Where Have All the Cursive Writers Gone?

Are the beautiful scrolls of cursive writing becoming a forgotten skill? With so much use of technology for writing and communicating, when do kids learn about and practice the skills of longhand? Tom Breen, Associated Press, in his article Cursive May Be a Fading Skill, mentions a student who had difficulty with something as simple as a signature. Most schools teach penmanship only in the primary grades, and a Vanderbilt professor notes that those with the best handwriting are in Grade 4. After that, as most of us educators know, it’s downhill with penmanship. Even though students can turn to computers, smart phones and other digital devices to communication, they do have forms to complete, notes to jot, and papers to sign—many of which still can’t be done digitally. —And what happens when the electricity goes off or they don’t have access to technologies? I find that many teens handwrite in a combination of tiny script/print, so tiny that I can hardly decipher it. Do you think this is because they are trying to write in a font size of 10 or 12? That’s fine for computer printouts, but it’s really difficult to read in cursive—especially in a sloppy cursive. Some say to forget about handwriting and concentrate on good writing. Who knows where we are heading with this? The folks at Zaner-Bloser, the handwriting people, tell us that people worried about the same problems with the advent of the typewriter. As for signatures—yes, they can be electronic, but don’t you think kids should learn to sign their own names on a piece of paper?