Reason #2,103 to mock America's education system

[CountDeMoney]

The End of the Line for Cursive?
abcnews.com

The handwriting may be on the wall for cursive.

At least that's what some people fear as schools across the country continue to drop cursive handwriting from their curricula.

Forty-one states have so far adopted the new Common Core State Standards for English, which does not require cursive. Set by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA), the standards provide a general framework for what students are expected to learn before college.

States are allowed the option of re-including cursive if they so choose, which is what Massachusetts and California have done.

But the latest to contemplate abandoning the script is Georgia, where teachers and administrators will meet in March to discuss erasing the longhand style from its lesson plans, says Georgia Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza.

The argument is that cursive is time-consuming and not as useful as the keyboard skills students will need as they move on to junior high and high school, he says.

As it happens, cursive is also not on the tests that rate schools under the No Child Left Behind law, and increasingly schools gear their curricula to excel at those tests, says Kathleen Wright, a national project manager for Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of education writing materials.

"It's just not being assessed. That's the biggie," she says. "If it's not assessed, it tends to fall by a little because people are teaching to the test."

So what's the big deal if your little John Hancock doesn't have a big loopy cursive signature of his own?

Antiquated or no, cursive is viewed by some parents and educators as essential to an education -- especially as text-happy teens become ever more thumb-centric.

"I've been disappointed in general with the public school system here," says Lisa Faircloth, a stay-at-home mother of two in Atlanta. She says she is pleased that her 7 year-old son Joe learned cursive.

"I feel like it has helped him with his fine motor skills and made him more graceful," she says. "He shows more of an interest in art because he is able to form things he hadn't before and has new muscle movements that he didn't know before."

The Neuroscience of Learning

Science backs her up. Increasingly the argument that students should be spending more time learning keyboard skills than cursive -- because that's the future! -- is beginning to look like a straw man.

"Of course it's important to know how to typewrite," says associate professor Anne Mangen at the University of Stavanger's Reading Centre. "But handwriting seems, based on empirical evidence from neuroscience, to play a larger role in the visual recognition and learning of letters.

"This is something one should be aware of in an educational context," she stresses.

In other words, those who learn to write by hand learn better.

Mangen points to an experiment involving two groups of adults in which participants were taught a new, foreign alphabet. One group learned the characters by hand, the other learned only to recognize them on a screen and with a keyboard.

Weeks after the experiment, the group that learned the letters by hand consistently scored better on recognition tests than those who learned with a keyboard. Brain scans of the hands-on group also showed greater activity in the part of the brain that controls language comprehension, motor-related processes and speech-associated gestures.

"Now we have studies that show for some important aspects of reading, digital technology may not be as important as handwriting," she says.

For this and other reasons, Kathleen Wright of Zaner-Bloser isn't quite prepared to type out cursive's obituary. Technology has been the bogey man before, after all.

"I personally don't see it going away," she says. "When the typewriter first came in, people asked ''is anyone going to write by hand any more?'

"And if you don't teach kids," she adds, "they won't have access to a lot of historical documents and primary source documents because they won't have learned cursive."

To which John Hancock might thave texted "OMG."

[CountDeMoney]

Is this the end of handwriting? Indiana schools to teach keyboard skills instead

As the old adage goes, the pen is mightier than the sword.

But it appears the once untouchable writing implement may have met its match in Indiana, after the Department of Education said it will no longer require public schools to teach cursive writing.

State officials sent school leaders a memo April 25 telling them that instead of cursive writing, students will be expected to become proficient in keyboard use.

The Times of Munster reports the memo says schools may continue to teach cursive as a local standard, or they may decide to stop teaching cursive altogether.

East Allen County Schools Superintendent Karyle Green said she didn't find the decision surprising.

'The skill of handwriting is a dying art,' she said. 'Everything isn't handwritten anymore.'

The district will still teach cursive, albeit in a limited form, according to curriculum director Marilyn Hissong.

From now on, second-graders will be taught cursive. But students will no longer be assessed on the handwriting style in third and fourth grade.

'We think it's still important for kids to be able to read cursive,' Hissong said.

'But after that, it begins to become obsolete.'

Andree Anderson of the Indiana University Northwest Urban Teacher Education Program says teachers haven't had the time to teach cursive writing for some time because it's not a top priority.

The education expert added students' handwriting was 'atrocious'.

[Agelastus]

I'm reminded of an episode of Blake's 7 when a character, being used as slave labour, is presented with a "graphite writing stick" and immediately points out that he has fingers which are "designed for pushing buttons".

[jimmy olsen]

I learned it, but aside from writing my signature I've only used it once since the fourth grade.

[CountDeMoney]

I learned it, but aside from writing my signature I've only used it once since the fourth grade.

We all know you're not exactly a ringing endorsement of America's education system.  No need to reinforce it.  Retard.

[Camerus]

Good.  The sooner we abandon it, the better.

[CountDeMoney]

Good.  The sooner we abandon it, the better.

Great, another troglodyte.

[HVC]

Alongside cursive i had to learn calligraphy. Who, in their daily lives, use either?

[HisMajestyBOB]

My cursive is nearly illegible at this point, except to me.

[Neil]

What are you going to do with cursive?  Write someone a letter?

[HVC]

Cdm has crossed the inevitable line from hipster to codger 

[dps]

Cdm has crossed the inevitable line from hipster to codger 

What makes you think he was ever on the hipster side of the line?  He's much too good of a person to have ever been a hipster.

[HVC]

Cdm has crossed the inevitable line from hipster to codger 

What makes you think he was ever on the hipster side of the line?  He's much too good of a person to have ever been a hipster.

ipicture him posting in a fedora. not sure if it's accurate, but that's how i see it lol.

That and impeccably manicured hands. but that because i know he gets manicures... which is off putting in its own right.

[Grey Fox]

Learning how to write cursive is useless if you don't actually read it anywhere.

You seen alot of cursive on the internet CD?

[CountDeMoney]

Cdm has crossed the inevitable line from hipster to codger 

At the very least, apparently a bit more refined and cultured than most of these philistine monkey ass pounders.

Go ahead, you increasingly faceless automatons.  Marginalize your individuality.