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When I was in first grade, Mrs. Scherger, my soon-to-be 2nd grade teacher told me, “Here at Trinity, we learn cursive in 2nd grade, so starting next year, you’ll be able to read anything written by anyone, even the Constitution.” That was an exciting, mysterious prospect to me because at that time all I knew was the print in my readers.
And for some time now, under the Common Core State Standards Initiative for “best educational practices”, it states that “cursive is no longer required to be taught” and instead will be replaced by keyboarding.
In “Killing Cursive Is Killing History,” HuffPost has this to say: “Not only can this generation not read or write cursive, they can no longer even sign their names. They write everything, including their own names, in block letters. Signing your name has been a proof of identity for hundreds of years. Those who could not sign their names would have to make their mark in front of witnesses. Contracts, mortgages, wills and all manner of other legal documents require our signature. What will the future bring for people who cannot put their signatures to documents?”
Other Side Effects:
What is being missed here – what many educators do not realize – is that by learning cursive:
- you were not just learning how to communicate in another font
- you were building neural pathways necessary to stimulate brain activity that enables vision-motor control and language fluency necessary for cognitive development, learning, reading, sports, socialization and everyday tasks
Reasons Cursive Should Be Taught:
The Science For Cognitive Development
Fine motor skills are the building blocks our brains need to connect and make sense of the world around us. Cursive is a great example of many specializations taking place at once.
Cursive combines:
- tactile information (touch/sensation)
- hand-eye coordination
- movement control (fine motor dexterity)
- visual integration
- directing movement by thought, and
- thinking simultaneously, in a fullness that print alone does not
Understanding and knowing how to form letters on lines at a certain shape and size, at a certain angle, in real time and space comes through the fine motor control of the hands and arms. Cursive handwriting naturally develops sensory skills, as they are called, by taking advantage of a child’s inability to fully control their fingers. (source)
Neurologist Frank Wilson wrote in his book, “The Hand: How its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, And Human Culture”, “teachers should not try to educate the mind by itself. If educators continue to dissolve the disciplines that involve the hands and the body in full movement (as in active play), much of the knowledge will be poorly processed and inadequately learned.”
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The Science On Cursive
- “Shadmehr and Holcomb of Johns Hopkins University published a study in Science magazine showing that their subjects’ brains actually changed in reaction to physical instruction such as cursive handwriting lessons. The researchers provided PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans as evidence of these changes in brain structure. In addition, they also demonstrated that these changes resulted in an almost immediate improve in fluency, which led to later development of neural pathways. As a result of practicing these handwriting motor skills, the researchers found that acquired knowledge becomes more stable.” (source)
- According to Dr. David Sortino, “cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing, typing or keyboarding.” He also discovered that cursive writing was “an excellent kinesthetic exercise which grounded his special needs students’ energies, many of which had severe behavioral problems.”
- Dr. Klemm, a senior professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M, has written several articles about why “the pen is mightier than the keyboard.”
- Dr. Stanislas Dehaene, a researcher at the Collège de France in Paris states, “When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated. There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain. And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn’t realize. Learning is made easier.” This study at Indiana University supports this.
- An article in New York Times by Maria Konnikova, it’s been shown that cursive vs print “activates separate brain networks and engages in more cognitive resources.” She explains how following a brain injury, or in dysgraphia, where the ability to write is impaired or in Alexia, impaired reading ability, individuals who can no longer write or understand print can still comprehend cursive.
- PBS Newshour published a report about how cursive helps not just dyslexic students but all students with deeper and more critical thinking, memory, reading, etc. “Some of the most recent research in the fMRI studies is showing us that when the hands are involved, it’s a stronger association for learning and memory. When people write things they remember them longer.”
- Cursive writing has proved to even support higher SAT scores.
Cursive Helps in Dyslexia:
The IDA (International Dyslexia Association) and the BDA (British Dyslexia Association) encourage cursive writing instruction for kids with dyslexia. Because cursive letters are more stylistically distinct and are easier for students struggling with distinguishing similar letters to recognize, the differences empower these children to see words as a whole, not just a part. Cursive is often part of dyslexia therapy.
To help your dyslexic student:
Dyslexia Games Therapy and the Thinking Tree PDF Fun-Schooling Curriculum is perfect for active and creative kids who have problems with typical curriculum. (Thinking Tree curriculum offers a stress free Delight-Directed and Charlotte Mason inspired approach to homeschooling, using Dyslexic Forts for easy reading).
Help in Focus (Boys and Girls):
And lastly, a 2012 study in Child Development Journal states “Fine motor skills through handwriting supports executive function by engaging a child’s attention and developing her ability to focus” and “…handwriting is important for the early recruitment in letter processing of brain regions known to underlie successful reading. Handwriting therefore may facilitate reading acquisition in young children.”
“It is a grave misconception to believe that promoting keyboard fingering fluency will develop the minds of students as much as traditional cursive handwriting lessons once did. Typing is a homolateral act using one hemisphere of the brain separately from the other hemisphere. Since a child’s hands do not cross the midline, the corpus callosum (connecting fibers of the two hemispheres of the brain which allows inter-hemispheric communication) is not being developed. Keyboarding has its own benefits to brain development and is a necessary tool for a 21st century lifestyle that should be taught in conjunction with traditional print and cursive disciplines to set our children on the path to success. To quote first-century Roman writer, Marcus Quintilanus, “too slow a hand impedes the mind,” and we cannot afford to have our children be any slower.” (source)
Jackie’s Note: here is a printable list of 30 ways to help your boys (and girls, too!)!“Cursive is an art form, subtle, day-to-day art form that leavens life, like little origami surprises, arranging flowers… a well-crafted condolence or thinking-of-you letter. If you support longhand teaching you are supporting art, a grace of writing. You also are supporting the hands to be a kind of multilingual.” ~Beth at WiseMommies.com
Charlotte Moore
It is a disservice to the students to not teach them cursive writing. I can remember when I first started working as a paper pro how important it was to teach them cursive. I worked with a second grade teacher that started her students in cursive right after the CHRISTmas holidays best I can recall. They need it so badly.
Jacqueline
I thank you so much for all you’ve done for those children! Charlotte, you say second grade and that’s when our school taught all us kids.
Blessings, friend! 😀
Charlotte Moore
OOPS!! That would be Para Pro. Which is a teacher’s aid it used to be called.
Juno
Jacqueline, this article gives great insight to all the reasons why cursive is still and always will be a valuable subject for kiss to keep on learning.
I would love to share this article on my blog if you’ll have me.
Juno.
Jacqueline
Hi, Juno! At this time, I would love to have you share it on FB. I hope that doesn’t offend. That’s been my policy for a while, and if I let one do it, others I have said no to will not be happy with me 🙂
Blessings,
Jacqueline
Michael Paul Goldenberg
So how did anyone manage to do much of anything before there was cursive?
What about people in countries with ideographic languages? No athletes of note coming out of China or Japan, I guess?
To be blunt, this piece uses a lot of circular reasoning and deceptive quotations to “prove” the already-believed conclusion. And the big give away comes early with the mention of the Constitution. I seriously doubt the teacher brought that up to 2nd graders, few of whom likely could have made sense of so much as two sentences of 18th century, highly formal prose.
Geo.
I too have the same questions as M.P. Goldberg, but using the Constitution herein may have been a poor example. My very first thought when first reading of this issue several years ago regarded an entire generation and successors who will be unable to read ANYthing that was ever written in cursive. I think one does not have to look so deeply to find reasons to continue teaching cursive in public schools, aside from the “science” or the neurologic-advantage discussions.
Consider its continuation as specialized “job security” for future careers.
Consider its demise the most harmful of consequences: teachers will no longer be able to send students to the blackboard (having now been replaced with either “green” or “white”) to write 500 times, “I will not chew gum in class.”
Jacqueline
Thank you for your comment, Geo.,
I also consider it harmful to neurological development and had to smile at your thoughts on school punishment. 😀
I don’t think it was a poor example since it was my experience. It was born in ’52. In my parochial grade school it was 8th grade that we looked at the writing of the Constitution. The history of our country and the writings of the founding Fathers has remained an important object of study to me when our family homeschooled our children all the way through high school. We indeed studied it and the Bill of Rights, etc. It may be the interest/excitement our teachers had in the foundations of our country are what made many of my friends interested as well. It is a shame that many (not all) public schools are participating in a dearth of Western Civ and therefore we have a population that is ignorant of our foundations and heritage.
Jacqueline
I am very interested that you would doubt my 2nd grade teacher (a great woman and great friend to me and many of my classmates as we grew into adulthood) would utter such a thing! If you only knew the wonderful education I got in our parochial grade and high school, through which I matriculated. We were blessed with a rich and rounded exposure that did not forego history. I commented to another reader a minute ago on the same type of comment. You may want to hop up there are read that for more of my thoughts. I wonder why so snarky over a cursive article…and what do you consider a deceptive quotation?
Michael Paul Goldenberg
Let’s just stick to the non-snark:
1) So how did anyone manage to do much of anything before there was cursive?
2) What about people in countries with ideographic languages? Are they unable to produce, say, great athletes due to those missing brain connections they lost out on without cursive writing?
I wonder if the researchers you cited have anything to say about those issues. Is it that they don’t consider any alternate hypotheses, or has it simply not occurred to them that there must be other activities besides cursive writing that build the same or very similarly-functioning neural pathways?
TheHoserbyTrade
Other languages have their own version of cursive writing. Like in China and Japan with their picture letters.
Obviously when you learn those languages you read the common lettering and not the picture letters.
Honestly before making an idiotic statement towards an article you obviously didn’t actually pay much attention to. Maybe think about what you are saying before you post it?
Jacqueline
Thank you for weighing in, TheHoserbyTrade! I agree with you wholeheartedly! ~J
Scout
I started cursive with my third-graders on the first day of school! It’s too bad that legislation like Common Core has been allowed to override educators’ knowledge.
Jacqueline
Scout, thank you for what YOU ARE doing in your school to help your children in 3rd grade. It has been a blessing to me, and it will tangibly give your students greater mental agility and open doors for them. Also, maybe they will teach their children cursive one day!
Blessings, J
Stacy
The Constitution should ONLY be ever reprinted in cursive, because much of the original meaning and flourish is lost when translated to print for these government-mandated schoolbooks that supposedly make it “easier” to read. No “print” copies even make any sense anyway, and it’s even worse if it’s on glossy paper, or God forbid a computer screen! Better if they only are allowed to read the original itself.
You should change the font of this entire website to Cursive, to show people how important it still is in the 21st century!
Dee | Grammy's Grid
Common core math and no more cursive, just two of the ways they’re dumbing down our kids!! Shared.
Jacqueline
Yes, Dee! We are in big trouble in so many ways!
I love that you are sharing your thoughts here!
God bless you, dear one!
Jacqueline
Patricia
I totally agree as to the importance of teaching cursive in school and feel that some of the problems we, as a population, are experiencing may be related to this. The shared experiences that young people go through make communication much easier and more meaningful. There is a definite disconnect between groups now. Seems to be a plan to separate and assign values not based on intelligence, worth or basic human rights! A slippery slope towards dumbing down the population and making them more easily manipulated. An angile mind is necessary for self government.