I remember spending a portion of every school day doing practice cursive writing, flowing letters neatly scripted to each line of the paper. Many of us took pride in our cursive skills as if flowing cursive writing was a right of passage from little kid work to big kid work in school. But todays' students are spending less time writing and more time texting.
By December 2008 110 billion text messages had been sent by cell phones. I wonder how many letters were written on paper, poems composed in a notebook and thoughts from the heart were written in a diary in 2008? Where does writing fit into the curriculum for today's students? In some school districts teachers embed handwriting into writing for other subjects, according to Kathleen Reddy-Butkovich, curriculum coordinator for English language art in Plymouth-Canton Community Schools. Instead of taking time to do practice writing students write to complete subject assignments.
What do you think? How often do you write with pencil and paper compared to using word processing or texting? How important is penmanship in today's schools and in society? Certainly we all need to be able to sign our names but how many of us sign our name in print? How many of us sign our names in cursive and does it really matter?
Here's another thought - if you send thank you notes to people who give you presents at Christmas will you send a hand-written note or will you send them a text or email? Surely I wasn't the only child who hand wrote thank you notes to all my relatives who gave me presents for Christmas and my birthday?
How should writing be taught in schools today and should cursive writing still be taught?
To read the entire article please go to:
Schools Adjust How Writing is Taught in Text Age
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091216/NEWS05/912160379/1001/NEWS/Schools-adjust-how-writing-is-taught-in-text-age&template=fullarticle
Image taken from the article (SUSAN TUSA/Detroit Free Press)
3 comments:
Research shows that the fastest and clearest handwriters avoid cursive. Highest-speed highest-legibility handwriters join only some, not all, of the letters -- making the easiest joins, skipping the rest -- and use print-style letter-shapes for those letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree.
It shouldn't surprise anyone, then, that a software company (owned by an MD in the process of mending his own poor handwriting) has come out with an iPhone app to teach such high-speed high-legibility handwriting to the texting generation: Better Letters, described as a "personal handwriting trainer" by its manufacturer at http://bit.ly/BetterLetters (demonstration video at http://bit.ly/BetterLettersVideo ).
Kate Gladstone -- http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
Director, the World Handwriting Contest
Founder and CEO, Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
Co-designer and content provider, Better Letters personal handwriting trainer app for the iPhone and iPodTouch
I definitely use a keyboard more -- it is almost rare that I write a true letter to someone, but I still do that, mostly thank you notes. It also could be a generational thing. Something my generation was taught about ALWAYS writing a thank you note - nothing pre-prepared, but an actual hand-written note. It's like taking the time to pick out a gift - it shows thought and meaning. That's not to say that cursive should or should not be taught, but I will say that keyboarding should be - effective keyboarding is more important now for students that when I was a child. Children need all the tools possible to be successful in a "wired" world, and keyboarding, currently, is one. It, too, will pass as more voice applications become available. I think the tie to cursive handwriting shows the slowness of schools to change. It is a motor skill, not a thinking process.
Kate - thanks for the information. I will check out this site because I am concerned about the poort handwriting of students, their lack of grammer and punctuation and total lack of writing skills.
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