Cursive Taking Backseat to Other Skills, Common Core

Handwriting requirements are missing from Common Core Standards, raising concerns among parents and educators.

The Common Core State Standards set out national guidelines for what students should learn and when they should it. Of concern to some people, however, is what’s absent from those guidelines: any mention of handwriting or cursive. Missouri, one of the states which have already adopted Common Core, leaves the decision on whether to teach cursive up to individual school districts.

Stltoday.com reports on the current trend away from teaching penmanship in favor of other modern skills:

The pressure to perform on state standardized tests in reading and math left some teachers in St. Louis Public Schools feeling as if there wasn’t time to focus on handwriting. The district tried to emphasize handwriting in K-5 in the 2009-2010 school year but dropped the requirement for instructional time last year.

While de-emphasis of handwriting skills is perhaps natural in an age where computer skills are considered far more important, the widespread abandonment of its teaching is not universal. Some schools, such as St John’s Lutheran School in Arnold, still teach penmanship every day even if the time found for teaching it can be measured in minutes rather than hours.

Some researchers also believe that the development of handwriting skill is linked to the development of skill in important areas such as math and English. If the developing mind of the student isn’t as stimulated by typing as it would be by handwriting then perhaps handwriting is not so replaceable a skill as often believed.

A member of the Rockwood School District pointed out that:

Grades are the major reason to keep cursive in classrooms. Research indicates that students who develop the discipline to write in legible cursive get better grades as they advance through school.

This issue is really two issues rolled into one; whether cursive should be a skill that US schools preserve amongst their students or whether to follow the lead of UK and Japanese schools and abandon cursive teaching, encouraging printing instead. Printing has the benefit of being more legible and easier for harried teachers to read and mark, while also preserving some handwriting skills amongst the younger generations.

Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, says it’s natural that in the modern technological age schools will place less emphasis on pre-technological skills like handwriting and cursive.

“We are in a hurry to do away with basic skills because they can be replaced by technology,” Domenech said. “What happens when technology doesn’t work?”

Comments

Rachael

March 9, 2012 at 11:31 am

Excellent points! Poor penmanship also makes it harder for students to complete their work quickly and it makes any notes or paperwork sometimes unreadable. Clear, natural penmanship allows students to communicate their thoughts in faster, more effective ways.

Reply
- Kevin
  
  March 10, 2012 at 4:00 am
  
  Most people type faster than they write now. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be teaching cursive but this insistence on pretending that technology isn’t penetrating our lives like it actually is, is annoying and backwards.
  
  Reply
Bob Rose

March 9, 2012 at 2:52 pm

Cursive is not the problem. ANY kind of legible writing, for example manuscript printing or “connected italic”, if FLUENT, will lead to literacy and prevent reading problems in the early grades.

Reply
- Kate Gladstone
  
  March 9, 2012 at 10:56 pm
  
  Yes, indeed! Research shows that the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive. They join only some letters, not all of them: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. (Citation: Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HANDWRITING STYLE AND SPEED AND LEGIBILITY. 2001: on-line at http://www.sbac.edu/~werned/DATA/Brain%20research%20class/handwriting%20speed%20style%20legibility%20berninger.pdf )
  
  What about _reading_ cursive? This matters vitally — it takes just 30 to 60 minutes to learn, and can be taught to a five- or six-year-old if the child knows how to read. The value of reading cursive is therefore no justification for writing it.
  
  Yours for better letters,
  
  Kate Gladstone — CEO, Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
  Director, the World Handwriting Contest
  Co-Designer, BETTER LETTERS handwriting trainer app for iPhone/iPad
  http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
  
  Reply
- Kevin
  
  March 10, 2012 at 4:02 am
  
  Thank you for the voice of reason, Bob. There’s nothing particularly special about cursive that should make the lack of it a problem. As long as you teach kids to write cleanly, it hardly matters that it has to be exactly one kind of script.
  
  Reply
Jo-Anne Gross

March 10, 2012 at 5:43 am

I agree with Kevin and Bob Rose,I am afraid the decisions are being made by people who never had the responsibility of imparting Literacy.

Very discouraging,the top down mandates.

Reply
- Bob Rose
  
  March 11, 2012 at 2:14 pm
  
  Thank you for agreeing, Kevin and Jo-Anne; the important thing is for individual teachers/districts to define exactly what they mean by “teach them to write”. Teachers know how to teach better than bureaucrats do.
  
  Reply
Cursive Taking Backseat to Other Skills, Common Core | International Education News | Renascence School International | Panama City | private preschool, elementary school, middle school

March 10, 2012 at 7:57 pm

[...] Core, leaves the decision on whether to teach cursive up to individual school districts.”(more) Comments (0) Go to main news [...]

Reply