FULLERTON, California (Reuters) - A generation of children who learned to write on screens is now going old school.
Starting this year, California grade school students are required to learn cursive handwriting, after the skill had fallen out of fashion in the computer age.
Assembly Bill 446, sponsored by former elementary school teacher Sharon Quirk-Silva and signed into law in October, requires handwriting instruction for the 2.6 million Californians in grades one to six, roughly ages 6 to 12, and cursive lessons for the “appropriate” grade levels - generally considered to be third grade and above.
Experts say learning cursive improves cognitive development, reading comprehension and fine motor skills, among other benefits. Some educators also find value in teaching children to read historic documents and family letters from generations past.
As a left-handed kid in school, cursive was a bit of a nightmare.
As a student of history who has seen countless beautiful examples of medieval calligraphy, chancery scripts, and renaissance typography, modern school cursive is a fucking abomination. It was developed neither for speed nor beauty nor legibility, but to reduce the amount of ink dripping from cheap dip pens when they were lifted from the page between strokes.
The danger in making a virtue of necessity is that some people will continue to fetishize it long after the necessity has passed.
That’s really interesting to know. Do you have any particular sources you’d recommend for further reading?
It was worthless back in the 90s.
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Looks like shit to me. 🤷
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K
Nonsense. You’re not fluent unless you know cursive.
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There has to be a better and more useful way to achieve those benefits than cursive writing. Maybe we expand art classes as opposed to this? Maybe cursive writing is just taught as more like calligraphy in an art class? I don’t see a value or learning cursive in like English class. I’m old though so had to learn it and in the over 40 years of knowing cursive the only time I use it or read it is my signature.
There is
former elementary school teacher Sharon Quirk-Silva
Probably another old person who just can’t let the damn thing go.
I learned cursive in the 3rd grade, the amount of times I’ve needed it (beyond a signature, even then it’s just a squiggle) is a whopping 0
It would be much more suitable in a separate optional class like you said, a calligraphy class or more budget for art classes (Which is far more important IMO)
Wow, even California is back to legalizing child abuse.
Please no. Cursive fucking sucks. This is not something we should bring back. Let it die for fucks sake.
The main problem I have with it is if your hand writing sucks it’s impossible to read cursive. It just looks like scribble.
Not so much of a problem for good handwriting but most people just suck at it.
The comments here are the kind of visceral reaction to cursive that I only ever saw online and in english, makes me think it’s mostly from the USA thanks to the location of the news.
What a fat waste of time!
If my kids had to do this, I’d just tell them to ignore the lessons and take a nap.
If the teachers have a problem, they can call me :)
Not even sure writing, like with pen or pencil, has any real value anymore. But I don’t know very much.
