"Cursive writing does not mean what I think it does"

[supergee]

As Bart Simpson had to write on the blackboard over and over again. That quaint old skill, at which most of us reached our peak at age 8 or so, is being phased out, and there is great indignation among those who don't want the younger generation to escape any of their suffering. (Why, this could lead to using the metric system and depriving the kids of all that wonderful rote learning of feet & pounds & such!) Amanda Marcotte discusses.

Comments

[weofodthignen]

This must be an indication of how poor quality the cursive taught in America is. What cursive is for is to enable you to write fast. I am a fast sight typist but I still write faster by hand. I also learned italic (after a move and resulting change of schools), which proved invaluable for printing on classroom boards (IME Americans tend to try to write cursive on blackboards - that is utterly silly, especially with a class of immigrants who can't recognize the letters) but is not cursive and as a result is just not fast enough. In the UK education system I went through, and I believe in all those in Europe, not being able to write fast is a severe handicap, not only for in-class notetaking but crucially for exams. That is undoubtedly less so in the US, because of the heavy reliance here on multiple-choice tests, but it still applies to note-taking, to the few essay exams in college, and to what's left of writing in daily life.

I could also of course point out that mental arithmetic is extremely useful. And that while the US doesn't use chains and furlongs, it seems likely never to abandon feet and inches, ounces and pounds. But the reason to teach children cursive has nothing to do with being oldfashioned and everything to do with giving them the entire toolbox.

M