FULLERTON, California (Reuters) - A generation of children who learned to write on screens is now going old school.
Starting this year, California grade school students are required to learn cursive handwriting, after the skill had fallen out of fashion in the computer age.
Assembly Bill 446, sponsored by former elementary school teacher Sharon Quirk-Silva and signed into law in October, requires handwriting instruction for the 2.6 million Californians in grades one to six, roughly ages 6 to 12, and cursive lessons for the “appropriate” grade levels - generally considered to be third grade and above.
Experts say learning cursive improves cognitive development, reading comprehension and fine motor skills, among other benefits. Some educators also find value in teaching children to read historic documents and family letters from generations past.
As a left-handed kid in school, cursive was a bit of a nightmare.
As a student of history who has seen countless beautiful examples of medieval calligraphy, chancery scripts, and renaissance typography, modern school cursive is a fucking abomination. It was developed neither for speed nor beauty nor legibility, but to reduce the amount of ink dripping from cheap dip pens when they were lifted from the page between strokes.
The danger in making a virtue of necessity is that some people will continue to fetishize it long after the necessity has passed.
I never knew that. It’s interesting, thanks!
I’m 40 and our teacher explained why cursive was a thing in elementary school. I figured we were learning it so we could sign our name.
Take computers out of the picture. How long have we been using ballpoint pens? Cursive was obsolete even before computers took over how we write.
That’s really interesting to know. Do you have any particular sources you’d recommend for further reading?
It was worthless back in the 90s.
Nonsense. You’re not fluent unless you know cursive.
It looks cool though. I just bought a fountain pen so I think it’s essential to learn cursive
You decide what children should learn in school based on your recent purchases?
That’s a strong point there. I guess because I grew up with it and found it cool, I expected future students to learn it as well. How else would they learn to write their signatures?
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I have 20 or so fountain pens, probably more. I use them exclusively since 2014 and, strangely enough, have never felt the urge to write in cursive. They perform almost exactly like normal pens but without the pressure on the tip.
Calligraphy, sure, but just for kicks. Cursive is still useless imo and was when I had to learn it as a kid. I sure as hell wouldn’t make kids now learn such a niche writing form that is somehow far, far less relevant than dip pens much less fountain.
A lot of the fountain pen guys I follow all write in cursive so I’d thought I’d pick up the skill again. I thought learning cursive in elementary was kind of neat (California education system) and I’m pretty rusty for not using it for so long.
Weird, I usually only see calligraphy. Glad you’re boarding the train though, they’re a lot better than ballpoint or rollerball!
Save it for art class.
There has to be a better and more useful way to achieve those benefits than cursive writing. Maybe we expand art classes as opposed to this? Maybe cursive writing is just taught as more like calligraphy in an art class? I don’t see a value or learning cursive in like English class. I’m old though so had to learn it and in the over 40 years of knowing cursive the only time I use it or read it is my signature.
There is
former elementary school teacher Sharon Quirk-Silva
Probably another old person who just can’t let the damn thing go.
I learned cursive in the 3rd grade, the amount of times I’ve needed it (beyond a signature, even then it’s just a squiggle) is a whopping 0
It would be much more suitable in a separate optional class like you said, a calligraphy class or more budget for art classes (Which is far more important IMO)
There’s no arguement for teaching cursive outside of old people’s sentimentality, and that’s worthless
That’s a huge shame, because cursive is my standard handwriting for any note taking or long form writing. It feels less strenuous on my hand, and looks neater. I use print writing for short notes or to fill in fields on documents, but everything else looks so much nicer to me in cursive script.
As another commenter noted it would be a fun elective class to take or possibly we should bring back short form classes. I never had short form class but my mom took it in the 60s? And uses it. Like a right angle represents “and” or something. That would be super useful and more so than cursive.
I agree short form and other note-taking methods, typing, etc should be rolled into a single course. I don’t think it should be elective, but that’s just me.
I appreciate having learned cursive to open up historical documents, published diaries, and the like. Plus, I could read the letters and cards my grandmother sent me.
But, I never had any issue learning to read or write cursive. A lot of people talk about those lessons being difficult or grueling in school, and that wasn’t my experience at all. It was just a nifty skill I learned alongside plenty of other skills that may or may not have use in every day life as an adult.
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It was my understanding that left-handed people experience more hand strain with any handwriting, for the same reasons? But yes, I am right-handed for writing.
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That’s good to know, and something I hadn’t been aware of before. I can understand a bit more the resistance for “forced” learning to write cursive being a part of core curriculum. Though I still think it’s something important, or at least beneficial, to learn to read and understand.
Around 3rd or 4th grade in the mid-2000s I learned cursive and also have never used it outside of pretty much just using it for my signature. It’s definitely something that isn’t all that useful outside of signatures anymore, and even then, it’s becoming less relevant when you can’t write worth a damn on those electric signature rectangle things.
Though, I completely agree that expanding it by adding it to an art class in the form of calligraphy would be an amazing way to both learn cursive and make it more enjoyable.
I was in school in the 80’s and 90’s. We had to exclusively use cursive from grades 3 (I think) through 8. I hated every second and most looked forward to high school because I knew I’d never use cursive again.
I’ve especially always had this irrational distaste for the cursive letter b.
Please no. Cursive fucking sucks. This is not something we should bring back. Let it die for fucks sake.
The main problem I have with it is if your hand writing sucks it’s impossible to read cursive. It just looks like scribble.
Not so much of a problem for good handwriting but most people just suck at it.
I find cursive to be far less readable than small caps architectural and engineering drafting handwriting. I wish that were taught from a young age.
Why have personalized handwriting when you can have 100% legible block text at all times with zero ambiguity?!
Do you mean to say you would rather teach the children to write like a dad?
I think reading cursive should be required, but writing cursive? I’m just happy if kids can develop neat standard handwriting (printing).
Wow, even California is back to legalizing child abuse.
The issue with not being able to at least read cursive handwriting is receiving a letter or looking at an old document and/or signatures written in cursive, in perfect English, and being like, “I don’t know what this says.”
It’s like having a mild illiteracy. Pointless or not, I’d feel like an idiot if I couldn’t decipher these common things.
I learned cursive in school, I still can’t read it. The nature of cursive is that only the person who wrote it can reliably read it and sometimes not even them
Fuck cursive, just let it die old people
This is so alien to me, do other Europeans struggle with cursive? Is it a geography or an age thing?
Personally, it feels like a natural way to write and link letters quickly. I think it’s taught in a backwards way, and a lot of people never develop their calligraphy skills because of that, but once you understand the point of cursive, it makes sense. And it’s one more way to express yourself. It can be as legible/ambiguous as you want to make it. You can add fancy ligatures, or keep it clean.I’ve always struggled with it. Often people let it degrade into a line with tiny bumps, and it becomes illegible.
Personally I am Autistic and have ADHD, so the fine motor control is hard to manage. I can’t write cursive neatly, but if I slow right down I can “draw” cursive.
Growing up undiagnosed when I did, has developed a hardy set of calluses across the knuckles from teachers hitting them with a ruler for bad pen grip or messy writing.
Most of those fuckers are dead or in diapers now.
Damn, that’s a terrible experience, I am truly sorry you went through all that. Those teachers are the dregs, fuck them.
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Thanks for the explanation! That’s exactly what I was wondering about, especially after reading some more comments in this thread. Sounds like it is an unfortunate consequence of how cursive is taught :(
There are times I have to present in meetings and share my computer screen, so I can’t really take notes using my laptop.
I learned cursive & it enables me to take faster hand-written notes as people comment or ask questions. That’s just a personal anecdote, I know, but fwiw I do use it on a regular basis but I realize that’s not applicable to most folks.
I really like hand written notes, especially since I can draw whatever I may need to help supplement the notes (graphs/arrows/boxes). Writing in print is so much slower and tiring than cursive, I will do whatever I can to not write in print. Also, I find my handwriting in cursive is far neater than print. I’m not sure the extent others can read it and am disappointed computers have a much harder time reading cursive into text.
Improved reading comprehension
I suppose if you don’t know cursive, you can’t read it and that would put a damper on your ability to comprehend it if you can’t even read it.
And fine motor skills
If you write legibly, it might. Cant comprehend if I can’t read it, and I can’t read it 90% of the time because whoever wrote it has crappy penmanship since they just wrote big flowing loops or tiny little scribbles instead of words that can be read by human eyes.
learning cursive improves cognitive development, reading comprehension and fine motor skills, among other benefits.
There’ve been studies saying this for a couple decades at least.
If those are desired results, what other activities produces the same result?
Lots of those benefits seems like they might be derived from playing certain video games. Assuming the peer-reviewed research supports that, shouldn’t that be considered too?
Have there been? Link them.
Because I call bullshit on that
The thread op quoted a claim from the article, it isn’t their claim
I’m not convinced. We learned cursive in like grade 2 or 3 or something and the rest of elementary school we had to do all assignments except for science and math in cursive with a ball point pen. I could do reading comprehension until an assignment asked what the characters were thinking and feeling then I lost marks. I even wrote to one of the still living authors of one of the books and they confirmed the teacher and my own opinions were both significantly different from what they intended but that didn’t overturn my bad marks for lack of understanding. Fine motor skills I owe to my grandma’s arts and crafts and video games she kept when my uncle grew up and left so I can’t really say for that. It didn’t do anything about being picked last in team sports but would that be coarse motor skills? Apart from the 2.5 savant syndrome kids we were all dumb as fuck but at least we could read and write cursive.
The comments here are the kind of visceral reaction to cursive that I only ever saw online and in english, makes me think it’s mostly from the USA thanks to the location of the news.
