The Lost Art Of Writing

[stonezebra]

I heard on the news tonight that Indiana is joining 40 states in deciding to eliminate cursive handwriting as a requirement in public schools.

 

How sad. I learned to write cursive (with a fountain pen) when I was a child (in the previous century!) and living in IN. Does anyone know if there is a list of the above-mentioned states? I'm curious to see if OK is one of them. I suspect it is.

[rosey]

I couldn't find anything doing a quick search on which states are adopting this policy. But here is a link to an article about the decision.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/30/cursive-handwriting-instr_n_842069.html

 

From The Associated Press talking about Indiana's decision: "The skill of handwriting is a dying art," [said East Allen County Schools Superintendent Karyle Green]. "Everything isn't handwritten anymore."

[mirosc]

"The skill of handwriting is a dying art," [said East Allen County Schools Superintendent Karyle Green]. "Everything isn't handwritten anymore."

Well, now THAT is just plain stupid... (and so wrong... at least for Europe, don't know about East Allen County Schools)

[beak]

From the clip: "... the education of cursive writing........'

From the Schools Superintendent: . "Everything isn't handwritten anymore."

 

 

Bloody hell! I'm going against my normal line on this for a minute; I'd give up my preference for the teaching of cursive if I thought that the time would be used to teach respectable English instead!

[The Good Captain]

From the clip: "... the education of cursive writing........'

From the Schools Superintendent: . "Everything isn't handwritten anymore."

 

 

Bloody hell! I'm going against my normal line on this for a minute; I'd give up my preference for the teaching of cursive if I thought that the time would be used to teach respectable English instead!

 

EXACTLY! They just don't not write English like they didn't ought to know how to anyway, any more, innit?

[stonezebra]

I couldn't find anything doing a quick search on which states are adopting this policy. But here is a link to an article about the decision.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/30/cursive-handwriting-instr_n_842069.html

 

From The Associated Press talking about Indiana's decision: "The skill of handwriting is a dying art," [said East Allen County Schools Superintendent Karyle Green]. "Everything isn't handwritten anymore."

 

Thanks Rosey! Your link eventually led to a page with a map of which states have adopted the 'core standards' < States Adopting Core Standards> - including not teaching cursive handwriting anymore.

Edited July 9, 2011 by stonezebra

[georges zaslavsky]

In my country everyone can read and write cursive and as far as I remember, cursive is what is taught at school since the youngest age.

[georges zaslavsky]

I couldn't find anything doing a quick search on which states are adopting this policy. But here is a link to an article about the decision.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/30/cursive-handwriting-instr_n_842069.html

 

From The Associated Press talking about Indiana's decision: "The skill of handwriting is a dying art," [said East Allen County Schools Superintendent Karyle Green]. "Everything isn't handwritten anymore."

Terrible and dumb decision but in France, only handwritten motivation letters are accepted, same comment with others important letters that can only be written by hand. And you wonder why some people have such (bleep) spelling or awful grammar and even don't know how to write, I don't.

[The Good Captain]

Here's the gist of part of an e-mail from one of my step-daughters who is a deputy head-teacher here in the UK

Handwriting is still taught as part of the national curriculum. It is up to individual schools how they teach it and which style of handwriting they choose to teach. Her nieces were taught cursive from the very beginning, learning to form letters from the bottom to include the join. Many children are taught letter formation first and then progress to learning the joins as they become proficient in formation. They mostly use pencil and progress to using pen once their wrtiting is legible and fluent. Children are then encouraged to experiment until they find their own style. Keyboard skills are taught from the age of five.

She says: "I had a pen pal from the the USA when I was younger I can quite understand why they may teach keyboard skills!! I found his dreadful handwriting almost illegible. I think it unlikely we would ever remove writing for keyboard skills. Mark making is part of young children's development and the progression in to communicating meaning and is embedded in our culture. The physical process of writing is fun."

I noticed with amusement that the State her pen pal lived in happens to be one of the ones adopting the new Curriculum!

[KateGladstone]

I have heard a discussion on the CBC (Radio Canada 1), where it was pointed out that different centers of the brain are used for typing & for cursive writing.

According to the expert on the air, hand writing (cursive in particular) needs a more direct concentration on the part of the writer, to keep the content, spelling, punctuation & proper grammar on course. The motor control to manipulate a pen is not on the same side of the brain as typing. Found this kind of intriguing.

 

I know that when I got back to making more hand written notes and letters, I had to mentally switch hats to keep my writing accurate. Had to slow down my thoughts, to keep pace with my lumbering, semi-cursive script. But, there seems to be less of a need for corrections. Cursive writing for me now is a form of relaxation.

On the computer, my mind often races ahead of my glacial typing speed,......but no worry, (there's always spell-check to correct at least some of the errors). It's easy to make corrections.

Don't know if the above is off topic, but here it is anyway....

 

Cheers: tinta

[KateGladstone]

I ment to add, to Tinta's assertions, these questions ... What brain centers, then, are used for semi-joined writing? And what were all those brain centers for cursive/typing/etc. doing throughout the long eons until the invention of typing, of cursive, or of writing itself?

[KateGladstone]

I meant "meant" ...

[rosey]

I couldn't find anything doing a quick search on which states are adopting this policy. But here is a link to an article about the decision.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/30/cursive-handwriting-instr_n_842069.html

 

From The Associated Press talking about Indiana's decision: "The skill of handwriting is a dying art," [said East Allen County Schools Superintendent Karyle Green]. "Everything isn't handwritten anymore."

 

Thanks Rosey! Your link eventually led to a page with a map of which states have adopted the 'core standards' < States Adopting Core Standards> - including not teaching cursive handwriting anymore.

 

Thanks for the link to the map of States Adopting Core Standards,stonezebra. I think it's a terrible decision by the states who are adopting this new policy. I'm all for teaching keyboard skills, but to totally disregard the importance of learning to write cursive is asinine. Here's another example of stupid legislature in action.

[Mickey]

I ment to add, to Tinta's assertions, these questions ... What brain centers, then, are used for semi-joined writing? And what were all those brain centers for cursive/typing/etc. doing throughout the long eons until the invention of typing, of cursive, or of writing itself?

 

Regarding your question about what the brain was doing.., I direct you to William Calvin's books "The River That Flows Uphill" and "Cerebral Symphony," both of which discuss neurophysiology and the evolution of consciousness in terms an intelligent layman might follow. In an eggshell, the answer to your question is that a lot of our "human" skills are secondary and tertiary uses of structures which evolved for entirely different purposes, i.e., these structures provided survival and propagation advantages. We probably evolved written language because we discovered that we could write and being able to write conferred advantages. Speech and language are thornier questions, but probably evolved similarly.

 

Moving on, the most obvious difference between language expressed via writing (pen, brush, chisel, etc.) versus that expressed via keyboard is the fairly extensive spacial considerations in the former and the relative absence of such in the latter. In written expression, visual systems are active to monitor both content and design (execution in space) on the page. This design monitoring (feedback) is dynamically active at the stroke, letter, word, and page levels. In keyboarding, content may be monitored similarly, but regarding design, the first two aspects are fixed. The font is not dynamically created or recreated by the keyboarder. Feedback loops absolutely necessary for writing can thus be bypassed for keyboarding. Also, the human brain is massively parallel processor, so it stands to reason that the slower pace imposed by written expression allows simultaneously for more fulsome monitoring of content, including word choice, grammar, etc.

 

A more interesting comparison might be made among unsighted people writing in Braille versus keyboard, and among people unsighted from birth versus those who lose sight after initial language skill acquisition.

[KateGladstone]

Why is it specifically *cursive* writing that matters to you?

[KateGladstone]

"[M]ore fulsome monitoring of ... word choice" is a poor recommendation, given the meanings of "fulsome." See for yourself at http://www.google.com/search?q=definition:+fulsome&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari

[KateGladstone]

An example of fulsomely monitored English in the defense of cursive: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8191635/why_penmanship_should_have_more_attention.html?cat=4

[Mickey]

"[M]ore fulsome monitoring of ... word choice" is a poor recommendation, given the meanings of "fulsome." See for yourself at http://www.google.co...n&client=safari

 

This sort of quibbling is usually reserved for those whose theory or argument has collapsed for lack of intellectual support. As 'fulsome" means (among other things) generous, abundant, or larger in extent, my use was not incorrect. Perhaps, if I'd been writing cursively, rather than keyboarding, I might have made a more felicitous choice of words, e.g., "thorough" or "compleat."

 

As for having a particular bug about cursive, that problem seems to be yours. I made no distinction between printing and cursive (versus keyboarding). I do believe, however, being unable to directly access primary research materials, because one cannot read cursive, presents a significant barrier to serious scholarship. Being able to write cursively is a slightly different issue, but I still believe one can better understand (interpret, decipher) the subtle thought processes embedded in a cursive manuscript if one has at least a minimal competence as a writer of cursive. There is a good reason why Torah is studied in Hebrew and Quran in Arabic: there is no substitute for reading significant works in as unadulterated form as possible.

[KateGladstone]

By your reasoning, one could not understand the thoughts behind the Magna Carta without first gaining "at least a minimal competence" in producing the handwriting of thirteenth-century England, and no one ignorant of Latin can understand any scientific discovery made in the Western world before the eighteenth century.

[Mickey]

By your reasoning, one could not understand the thoughts behind the Magna Carta without first gaining "at least a minimal competence" in producing the handwriting of thirteenth-century England, and no one ignorant of Latin can understand any scientific discovery made in the Western world before the eighteenth century.

 

I hope you are not making a point of misunderstanding, but you give every evidence of it. I will try once more, taking your final absurd argument as a starting point.

 

To understand a particular scientific discovery, read whatever you are capable of understanding, but to learn how the discovery was made, one may well need to read the writings of the discoverer (disclosures, research notes, correspondence, marginalia, etc.) in their least adulterated form, which may well be in another language and may very well be cursive. The point of such an exercise is not to understand the discovery, but the history of the discovery and the thought processes leading up to it. The mind of the scientist or the scientific process is the target, not the actual discovery.

 

Similarly, the King James versions of the first 5 books of the Bible are wonderful pieces of artistic writing, but don't always come that close to the meaning of the original text. Commandment 6 is a prime example. (The correct word is "murder," not "kill.") One is at the mercy of the translator, who may be full of beans, but otherwise honorable, or may have a distinct agenda. (There are reasons why Jews learn Hebrew and Muslims Arabic. A person of faith should not be at the mercy of priests (read ecclesiastic politicians) to tell them what is right or wrong.)

 

In another regime, to understand the published version of "Pride and Prejudice" read the book. To understand how it was written, you will need to read the manuscript and large amounts of other materials, much of it unpublished in printed form and available only as facsimiles - all of it cursive. Are you starting to get it? There are many thing you cannot know with any surety (or even create informed conjectures about) without reading the relevant materials in their least adulterated form, which usually means the earliest hand written text. The same principle applies to all primary source material. I worked as a research librarian while in college and when in doubt, one usually cut past the editors and looked at original manuscripts or facsimiles (and then hoped the reproduction was clear enough to resolve the question).

 

As Dr. Pangloss might say, "Any questions....?"

Edited July 12, 2011 by Mickey