Handwriting experts and educators worry that Indiana's choice to stop teaching cursive in schools could negatively affect a child's ability to learn.
The Indiana Department of Education joined 39 other states in adopting the Common Core curriculum, an initiative to phase out cursive writing in classrooms in favor of providing students more time to hone digital skills.
But some believe the move could adversely affect children.
"The fluidity of cursive allows, I think, for gains in spelling and a better tie to what they are reading and comprehending through stories and such and through literature," said Paul Sullivan, principal of St. Francis Xavier Elementary School in Burbank, California.
"I think there’s a firmer connection of wiring between the brain’s processes of learning these skills and the actual practice of writing."
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There is this thing called the kinesthetic response – the act of writing fires neurons to the brain, helping the writer remember spelling, word retrieval, grammar...cursive is also faster than printing, and reversals are less likely to occur – d for b, etc.
To he;p lefy handers, turn your paper to the right on a slant, rather than the traditional left. It helps the "hook".
No one can read cursive anymore – what a loss!
I totaly agree and what a shame. I have 5th graders and decided to teach them cursive on my own! I believe that is a tool that need to be sucessful in life.
In 1970 my now ex but my groom then was in the Army. We got sent to Germany, and we did not speak the language. In our first apartment we had a lovely woman upstairs we called our German grandmother. I learned some German. and she some English by passing a dicrionary back and forth. One day I was going out, and she asked where I was going. I told her the market on the corner. There were some chairs in the entry hall, and she pushed me into a chiar and told me to wait. In about 5 minutes she came back w/ a lovely young girl who curtseyed! She informed me, in almost perfect, barely accented English that she was Frau Keller's granddaughter and her grandmother wanted her to help me iin the market. I was amazed. Everything I picked up she named, and when necessary, explained what was in the package. She'd just finished her FIRST YEAR of English. I took French for 3 years, and all I kept thinking was god help the Frenchman who needed my help in the grocery. He'd starve. When Petra got more usd to me and stopped blushing every time I asked her a question, I asked how she knew English so well after one year. She said from the minute they entered a foreign language class – any language – they were not allowed to spek except in the language they were there to learn. I.e., if a kid had to use the loo, s/he had to ask to be excused IN ENGLISH. It sounded cruel to me, but it obviously worked. She was 12 years old, and as cute as a button, obviously she was also a smart girl.
In this country, when I went to school we learned much of what we set out to learn or took the class again in the summer; but we certainly do not have test scores as kids do in so many countries. Now I find out we're phasing out basic arithmetic and cursive writing w/ more time given to learning better computer skills. There are so many holes in the current scheduling that I am afraid of what will happen when we close schools altoghther. I am reasonably sure Christie had 'governor' by his name on my ballot; once elected, however, he somehow seems to have become a dictator and I've seen no evidence of the Democrats who have majorities in both houses, yet within a couple of weeks he took $200 million from the school funds and took 75,000 indigent kids off kid-care so they have no health insurance. And as far as the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana law signed into law by Corzine on his way out. Yet this program keeps getting pushed back due to logistics. Many of us are suffering more than we have to; it seems that Christie has the power of a dictator, and this law, which became effective in October of '10 is still being pushed by logistics. Finally, back to the schools. My son went to k-garten in TX, and there was a student teacher I finally could not keep from reporting to the principal. The student teacher's grammar was so bad I honestly never knew what she was saying.
I can't imagine what the future holds in a couple of generations from now, or if there will still be schools. Added to the fright for the future are the things children are not learning at this point in time, and one of, if not the main, problem seems to be that children are simply not being taught how to think for themselves or anything resembling common sense. Two things give me pause whenever either of these situations occurs. The first is a constant. Go into the grocery w/ a total of $4.03. The customer gives the checker a five dollar bill and that asks the kid to wait a moment, she has the 3 cents. She hands this kid 3 cents, but he's already put in $4.03 total and the $5 the customer service initially gave him. His computer says to give her 97 cents, and when she tries to explain that if the checker takes the 3 pennies, he can then give her back a dollar and the bottom line will be the same. Yet many say there's no point in teaching arithmetic; the kids have computers, calculators. Obviously they need the simple arithmetic.
The other example scared me deeply. I was somewhere where a teen-aged girl was asking me questions and filling in a form. First I had to tell her the meaning of the questions she was asking, and finally, she came to my birthdate. I gave her the month and date using the last two numbers of the year I was born. The child started to write, then stopped and asked me if that was 19 # or a 2000 #, I said 2000 and she wrote it down. Don't think in my wildest dreams I could pass for a teen ager, but I would have been a teen based on the 2000. WE NEED HELP BEFORE THE ENTIRE COUNTRY IS RUN BY IGNORANT AND UNTAUGHT LEADERS.
Senior citizen......Have a grandchild with "adhd"...have watched him with his dysfunctionality...was awakened literally and figuratively to the possibility that the increasing and growing incidence of "adhd" reported, may be related to a growing deficiency in eye hand coordination/concentration, training...Tracking the incidence of "adhd" (in societies and school systems), where (in early childhood settings) "cursive" is not valued or taught might be a worthwhile study ...there may be a specific relationship with the above and the developmental wiring of the brain, ...This is not to say that "adhd" is caused by a deficiency of eye/hand coordination, but that children with the potential for the development of dysfunctional forms of "adhd" can be helped by the eye hand "cursive" training given in early childhood before distructive patterns develop... Abandoning "cursive" may have been a grievous error.
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