Cursive...slip Slidin' Away

[estie1948]

I am acquainted with a great number of American teachers and have worked with them in a professional capacity until just a few years ago. I, and these teachers, were all taught cursive when in elementary school. When I learned that some of these teachers were no longer teaching cursive, I asked why? All of these teachers had at least twenty years experience and were considered Master Teachers. How could they stop teaching cursive?

 

They all gave the same answer. It began with President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" which, like many bills, has nothing to do with what its name implies. I'm not blaming President Bush. However, with the passage of "No Child Left Behind" the teachers lost control of what is taught. Education, in all aspects, became a political item as never before. First, the student must pass a standardized test. Then, the student must pass a series of standardized tests. There was not time enough in the day to educate the student and get the student ready for a test that was designed, produced, and scored by some company with no idea what was being taught in the classroom. If the students fail the standardized tests, the teacher is in trouble. The standardized test companies became the ones who determined what is taught in American classrooms. Standardized tests do not score printing or cursive handwriting. So, penmanship - printing or cursive - were dropped to provide more time for test preparation. Penmanship was just the first subject to go. All but two of the experienced teachers I worked with either retired or quit education and went into another field. Several told me that state school systems do not want teachers now. Now what the school systems want are "test tutors" and classroom monitors. I was even shown a manual that a major school system requires its elementary teachers to use for every subject taught. The huge manual is produced by the company which makes the its standardized test for the system. It is meant to be read verbatim and teachers caught deviating from the manual are punished. This large system does not buy textbooks for elementary subjects.

 

Standardized testing is big money. State legislatures are lobbied more by testing companies than by parents and teacher groups. One of the teachers I worked with said, "If you can't beat them, join them" and went to work as a lobbying for one of the testing company at a salary four times greater than he was paid for teaching twenty-eight years plus he was given a car and an expense account.

He told me he took a different state legislator and his wife (or her husband) to a ritzy dinner every night of the legislative session.

 

My grandkids attend school in this school system. I am teaching them cursive during the summer. I am not their favorite grandfather!

 

-David.

[Sandy Fry]

Not in Louisiana apparently.

 

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/04/louisiana_cursive_requirement.html

 

David

[Sandy Fry]

Can I also add. I just read recently that it is bad form to use a period when you are texting! It's no wonder the youth of today are poor writers. Good grammar is almost nonexistent. Spelling is terrible ( unless they have spellcheck ) and vocabulary is limited...IMHO.

 

David

[aeba]

Ponder this: what did Sumerians think when cuneiform script got replaced with alphabets? Or the Egyptians?

 

It's like it always was, and for the foreseeable future will be; things evolve. Not necessarily to "better", what ever "better" even is, but still evolving. One will not be asked if they like it or not.

 

In my opinion current cell phones are pretty *bleeeeep*. What can I do about that? Throw a fit?

[ksm]

Disclaimer: I personally do not write Business Writing, I can read well executed cursive, but deciphering sloppy cursive is beyond my capabilities , I've printed throughout school and learned italic cursive much later in my life.

 

My grandson prints his name on his paychecks or uses direct deposit. Since 3200 BC man has recorded language in writing, but not too much longer, I'm afraid.

 

For most of the recorded history dominant form of handwriting was some kind of book-script and not cursive.

 

Some handwriting styles went the way of dodo. No one but palaeographers can read secretary hand from Elizabethan times, German “Kurrentschrift” is of interest to historians only, but human civilization survived.

 

Cursive was the way to write with dip pens. It compensated for the weaknesses of those instruments. Fountain pens and ballpoints brought adjusted ink flow and allowed printing letters with more or less permanent inks as easily as with pencil.

 

I'm of the opinion, that the shape of handwriting is a compromise between speed, legibility and amount of effort needed to acquire it. In the first half of twentieth century quick and visually attractive handwriting was essential to any office worker, handwriting was taught with dip pens, all in all it necessitated teaching some form of cursive.

In the second half of twentieth century, ballpoints came to schools, typewriters and later word processors became common in office settings and handwriting ceased to be the expected mode of communication. Nowadays the only handwritten letter one can expect from government agency is the feared “We deeply regret to inform You...” letter to the next of kin. The use of handwriting is limited to educational setting, private notes, filling form (in print) and signing documents. Some decades ago, Latin and Classical Greek were struck from curriculum; we stopped requiring proficiency in long division and other arithmetic procedures. Why are you so fixed on cursive? Why legible print does not meet your criteria for proper adult handwriting?

 

p.s. I might be a little biased, my father used a handwriting that closely resembled slanted version of ISO 3098 script.

[milkb0at]

A lot of this sounds like "The youth of today...", which has been going on forever. Older generations have always complained about how the young listen to the wrong music, wear the wrong clothes, have the wrong hobbies and are educated badly.

 

The death of cursive, if it does indeed happen, will have little consequence in a world where most communication is electronic.

 

Perhaps I'm a dinosaur since I still like to handwrite notes as it helps my memory retention, but I also make use to Evernote, OneNote, Trello, Wunderlist, GitHub Issues and all the other useful electronic tools for notes and to-do lists. I still like to send and receive the occasional handwritten letter, but email / text / IM is best for 99% of my communication.

[jody_fpn]

>>Perhaps I'm a dinosaur since I still like to handwrite notes as it helps my memory retention

 

Ditto - same for me.

Jody

[Guardy]

First of all, you folks need to stop equating cursive and handwriting. Print and all sorts of semi-cursives are alive and well, at least here in Europe, for both practical and aesthetic reasons. Do you know how many ~*aesthetic*~ social media accounts consist of 60% calligraphy and other assorted handwriting? As somebody with a little sister, let me tell you: far too many.
Print also happens to be really fashionable, because it's easier to write really quickly and really cleanly (and, in case of your typical girly schoolgirl, as adorably and bubbly as possible).

 

Can I also add. I just read recently that it is bad form to use a period when you are texting! It's no wonder the youth of today are poor writers. Good grammar is almost nonexistent. Spelling is terrible ( unless they have spellcheck ) and vocabulary is limited...IMHO.

 

David

As a non-native speaker who commands a very much adequate vocabulary in two different languages and is certainly no exception in my social circles, I take personal offense to that, thank you very much.
Texting is basically telegraphy 2.0 - you want to save as much time and space as possible and condense things down as much as possible, while still cramming the maximum amount of meaning into the characters you do type. I do not text - ever - but I can see a certain logic in that.
That does not mean those people are not perfectly able to write "properly", if you will, given the right situation.
Also, as somebody who spends a lot of time listening to 70's music on youtube, I can faithfully tell you that the older generations are just as apt at typing incomprehensible things without any semblance of grammar or punctuation as we are.
Cheers.

P.S.: How mad are you going to be if I tell you that you might want to check if you really put a space behind every punctuation mark, at least in a post in which you complain about the youth's inability to write properly? Might just be me, but that seems a tad hypocritical, IMHO.
(Also, sorry for snapping at you, but this kind of post is incredibly frequent here and it's starting to make me feel rather unwelcome)

 

 

>>Perhaps I'm a dinosaur since I still like to handwrite notes as it helps my memory retention

 

Ditto - same for me.

Jody

I'm actually fairly certain that that's something that has been scientifically proven.
Makes a lot of sense, too, since letter shapes, logically, are different for every letter, while pressing keys on a keyboard is a far more monotone motion.
But really, I just like putting arrows everywhere all over my notes and that's a lot easier using pen and paper.

 

That said, I don't really get why people don't use cursive as much anymore. I mean, it's easier to get sloppy writing cursive, but it's way more efficient to keep the pen on the paper as much as possible, if you ask me.

I kind of get why people use cursive italics and all sorts of weird hybrids, because it's kind of a 'best of both worlds' kind of thing, but straight-up print? Why. And, more importantly, how.

[fatalelement]

A lot of this sounds like "The youth of today...", which has been going on forever. Older generations have always complained about how the young listen to the wrong music, wear the wrong clothes, have the wrong hobbies and are educated badly.

 

The death of cursive, if it does indeed happen, will have little consequence in a world where most communication is electronic.

 

Perhaps I'm a dinosaur since I still like to handwrite notes as it helps my memory retention, but I also make use to Evernote, OneNote, Trello, Wunderlist, GitHub Issues and all the other useful electronic tools for notes and to-do lists. I still like to send and receive the occasional handwritten letter, but email / text / IM is best for 99% of my communication.

 

This would be my response as well. Cursive fulfilled a function - but I think most people here forget that the majority of well-educated professionals still have the same general level, if not higher, of language comprehension than those of the last generation. Penmanship used to be- let's be frank- a way to tell who was well-educated and intelligent at face value, much like a nice suit or a well-formatted resume. As you'll immediately protest, neither of those were or still are actual good methods for evaluating a person.

Most scientists used to, in the generations before my father's, speak many languages. Physicists and engineers would all at least speak German, and conferences were conducted in multiple languages. But I'd argue that multilinguism is much more common nowadays among the younger people I know than it was in my father's time.

I don't think language is "dying out", but it certainly is changing. But when you think about why we have such tradition surrounding language, it's important to understand that the reason electronic communication seems to be degrading these things is because electronic communication has, on some level, begun to supersede it.

 

If you are a film buff or a historian of media, you'll remember that most people did believe that film would be the death of culture. It was, to many, a brutish medium with no subtlety. Nowadays, you're welcome to tell me Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries is without class or depth, but I'd have a hard time entertaining that argument.

Electronic communications certainly do represent the death or at least erosion of the formal written word in comparison to its status in the pre-Internet age. But as I said before - think about what language is for. It's for communicating with other people. Imagine, if you will, a society/race/creature that can communicate telepathically. I'd be willing to bet they'd never develop much of a language tradition, because there would be no need for it. When you can get ideas across in another, standardized way, what's the harm? Subtlety and nuance are important, but in certain contexts, they can be assumed effectively. Before you tell me sarcasm and other things get lost in emails and texts, they get lost in the written word just as easily. The written word is a poor substitute for human communication, unless it's a book or formal text.

 

But in historical context anyway, for the vast majority of human history, the vast majority of people have had no ability to read and write. The popularity of penmanship takes up such a small percentage of what I would consider the "tradition" of recording things that it's a bit silly to argue it's the death knell of culture. So, too, was the movable type, I guess.

 

But I'm in my mid-20s, have an engineering education, and I speak 3 languages and take paper notes when I feel like it. Most of the friends I grew up with regularly scoff at the barrage of spelling and punctuation errors in the writing of people in their mid-forties to mid-sixties. People really mis-remember their own childhood, it seems. The general evaluated IQ of plenty of average American populations is, and has been, on an upward trend almost perpetually. People are smarter and more cultured now. Any anecdotal evidence to the contrary can be entirely countered with the reverse.

 

 

(Also, sorry for snapping at you, but this kind of post is incredibly frequent here and it's starting to make me feel rather unwelcome)

 

Even in my admittedly short time here, I would echo this. It holds true to a ton of other communities as well, but I think a lot of people seem to keep their critical eye focused outside of their own strata. My social circles, like Guardy's, are generally full of people with a strong command of the English language. But when I was 15, I could probably name about 20 adults with a full college education who still didn't understand how apostrophes are applied. If the death of formal language started, it was long before I was born.

[fatalelement]

Can I also add. I just read recently that it is bad form to use a period when you are texting! It's no wonder the youth of today are poor writers. Good grammar is almost nonexistent. Spelling is terrible ( unless they have spellcheck ) and vocabulary is limited...IMHO.

 

David

 

The reason for this is quite sensible, though. When writing on a page, you need punctuation to delineate the end of a sentence. In a text, it is delineated for you. Since a period is unnecessary, it's not bad form to include one, but the general feeling is that choosing to include it is a conscious decision and therefore has meaning. Most people agree it implies terseness or being upset at the recipient. Much like saying "Yes!" with an upward tone versus "Yes." with a downward monotone. I can personally attest that if I asked someone (with whom I'm close) if they could do me a favor and they responded "ok", I'd be much more confident they aren't annoyed by it than if they sent me "Ok."

[rwilsonedn]

Perhaps it is useful to mention that in most modern societies there are still deeply etched social strata. There are circles in which Greek and Latin are still part of learning to be a person, art and music are taught, and students are expected to write in an elegant hand. I rarely get to meet people from that group.

There is another stratum that, to paint with a broad brush, is always aspiring. In my grandfather's generation they aspired to be educated and polite. In my generation we aspired to be high-income professionals. My grandchildren will perhaps aspire to be employed. This group has seen a continual shift in the purpose of public education, upon which it is dependent. For my grandfather, public education was for only the best students, and prepared them to live a meaningful life (in many senses of the word). For me, public education was mostly not about how to live meaningfully, it was about preparing for university and a career. Today, public education, as a previous poster explained in his discussion of standardized tests, intends to instill a basic level of competence for office workers. These are of course generalizations that ignore the heroic efforts of many teachers to cling to earlier aspirations.

Finally, there is a growing stratum for which public education means something entirely different. These are the people who for reasons mostly not under their influence will have no working role in the automated, global society we think we are building. Once they were excluded from public education beyond a basic level. Now they are warehoused and trained to cause only minimal trouble. Somehow I don't think that is going to work out very well.

ron

[aeba]

 

The reason for this is quite sensible, though. When writing on a page, you need punctuation to delineate the end of a sentence. In a text, it is delineated for you. Since a period is unnecessary, it's not bad form to include one, but the general feeling is that choosing to include it is a conscious decision and therefore has meaning. Most people agree it implies terseness or being upset at the recipient. Much like saying "Yes!" with an upward tone versus "Yes." with a downward monotone. I can personally attest that if I asked someone (with whom I'm close) if they could do me a favor and they responded "ok", I'd be much more confident they aren't annoyed by it than if they sent me "Ok."

Add in people who use "<argument>. Period / point / full stop." even in spoken communication, not just written communication to show that they are in "right".

[ISW_Kaputnik]

Can I also add. I just read recently that it is bad form to use a period when you are texting! It's no wonder the youth of today are poor writers. Good grammar is almost nonexistent. Spelling is terrible ( unless they have spellcheck ) and vocabulary is limited...IMHO.

 

David

I had never heard of this before. Interesting.

 

 

The reason for this is quite sensible, though. When writing on a page, you need punctuation to delineate the end of a sentence. In a text, it is delineated for you. Since a period is unnecessary, it's not bad form to include one, but the general feeling is that choosing to include it is a conscious decision and therefore has meaning. Most people agree it implies terseness or being upset at the recipient. Much like saying "Yes!" with an upward tone versus "Yes." with a downward monotone. I can personally attest that if I asked someone (with whom I'm close) if they could do me a favor and they responded "ok", I'd be much more confident they aren't annoyed by it than if they sent me "Ok."

 

But what if your text has more than one sentence? I realize that texters tend to be brief, and even I sometimes send a one word message, but quite often I use a text as a mini Email. Sending two or three sentences with punctuation might annoy the recipient (although I never would have guessed that), but sending them without punctuation would annoy me.

[fatalelement]

I had never heard of this before. Interesting.

 

 

But what if your text has more than one sentence? I realize that texters tend to be brief, and even I sometimes send a one word message, but quite often I use a text as a mini Email. Sending two or three sentences with punctuation might annoy the recipient (although I never would have guessed that), but sending them without punctuation would annoy me.

 

I do too. I get in the habit of using dashes often as a semi-period (for example, "just want to know if you can make it tomorrow - let me know, since I need a head count - otherwise there might not be a seat"). I also use periods too, and I don't think it has that implication in a multi-sentence communication. Again, in that situation, I think you aren't pre-delineating your sentences so a period isn't out of place. But where one isn't necessary, I still think that in the right context it can have a negative connotation. I did study linguistics during my engineering education, and took a few classes on how these types of conventions play out in fully- or partially-electronic communications. It's really an interesting topic.

[Sasha Royale]

We are keepers of the flame. Someday, what was ours, will be ours again. For that day, we will cherish, lovingly, pen-ink-cursive.

[pajaro]

Nothing is so constant as change.

[estie1948]

I have learned a great deal from this topic. I have studied the history of human civilization and am forced to admit that many posters are quite correct in stating that civilization and culture are constantly changing (note: civilization and culture are not synonymous). I am even willing to concede that I am one of the old geezers and that is perhaps why I see this abandonment of penmanship as an evil.

 

This topic, which annoys so many of those who took their time to respond (and I am glad they did), keeps appearing because so many of us who so love fountain pens tend to associate fountain pens with our cursive writing. The fact that we love our fountain pens and associate them with cursive writing does not, of course, make us right. It, apparently, merely makes us annoying which is fine and not necessarily a bad thing.

 

We dinosaurs keep harping on the dropping of penmanship from the school curriculum not because it will lead to the fall of civilization, but because it is a symptom of a changing educational vision that trains test takers rather than educates young people. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps this is what is necessary for the modern world. I am honestly in awe of those of you who have mastered more than one language. I hold the mastery of a language foreign to you to be a major accomplishment. Yet in many American school systems the teaching of foreign languages is being dropped as unimportant. The reasoning is that most electronic systems contain translators. Yet I know American teachers teaching in China who teach English to Chinese students. I'm just old and confused. Engineers can function without knowing mathematics. Electronic devices take care of the math so it is not a problem that math courses are disappearing from school curriculums.

 

My grandson and granddaughter had two free days from school this last school year because the school system lost all internet and wifi. The school system could not take attendance, record grades, order the right amount of lunches, or have instruction for most classes - everything is on computer. It does not have a back-up system to cover everything and those back-up systems in place were overwhelmed and failed. All citizens of our city (over 100,000) lost water and sewage service for one day because the city's water department's computer-controlled system went down and its back-up system failed. Such a dependence on a very fragile entity as electronic devices tend to worry dinosaurs. It is the nature of the beast.

 

-David.

[Guardy]

@Estie1948: I hate the over-reliance on electronic systems and the potential death of cursive as much as the next person. The former annoys me to no end, because there's a place for everything and sometimes doing things by hand is just more practical. The latter annoys me because it's a useful skill to have. Doesn't matter if the kids will end up using it, they should just have the option to do so.

However, I do not believe that cursive handwriting should be graded, as they did when I was in school. That was just a royal pain and made me want to never write cursive again out of pure defiance.

 

The point is, that's not the kind of post that annoys me. Being critical of progress/change/whatever is not only natural, but maybe also necessary as long as one is willing to try and keep an open mind regardless. We need people who occasionally object to things, that kind of dialogue is what human society runs on - or should, anyway. However, one has to accept that change will come, no matter what. It's inevitable - all we can do is make those changes in a smart and informed manner (and occasionally try to delay the parts we don't like). One should also possibly not blame us young whippersnappers for stuff going wrong - we're not the ones digitizing the entire school system. We're usually not the ones coming up with the kind of stuff you're criticizing. We're just living in the world the preceding generation creates. We're just carving out our niches in the society we grow up in. Also, our culture and your culture might not always match, or even overlap, but that doesn't necessarily make us stupid, uneducated or uncivilised as posters on here are wont to claim, it just makes us different.
What I'm trying to say: Criticism is fine. Skepticism is fine. Constantly claiming moral and cultural superiority based on an arbitrary set of conventions is not fine, it's annoying.

(You make a lot of very good points, by the way, and your posts are a pretty good example for the kind of thing I, personally, really don't mind reading)

 

Anyway, I still maintain that any reasonably well-executed handwriting is perfectly equal to cursive and purely a matter of personal preference, although actually learning cursive at some point is definitely desirable.

[aeba]

I would, and do (but once again, my opinion doesn't really matter) support idea of handwriting to be a (optional?) part of drawing / arts classes. But I mean in wider sense than just what ever cursive or joined script some politicians somewhere decide; I mean being able to choose what one is piqued with, be it copperplate, fraktura, typography and / or designing fonts. Throw in a one hour 101 of writing utensils and maybe there would be more fresh blood using quality pens.

 

But what would be dropped from curriculum to get time for that? And what about budget for the needed teachers?

 

Edit: I don't mean dropping handwriting in entirety out of mandated curriculum.

[Sandy Fry]

First of all, you folks need to stop equating cursive and handwriting. Print and all sorts of semi-cursives are alive and well, at least here in Europe, for both practical and aesthetic reasons. Do you know how many ~*aesthetic*~ social media accounts consist of 60% calligraphy and other assorted handwriting? As somebody with a little sister, let me tell you: far too many.

Print also happens to be really fashionable, because it's easier to write really quickly and really cleanly (and, in case of your typical girly schoolgirl, as adorably and bubbly as possible).

 

As a non-native speaker who commands a very much adequate vocabulary in two different languages and is certainly no exception in my social circles, I take personal offense to that, thank you very much.

Texting is basically telegraphy 2.0 - you want to save as much time and space as possible and condense things down as much as possible, while still cramming the maximum amount of meaning into the characters you do type. I do not text - ever - but I can see a certain logic in that.

That does not mean those people are not perfectly able to write "properly", if you will, given the right situation.

Also, as somebody who spends a lot of time listening to 70's music on youtube, I can faithfully tell you that the older generations are just as apt at typing incomprehensible things without any semblance of grammar or punctuation as we are.

Cheers.

 

P.S.: How mad are you going to be if I tell you that you might want to check if you really put a space behind every punctuation mark, at least in a post in which you complain about the youth's inability to write properly? Might just be me, but that seems a tad hypocritical, IMHO.

(Also, sorry for snapping at you, but this kind of post is incredibly frequent here and it's starting to make me feel rather unwelcome)

 

 

I'm actually fairly certain that that's something that has been scientifically proven.

Makes a lot of sense, too, since letter shapes, logically, are different for every letter, while pressing keys on a keyboard is a far more monotone motion.

But really, I just like putting arrows everywhere all over my notes and that's a lot easier using pen and paper.

 

That said, I don't really get why people don't use cursive as much anymore. I mean, it's easier to get sloppy writing cursive, but it's way more efficient to keep the pen on the paper as much as possible, if you ask me.

I kind of get why people use cursive italics and all sorts of weird hybrids, because it's kind of a 'best of both worlds' kind of thing, but straight-up print? Why. And, more importantly, how.

Everyone makes assumptions. Just like you assume that English is my first or only language.

 

Why would I get mad at YOUR opinion?

 

If you noticed at the end of my post, I clearly stated ...IMHO...which I am sure you know means " In my humble opinion. "

 

Personally, again in MY opinion, lack of punctuation in texting is sloppy and lazy. I text. I use punctuation. I find writing easier to read if it is punctuated. I would still rather write than type. I write letters frequently. The replies are usually in the form of an email!

 

My post was not meant to offend you and if it did then I apologise for it.

 

David