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In a June episode, we asked you whether you thought cursive should be taught in schools. In an age where keyboarding classes are more common, and hand-writing anything beyond a signature seems to be a rare event, is there a place for the Palmer Method? Will cursive (also known simply as handwriting, or, in the U.K., joined-up writing) go the way of the copybook?
I was surprised there weren't more responses in support of teaching handwriting. Typical is this tweet from Nancy Robinson in Houston: "Cursive is art! Not relevant or necessary to everyday communication!"
Dino Sarma in New York City agrees:
Personally, I see cursive writing as one of those annoying vestigial organs of our collective experience that is fading quickly (and I'm heartily glad of it).
When I was in grade school, and we were being taught cursive writing, it was my least liked subject. The problem comes (for me), because I read more than one language fairly easily.
In Hindi, most people's writing is actually in print letters. If you've seen handwriting for Hindi, it's very beautiful, even when a "normal" person is writing it. It's all in print. In Tamil, however, which I also read, there is a cursive form, and it looks disgusting.
I'm used to the neat, rounded letters that I learned to use while growing up, as are most of the people in my generation. They're not huge fans of my parents' generation's cursive , which looks rushed, and ugly.
The same goes for English, which is difficult enough to parse without having all kinds of letters that look the same (is that a small L or is that a huge E?), while still wrangling the various silent letters, implied cases, and fairy magic that tends to make up English language (and make it interesting). Most of the type that we read today is in print letters, and I'm happy for cursive writing to go the way of the dodo.
Even at its most beautiful (which implies that it's not being written with any great speed, which defeats the purpose of it in the first place) cursive writing is still more difficult to read than print letters. At the end of the day, it defeats the purpose of the job that writing is meant to do in the first place: convey ideas in a manner that others find legible too.
Like many other listeners, Rachel Rohm, who recently graduated from high school in Delaware, shared a story of how not knowing cursive can cause problems in the classroom:
I went to public high school, where we never used cursive in class. There were a few times in English class where the teacher would write something on the board in cursive, expecting us to be able to read it or even copy it in our notebooks. Because my mom does the same thing when she wants to write quickly (and because I had actually been taught cursive), I could read it with no problems, but most of the class had to have her read it out aloud in order to decipher it! Also, it is still a requirement of the SAT to copy a statement on the back of the answer booklet in cursive. Many of the people in my testing room BOTH times I took the test (once in my own high school, once in an area high school) ran out of time or gave up entirely. Personally, I don't really care much for cursive writing, although I do still want to be able to read it — mostly for old letters and such.
Erin Brenner, who edits the Copyediting newsletter, tells us her boys, ages 11 and 9, are learning cursive and keyboarding at a small Catholic school. She adds,
You mentioned the beautiful cursive older generations wrote that younger generations don't use. This might have been the Palmer Method. In the late '70s and early '80s I learned the Zaner-Bloser method at the same school my boys now attend. I'm not sure which method they're now learning, but the capital Q looks more like a printed Q than a fancy 2.
More to say on cursive writing? There's a conversation already underway in the forums, or leave your remarks below.
Photo by Tyler Burrus. Used under a Creative Commons license.
More on the Subject
Freeman, Frank N. Current Methods of Teaching Handwriting." The Elementary School Teacher, vol. 12, no. 9. May 1912.
Palmer, A.N. Palmer's Guide to Business Writing. Western Penman Publishing Co., Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 1894.
Plakins Thornton, Tamara. Handwriting in America: A Cultural History. Yale University Press. 1998.
I used to be for teaching cursive writing in schools, until I had a reason to think about the subject.
Our son has several learning disabilities that have made it extremely difficult for him to read and write, but mostly write. His school passed briefly over the topic just long enough for other students to pick up cursive writing, but he was unable to pick it up at all, and the subject of cursive writing never resurfaced again. He is now 17, and even his signature is printed.
At a point during his schooling, we had to decide what the priorities were. Do we force him to learn cursive writing, which for him would have been a long and painful process, or do we spend that time on other subjects? After some thought, we chose the latter.
What uses in life would he have for cursive writing? Heck, what use do I have for it? I haven't written anything more than my signature since about 1984. Seems to me that it is a fading language tool, made obsolete by computers with keyboards. I see this as a good thing, as precision and readability can go nowhere but up, with the use of easily readable fonts. No more trying to decipher handwritten notes of various styles... not to mention my favorite timesaver of all, the backspace key.
It would be well worth following the link Grant provided to the existing thread on this topic.
My initial take on cursive was that it is fast becoming obsolete. At least in terms of writing it. But any student who's considering college should know how to read cursive, as academic research often leads one to source material written in that style.
The long:
I've never given cursive a second thought, always just considered it part of the basic things you learn in school, like basic math. I was not only taught cursive in grade school, but taught the Paulinian* style. This style has specific loops (larger than regular cursive for some uppercase letters) and variations in stroke weight, with the downwards strokes being heavier/thicker. It almost looks like calligraphy, except it's written using regular ballpoint pens or pencils.
I appreciate that I have this skill, but can also understand how cursive may be seen as unnecessary these days for all practical purposes. I hear horror stories about high school students submitting essays in which they use "internet speak." If something as basic as the use of actual, real English words is no longer a given, I don't see cursive surviving much longer.
The short:
This discussion makes me feel really old.
*St. Paul College, Pasig - a private Catholic school in the Philippines
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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