Yes, they do get upset. Strangely, this group probably overlaps with people who argue teachers shouldn’t just “teach to the test.”
For lots of educators, teaching to the test is the only thing worth doing because it is the only way education was measured and the public and politicians have a fetish for things that can be measured. Recess and arts classes took the biggest hit. Cursive was chucked along with it.
Lots of kids have trouble composing on a computer. I worked with special needs middle schoolers and I had to go around turning off the spell-check features and bar the kids from changing the font, margins, etc. because a word processor can be mighty distracting, and not just for special needs kids.
I also buy the argument that some kids have trouble with hand writing. If you have to think too hard and are drawing your letters one at a time, then writing coherently is much harder.
Writing with your hand instead of a keyboard is probably the best way to do a first draft. IMO, whether your print, use cursive, or your own invented cross may matter less.
I will put in a plug for teaching kids the proper way to form the letters and numbers. Deciphering someone else’s scrawl is much easier if you can be confident that the writer was trying to follow the conventional method- it gives you strong clues that are absent otherwise. If I can’t tell your 4 from a 9, it may be because of the way you made it. (Yes, I know this isn’t a problem with a computer, but is this a capital I or a lower case l ?)
Kids should know how to write. But forcing them to learn cursive isn’t the same. Cursive can be beautiful but it isn’t the best way to make sure someone else can read what you wrote. If the fine motor skills are so important, carve out more time for art and offer cursive as an artistic endeavor.
Calligraphy is awesome! I feel like there’s only a certain number of things adults can truly mandate children learn before the kids just tap out. One of those rare spots shouldn’t be used for a second form of writing by hand. Particularly when there are multiple kinds of cursive, it’s not as uniform as block letters.
But offering calligraphy for art? Sure, that could be a lot of fun.
When I showed my son the Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting method he asked me why they didn’t teach it in school. I told him that schools teach you a method, but that there are often different, sometimes better methods to everything, but they can’t teach all of the alternatives.
I told him that he should tell his teacher about it, and who knows, maybe they’ll start teaching that method in the future.
Kudos to you! In my primary school district, anything that they wanted to teach a kid that was outside the usual curriculum was placed in the same period as handwriting. For various reasons, in grades 3 and 4, I had almost no handwriting classes. And it shows; my handwriting has always been atrocious.
I tried teaching myself the Palmer method a few years back, but never made any progress. My fine motor skills are, well, fine…there’s just something about that intersection of motion and language that I can’t grasp.
Fortunately, I had drafting classes in grades 8 and 9, and that gave me a character set to use. I’ve adapted it to my own style over the years, and like you I enjoy taking the time to write notes and planners by hand. It’s relaxing and helps me commit what I’m doing to memory.
Should probably also teach kids to tell time with analog clocks, because that’s a useful skill my teacher friends tell me some high school students don’t have (or aren’t strong in).
Repeating my “Using a Fountain pen makes Cursive make sense”. Using a fountain pen is also fun, but it really doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.
Sometimes being forced to do something pointless you don’t like in an environment you can’t escape leaves really bad feelings. At least it wasn’t as bad as all the stuff from phys ed, I guess.
So I am a bit out of touch on what they are teaching in schools - is there like a several year gap of kids that can’t read or write cursive?
I don’t really remember it taking up that much time in schooling. We had to learn how to draw the letters and then practiced some in other assignments.
When she was in college a few years back, my daughter worked a summer job with a girl her age who literally could not read an analog clock. As “useless” as these skills are, I’ll be sad to see them go. My mother and grandmother (both teachers) had beautiful cursive handwriting. I’m sad to think that my grandchildren might not be able to read the letters and cards of theirs that I’ve saved. But maybe they won’t care.
This is the point in the “legislating cursive education” argument where someone has to jokingly suggest that we require kids to learn Blackletter. “It’ll help them read historical documents!”
[tuarum cele.uiti st] per noia lui
gloriorum a viginti annis & surer ones
qui ad bella proederent: quodragin-
taquincibus milia sexoenti quinqua-
ginta. De filiis uida per genera-
tiones & familias ac domos
cognationum suarum per nomina
singulorum a vicesimos anno et
[…
Fair point. I guess cursive stands out because there are so many arguably pointless things we were all forced to do in school, but somehow drawing letters awakens all this vehemence. Every time it comes up.
I’m sure others get a chuckle at some of the things I get upset about. C’est la vie.
