Texas - The Return Of Cursive

[Chouffleur]

The handwriting is back on the wall:

 

Texas students will be reintroduced to the "lost art" of cursive writing in the 2019-2020 school year.

Thanks to the increase in computers, tablets and standardized testing, cursive writing decreased as early as 2005. More than a decade later, the now-rare skill will become a requirement for Texas elementary students to master.Updates to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS, for language arts now require all second-grade students in Texas to write legibly in cursive by the time they reach the fifth grade. The State Board of Education changed the requirements in 2017 but they will not go into effect until next school year, according to the Texas Education Agency.

 

 

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/article/Texas-districts-to-re-establish-cursive-writing-13753336.php

 

Edit: Er, that should be "Cursive". Not that "Cusrive" isn't welcome, too.

Edited April 12, 2019 by Chouffleur

[kmcmichael]

I think it is good and likely will be better than when I learned. I will never be as good as I was when young because we were forced to write so much that it became illegible. It is an art and should not be used as punishment. Writing does help one remember but not if a certain amount is decreed.

[Karmachanic]

Thin edge of the wedge. Before you know it they'll have to write exams!!

[Parker51]

I did.

[ildbig]

Cursive is still useful! One learns more taking notes by hand than on a computer, and cursive lets you keep up. Also, how do you pass a note in, say, a deposition using a computer?! You need to be able to write the note -- quickly, too.

 

 

 

 

 

The handwriting is back on the wall:

 

Texas students will be reintroduced to the "lost art" of cursive writing in the 2019-2020 school year.

Thanks to the increase in computers, tablets and standardized testing, cursive writing decreased as early as 2005. More than a decade later, the now-rare skill will become a requirement for Texas elementary students to master.Updates to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS, for language arts now require all second-grade students in Texas to write legibly in cursive by the time they reach the fifth grade. The State Board of Education changed the requirements in 2017 but they will not go into effect until next school year, according to the Texas Education Agency.

 

 

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/article/Texas-districts-to-re-establish-cursive-writing-13753336.php

 

Edit: Er, that should be "Cursive". Not that "Cusrive" isn't welcome, too.

 

 

Cursive is still usefulf

[phm14]

That's good news.

[jhylkema]

As someone who is starting a journey rediscovering cursive as an adult, I can say this:

 

Cursive, properly taught and properly done, allows one to write much longer with much less fatigue. After all, your wrist and arm muscles are much bigger and have a much greater range of motion. Improperly taught (i.e., writing using only your fingers, as I was taught) is a painful nightmare and sets the kids up for failure.

[Chouffleur]

As someone who is starting a journey rediscovering cursive as an adult, I can say this:

 

Cursive, properly taught and properly done, allows one to write much longer with much less fatigue. After all, your wrist and arm muscles are much bigger and have a much greater range of motion. Improperly taught (i.e., writing using only your fingers, as I was taught) is a painful nightmare and sets the kids up for failure.

If you excise the bolded part of the sentence you will have something very close to a universal law. ;-)

[kestrel]

Thin edge of the wedge. Before you know it they'll have to write exams!!

Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate students are required to write out their answers longhand unless they have a special exemption. Some write cursive, some print, and some leave "writing" looks remarkably like the marks left by a horde of drunken hamsters with inky feet as they staggered across the paper.

[Chouffleur]

Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate students are required to write out their answers longhand unless they have a special exemption. Some write cursive, some print, and some leave "writing" looks remarkably like the marks left by a horde of drunken hamsters with inky feet as they staggered across the paper.

This post insults drunken hamsters. ;-)

[kestrel]

This post insults drunken hamsters. ;-)

You must have seen some of the papers I had to score. For years I was the go-to guy on whatever AP Bio question I was scoring for hamster papers that nobody else could read. They came to me. I generally deciphered them but it was painful. Visine was a lifesaver. One year a kind soul left a little toy plush hamster at my seat with an ink pad.

[doggle2]

Ehh. Personally, I think this is a bad idea. My classmates handwriting is already bad enoughno need to make them learn another script, and make more of the horrible print-cursive mix that I often see.

If someone wants to learn cursive, let them do it themselves. As a person who uses cursive in high school, I think the skill is quite useless, though fun to use.

[cellmatrix]

I am a big fan of cursive writing but dont think students should be required to learn it. The time they would spend learning cursive would be better spent on more important subjects like science and the liberal arts.

[missclimpson]

If you cant write cursive, how do you read it? In my working life Ive had to read a lot of hand written notes, edits to typed pages, etc. if I hadnt known cursive, I could hardly have figured any of them out.

[A Smug Dill]

If you cant write cursive, how do you read it?

I'm not sure whether you meant that as a rhetorical question. Assuming you didn't, the answer is:

 

Visual recognition and pattern matching allow people to read something they cannot write by hand with a pen. Some people can read signs in foreign languages (e.g. Arabic, Chinese and Thai) that use a completely different system from the Latin-based alphabets, without ever having learnt the correct pen stroke order, relative proportions and placement for the words.

 

It isn't that difficult for someone to learn to recognise 東京 as being Tokyo in Japanese and Chinese, and some can even draw a collection of lines in a way such that they are easily recognisable as those characters, but to write the word requires more than that:

Source: strokeorder.com.tw

 

In much the same way, some people can read content that is written in the English court hand, without being able write or so much as reproduce it in the same hand.

 

So I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for someone to read cursive English writing without being able to produce it with a pen by his/her own hand.

 

In my working life Ive had to read a lot of hand written notes, edits to typed pages, etc. if I hadnt known cursive, I could hardly have figured any of them out.

[ardene]

Teaching kids cursive for the sake of cursive -rather than, say, to improve fine motor skills, which can be done with printed handwriting btw- is problematic.

[Moruk]

As a Texan, I think reintroducing cursive is a good idea--but I also have to be suspicious that there is a political angle to this announcement. Very little is done in our educational system that is "good" in and of itself, so I have to ask why now? why this sudden conversion to cursive? Inquiring minds want to know.

[TSherbs]

As a Texan, I think reintroducing cursive is a good idea--but I also have to be suspicious that there is a political angle to this announcement. Very little is done in our educational system that is "good" in and of itself, so I have to ask why now? why this sudden conversion to cursive? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

On the bolded part: oh, come on

 

I am a teacher, and that is just nonsense.

 

It's ok to wonder about the additional political angle of state law changes (teachers are not lawmakers), but don't impugn the integrity of the entire educational system. It's inaccurate and unkind. Every day that we teachers care for the wellbeing of children, we are doing it as a good in and of itself. Every day, millions of times a day.

[kmcmichael]

[cellmatrix]

Or write their girlfriends name in the sand? (image taken from New Spencerian Compendium, P. R. Spencer & Sons, 1887)