Can you read cursive

Many in his position would turn to standardized tests like the SAT Scholastic S omething like modern cursive emerged from Renaissance Italy, perhaps partly because lifting a delicate quill off and on the paper was apt to damage it and spatter ink.

By the 19th century cursive handwriting was considered a mark of good education and character. Teaching of manuscript lettering not joined up only began in the United States in the s, to some controversy. In many countries today, including the U.

In France, children are expected to use it as soon as they start to write in kindergarten, but in Mexico only manuscript is taught. The U. In France, the cursive form is virtually universal and highly standardized, and children are discouraged from developing their own handwriting style. Despite this diversity, the teaching of cursive is often accompanied by a strong sense of propriety. What does research say on these issues? It has consistently failed to find any real advantage of cursive over other forms of handwriting.

Simply put, our real understanding of how children respond to different writing styles is surprisingly patchy and woefully inadequate. Many people including teachers swear that cursive is faster, and cite not only the fact that there is less lifting of pen from paper but also their own experience.

Needless to say, the latter point is like me saying that English is a faster language than French because I can speak and read it more quickly. Tests on writing speed have been fairly inconclusive in the past. They compared writing speeds for French-speaking primary pupils in their respective countries. While cursive is quite rigidly enforced in France, teachers in Canada are more free to decide which style to teach, and when. Some Canadians teach manuscript first and cursive later; some introduce cursive straight away in first grade.

So was cursive faster than manuscript? No, it was slower. But fastest of all was a personalized mixture of cursive and manuscript developed spontaneously by pupils around the fourth to fifth grade.

Even in France, a quarter of the French pupils who were taught cursive exclusively and were still mostly using it in the fourth grade, had largely abandoned it for a mixed style by the fifth grade. They had apparently imbibed manuscript style from their reading experience it more closely resembles print , even without being taught it explicitly.

While pupils writing in cursive were slower on average, their handwriting was also typically more legible than that of pupils taught only manuscript. But the mixed style allowed for greater speed with barely any deficit in legibility. That idea is supported by Virginia Berninger, a professor of education psychology at the University of Washington. Does cursive help with writing and reading disorders such as dyslexia? Because cursive writing is more challenging for motor coordination and for sheer complexity of the letters, some early research from the s to the s indicated that children develop their writing skills sooner and more legibly with manuscript.

Because they have to lift pen from paper between each letter, children prepare better for the next letter. Some recent studies suggest that freeing up cognitive resources that are otherwise devoted to the challenge of simply making the more elaborate cursive forms on paper will leave children more articulate and accurate in what they write. In a study in Quebec, Bara and Morin found no reading difficulties in primary-school children that correlated with learning cursive.

And most documents permit e-signatures. Beautiful handwriting takes a lot of time to learn, is not easy for kids with motor challenges, and is a dying art. She had me there. Perhaps because my hands are a bit arthritic or perhaps because I am too much in love with my computer, I don't write too many things by hand anymore. I'm more likely to compose a personal letter on Word and print it out than write it by hand.

But I still like to sign my name at the bottom. It suddenly hit me, however, that if my grandchildren never learn to write in cursive, they will also be unable to read it. They will never be able to decipher things I wrote by hand and saved to show them. My old recipe cards will also need to be translated for them. They will never be able to read the stash of WWII letters my parents wrote to each other.

If they do original research that involves prest century documents, will they need an interpreter for the handwritten ones? All of this makes me rather depressed. Someone has decided that our schools shouldn't waste much time teaching things that don't matter like cursive writing or art appreciation or literary classics.

There won't be a test on these things and they won't get kids the jobs of the future. Ours is a disposable society and we are fine with tossing aside the things that are not practical for the college or career. Maybe I should start transcribing my parents' letters so they are not lost to their great grandchildren. There is probably no point in saving those hand-written family recipes or the things I wrote in cursive in the pre-computer era. Lime is wart. Life is short.

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