Ind. schools no longer required to teach cursive handwriting

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It seems that everyone in favor of doing away with cursive is also poor at writing or reading it.
Shall our schools cease teaching anything that some people find difficult?
Let's do away with algebra.

YES. BTW, that's a bad question to ask a dyscalculic person.

And cursive really is useless. All my college courses required print, as do all government documents in the U.S.

The people who want to keep cursive are the ones who like it "just because." By that reckoning, should we have kept quill pens because some students preferred them? I don't believe in forcing students to learn outdated junk that has little to no applicability in the real world.

I have actually found cursive handwriting taking me longer to write than using print. Plus it's so hard to read I despise it. I can't even read my IEP records very well because of the cursivness. I am going to be asking my child's school to not write in cursive because I have a hard time reading it so if they wish to write me notes or write in my child's report cart or in his IEP (if he has one) please use print so I can understand or else I can't do my job as a parent.

When I write in cursive, it's very messy because it's just my name and people already know what it says anyway. That is because I write it so fast.

In the Baby Sitters Club books, I have always skipped the journal part because the cursive be so bad. But I loved it when one of the members write it in print. It made it a lot easier to read.

I like writing in cursive, its easier than printing and often looks nicer. Also, just because we're concentrating on typing doesn't mean we should abandon it. If anything, we should replace writing with a pencil/pen and paper with writing with tablets, which I use to jot down notes and draw, especially on sites like Tegaki E in which everything is written, nothing is typed.

With cursive one can write with feeling. The curved motions afford a degree of freedom that hand printing does not. There is also the element of beauty. Hand printing just isn't all that beautiful. The only issue with hand printing is clear/legible or not.

ruveyn

I question the value of teaching cursive handwriting. To me, it's a throwback to the past when people wrote beautiful letters to one another and cherished each one, keeping them in exquisite boxes or handcrafted, solid wood chests. There was a need then, cursive writing made these letters look sophisticated and attractive and people chose this mode of communication on a regular basis.
Nowadays with computers and forms requiring print rather than cursive, is it really needed? Kids still need to learn to write their name in cursive but that's about it. Chances are most of their letters will be typed emails, not cursive. They may need to know how to read cursive, though. That is, unless everyone stops cursive all together. Then, there won't be much to read.

The only thing I've used cursive for after I finished learning it in school was to sign my name. When I sign my name it's in cursive. When I do my initials, it's in block capital print letters, but I do it fast enough that it's pretty distinctive.

I can't see any reason why anyone needs to learn cursive for the sole purpose of signing their name. They can always just print in a connected, curvy sort of way, which is pretty much what cursive is anyway. Most people's signatures aren't very legible, and may not resemble the cursive they're based on.

I hope these schools did the smart thing and replaced it with typing. I could do cursive fairly well even in elementary school, and it's a skill I don't use. I couldn't type until high school, and it's a skill I use all of the time.

Well written cursive is easy to read. As easy as hand printing.

ruveyn

I think its sad I like cursive when I was at school we learnt to print and just put lines to join the words as I got older I changed my writing to cursive as it looks much nicer then printing and having straight lines in between the letters.
I also did a caligraphy course so I learnt different types of writing.

I was so relieved when I found out that I didn't have to use cursive in high school. I resumed printing instantly, becuase my printing is legible.

I looked and you can buy cursive handwriting books so you can learn it.

Agreed!

Speaking as a physician, I have taken far too long to learn to write illegibly to give up the habit of a lifetime.

I always found cursive to be really easy. In fact, I was better at it than anyone in my class (i'm left-handed, too).

There was a very good op-ed piece in the New York Times about this issue. One of the points mentioned was that in another generation or two, only experts in handwriting will be able to decipher personal letters and historical documents written in cursive. What a shame!

As a left-hander in grade school, my cursive writing was remarkably legible--even mature. At the age of eleven I was earning money addressing invitations for a local art gallery.

And what has applicability in the "real world" holds very little interest for me.