Cursive! Folioed again!

I am sure there might be good reasons for kids to learn cursive that aren’t “Because I did, dammit!” but they aren’t among those in the attached article (about revanchist efforts, mostly by political conservatives, to push cursive training back into schools).

Among the reasons given:

• People who don’t know how to write in cursive won’t seem educated. — That seems very … subjective. Once upon a time people who couldn’t decline in Latin and Greek didn’t seem educated, but we seem to have gotten over that.
• “Part of being an American is being able to read cursive writing” — Um … that seems even more subjective, and, yeah, I really don’t buy it.
• The Founding Fathers all knew cursive, as demonstrated by John Hancock in that quintessential document, the Declaration of Independence. — The Founding Fathers wore wigs, too (and, as noted previously, had learned Latin and Greek).
• Knowing cursive helps you read prominent historical texts in their original handwriting. — Only if you don’t trust the printed transcriptions. Also, there are a lot of prominent historical texts that require knowledge of, dare I say it, Latin (e.g., the Magna Carta). Actually, Louisiana passed a bill requiring cursive education because, in part, the Magna Carta was written in cursive — while not also mandating Latin education. That strikes me as a bit … uneducated.

• Signatures are important and require cursive. — Most people’s signatures are unintelligible scrawls, and the need for signing stuff continues to dwindle every year.
• “Your cursive writing identifies you as much as your physical features do” — And your non-cursive writing doesn’t, too?
• “The fact that American kids couldn’t do cursive made us vulnerable to the Russian menace.” — We still managed to beat ’em. Maybe it’s because we use a Latin alphabet instead of a Cyrillic one.
• “It’s a lifelong skill that is part of a well-rounded education. Why leave it out?” — Because there are only so many hours in the educational day, and it’s unclear that’s a more important “part of a well-rounded education” than math, science, reading, writing, art, music, theater, PE, or all the other demands on kids times. Hell, we’ve already carved out vast swathes of time to teach kids to do well on standardized tests — none of which require cursive — that eating into the remainder to teach how a second way of forming letters that most people will find of minimal practical application in their life seems goofy.

The article does note that there are some studies that seem to indicate that learning and using cursive may have some interesting positive effects in brain development and the like. Of course, it also appears that some of those studies come from … companies that sell cursive handbooks and the like.

I don’t particularly object to cursive. I just want people to be honest that they are pushing for it because they think it’s cool and since they had to learn it they want their kids to, too. Dressing it all up in dubious patriotism or incomplete cultural pedagogy only discredits the argument.

My personal preference, though, may be showing through. I dropped handwriting almost as soon as I was allowed to do so, evolving a block script that served me just as well. (My actual cursive is exquisite, as I never learned any bad habits over years except with my scrawl of a signature.)

That said, 99% of the writing I do, I do at a keyboard. I’d rather kids were getting solid training on that before we bother with cursive.

Do you want to know more? Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It’s Coming Back. – The New York Times