lead author, explains in a article, “Schools debate: Is cursive writing worth teaching?” (Megan Downs, Florida Today, January 2009) that the goals behind teaching handwriting have changed, “Now, there’s more emphasis on process and content and less on emphasis and form.”
Proponents of either keeping or dumping cursive should be aware however, that the mode of communication someone chooses may be organic to the tone and style in which they communicate.
In 1882 Friedrich Nietzasche, in response to a friend who remarked that Nietzasche's already terse prose became more so after he started using a typewriter said, "You are right, our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts."("Is Google Making Us Stupid," Nicholas Carr, The Atlantic Monthly Journal Online, Jul/Aug. 2008.)
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