Cursive Writing

I think as long as they can sign their name - cursive signatures are still and will always be important. The rest, nope, everything needs to be printed or typed.

they should spend more time on spelling and grammar!

I'm split on this issue. Because when I "hand write" a letter...my own handwriting is a mixture of cursive and print. A lot of people's handwriting becomes a mix of the two I think. That said, my children have been learning it, and, when I have to help, I have to think about how those darned cursive letters are written.

We can stop teaching them math while we're at it since we have calculators and all that.

I still use an abacus.

this is hard for me to wrap my head around. i mean, not teaching a kid to write cursive sounds ridiculous, but if i think about it, they really don't need it all that often, and even now - when I write things out, i usually print and not cursive.

that said, does a kid need to know cursive to read cursive? I mean, there are some historical documents written in cursive that i would want my chile to be able to read and not rely on a "translation" from cursive to print.

The only thing that needs to be written in cursive is your signature...

I still think that there are "personal" touches that signify us and cursive writing is one of them. Don't spend hours and hours on it, but teaching my daughter to write a personal message in a card in cursive is still worth it.


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Nooo way! They should definitely keep teaching it. Even if you don't write proper cursive, it's still useful. When writing notes in university and everyday at work, I need to write as fast as I can and printing doesn't cut it. It's good to incorporate cursive into your writing in my opinion. It makes you so much faster. I always felt bad for kids in university who couldn't keep up in writing notes and I think practicing cursive makes you faster.

my children learned cursive in 4th grade. i remember learning it in 2nd.
they will not be required to use it, as long as they can read it.

it's pretty pointless. i never use it.

I use cursive lettering to bring out some words in my signs. That's pretty much it though. That said, kid's start reading it and kinda working it out for themselves at a really young age. I think, if push come to shove, they could read cursive even if they never learned it.

My handwriting is absolutely horrific. I failed it in 5th grade. However, I think kids need to learn cursive so that they are able to sign things. Most documents still require a signature in cursive.

I've haven't cursive written in my professional life ever. I'm pretty sure if I did, people would start asking me to stop - and my cursive's pretty awesome.

Many wont think its needed but this is just another way for our society to dumb down our children. IMPORTANT historical documents are hand-written in cursive. If our children do not know how to read and write in cursive, then they will only know what "text books" say are on those documents.
Most text books in schools are 45% or more inaccurate to begin with... but thats discussion for another thread.

Fox news just had a segement about Cursive writing .. The discussion was about the consideration of REMOVING teaching cursive writing to our children ... On the premise that the way technology is now a days (texting , tablets , laptops etc) how often do our children actually sit down and write something long hand like that other than in school ... Is the time spent teaching them this skill wasted and better used elsewhere? Personally I feel that it is a skill that should remain.. There are plenty of times where a handwritten letter is FAR more appropriate than something formal and typed ...

Thoughts ??

Let's dumb down education even more - shall we?
We've already fallen way behind the rest of the civilized world when it comes to math and science, and now writing?
They should just teach kids how to get fat and play games....:frown:

Cursive = joined up writing right...(sorry I'm a brit) why WOULDN'T they teach it!?
Loads of people in the uk still use joined up writing...I don't understand wh it "takes time" to teach...it's just handwriting, they need to learn to have legible handwriting, and then once they get older they can decide for themselves whether or not to join the letters up... Surely all schools should teach have to teach legible handwriting...unless I'm very mistaken, children still have to write at school as they don't always have a laptop infront of them...right?

I can understand their point if the time spent teaching cursive would truly be spent educating children on another aspect of English. I truly believe, that the English written language as most of us know it will be a completely lost art/language in the years to come. While the use of cursive may not be necessary, it did promote attention to detail, fine motor skills, coordination, all combined with the need for effective use of grammar/punctuation. Accurately produced cursive script looks very nice and it also is a reflection of the individual utilizing it.

The thing is, they say the effort will be placed elsewhere but I doubt that it will spent on other language areas and that saddens me. I am amazed when looking at billboard signs, advertisements, kids facebooks pages, emails from coworkers, etc. at the decline in spelling/grammar among the general populace.

At any rate, I suppose their argument of "we don't really use it" could hold true for many things. I still don't see a need for learning Trigonometry or complex algebra personally, but I'm sure there are people who would be shocked me saying so.