http://www.wral.com/-back-to-basics-bill-would-require-cursive-writing-instruction/12136535/

Quote :

"Lawmakers are hoping to reverse course on a recent education trend in which cursive handwriting instruction is abandoned in favor of other instructional topics."

Quote :

"Specifically, the bill would require instruction "so that students create readable documents through legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade.""

In the age of electronic correspondence, do people really need to know more cursive than being able to sign their name? I get that it's "traditional" to know it, but are their enough merits for the General Assembly to spend time and taxpayer dollars micromanaging schools this way?

2/23/2013 2:57:45 AM

This is a pretty bizarre bill.

Definitely reeks of old, dilapidated, out of touch politicians.

Wtf

2/23/2013 3:49:04 AM

seriously, what morons

2/23/2013 7:03:31 AM

I thought this was a joke thread

2/23/2013 7:23:46 AM

they teach you how to write, and a few years later they tell you that you can't write that way anymore and have to use this new way

2/23/2013 7:40:21 AM

This is totally necessary, just yesterday the document I created for some business correspondence was unreadable due to poor cursive handwriting.


...and I broke three quills writing it!

2/23/2013 8:06:45 AM

Also known as the "Back in My Day" Bill

2/23/2013 9:52:24 AM

Back in My Day

... it was already a waste of time

2/23/2013 10:36:11 AM

I think they should add mandatory Latin classes while they are at it

2/23/2013 11:09:28 AM

When I'm older I'm running for a seat on the NCGA so I can sponsor a bill requiring mandatory Numbers Crunchers time and mandatory Parachute Day Tuesdays!

2/23/2013 11:30:31 AM

^You've got my vote.

2/23/2013 12:04:49 PM

The only people I know who write anything in cursive outside of their name are women over the age of 60. I don't even know any men over the age of 60 who write in cursive.

Get rid of cursive entirely. If you want to make something mandatory in terms of helping kids communicate clearly try typing. Oh, and mandatory metric system please.

2/23/2013 1:34:16 PM

On a more serious note, while I don't think cursive is particularly useful to know, I really wish I knew shorthand like my mom. It would be really helpful taking notes.


(But while I think it would be helpful, I'd always let educators decide curricula... not legislators)

2/23/2013 1:41:20 PM

That might be cool to learn, but ultimately is unnecessary. Recording devices are cheap and ubiquitous. Factor in how many lectures and meetings are done on things like powerpoint which can be uploaded to a website and viewed there means that you really don't need to take super detailed notes.

Don't get me wrong, I wish I knew shorthand for taking notes in my ancient history classes at NCSU, but it's just another thing you really don't need to know how to do and would be a bigger time waste than time saver in the short and medium term.

2/23/2013 1:55:01 PM

Where do you draw the line?

2/23/2013 1:56:38 PM

Man this republican state government sure is focusing on a smaller government..... O wait no its not.

2/23/2013 2:07:33 PM

2/23/2013 3:48:00 PM

I'm a fan of this bill - for all the reasons a stodgy old man might rant about, plus some more.

Learning to write in cursive changes the way the brain works while reading and writing. The 'flow' inherent in cursive brings a lot of stuff with it.

Young children often confuse B and D, F and T, and G, Q and P. Using cursive, there is much more of a contrast in how each is formed, thus making them easier to use and remember.

Unified hand movements across the word incorporate a muscle-memory process that aids spelling. Words become unified things, instead of letters written closely to one another. Printing is analogous to pecking on a keyboard with your index fingers. Cursive is like proper typing, where letter combinations become part of one fluid movement.

Cursive makes errors more obvious, because each word has a 'look' to it, and a feeling when the flow is violated awkwardly. Cursive improves reading for the same reasons.

Cursive prevents erratic spacing between words and letters, which is a common problem in young children. This erratic spacing in their own writing often makes it difficult for students to examine their own sentence structure and grammar.

I work with students from 3rd grade through seniors in AP courses. I teach English, writing, grammar, and math through Calculus. I work with most of my students for a few months at a time in individual sessions.

And don't even get me started on multiplication tables, which are also mandated in this bill. I have worked with hundreds of high schoolers in math, usually from either the bottom quarter of their classes, or the top tenth. Those are the groups that pursue special help.

I have not found a single student in 5 years (across Wake, Orange, and Durham counties, public, private, and home-schools) including plenty of people who got 750+ on SAT Math who I thought had an adequate grasp of basic number sense, including multiplication tables, written long division, estimating order of magnitude on big number multiplication/division, etc.

[Edited on February 23, 2013 at 4:10 PM. Reason : s]

2/23/2013 3:55:29 PM

You realize that students still learn both multiplication and cursive throughout school?

This bill is because some busy-body state legislator has no clue how the education system actually works and is trying to pretend his worthless opinion is meaningful.

2/23/2013 4:14:41 PM

Quote :

"You realize that students still learn both multiplication and cursive throughout school?"

It is pretty safe for me to say that no, they don't.

They may be taught it, which is better than nothing. But obviously there has been no learning, or I would have met a student somewhere who actually knew how multiplication works.

In their notebooks, I have yet to see students who take notes primarily in cursive. That would have happened if they had actually learned it. It wouldn't necessarily be everyone, but it would be someone.

Putting my old man hat on for a related rant - I have a sixth grader who told me that last year he looked on the internet to find out how to tell time. He's a really bright kid, two years above his grade level in math, but had simply never been taught.

2/23/2013 4:24:13 PM

I don't know how to make a butter churn. The school system has failed me.

2/23/2013 4:26:11 PM

I have yet to see anyone talk about why cursive shouldn't be taught without revealing an utter contempt for the past. You all act like there was no serious study of education until 20 years ago.

Maybe, just maybe, there was a reason that cursive was dominant for hundreds of years. And it wasn't because they weren't creative enough to think of print. They weren't missing out on such a grand invention that would have simplified their lives, improved education, and given kids what they really needed.

Whether it's cursive, latin, thorough study of arithmetical operations, or any other major component of historical education, we cast it off quickly and with great contempt. Instead, we ought to be very slow to abandon those things, and only do so with very good reasons.

For a quick example, I think most 5th graders ought to be able to do, say, 24x13 in about 5 seconds, without pen, paper, or a calculator. That's if you teach arithmetic correctly. Now, it's a toss-up over whether any given 11th-grader would be able to do that with pen and paper now. And yes, such skills matter a great deal, even in the age of the calculator and the internet.

2/23/2013 4:50:31 PM

Quote :

"I have yet to see anyone talk about why cursive shouldn't be taught without revealing an utter contempt for the past. You all act like there was no serious study of education until 20 years ago."

it's a waste of time. if they're going to teach an invaluable skill, it should at least be fun for the students. please don't compare learning cursive to learning latin or arithmetic. that's absurd.

[Edited on February 23, 2013 at 5:04 PM. Reason : .]

2/23/2013 5:03:17 PM

Do you have a rebuttal to the points in my first post about why cursive actually matters?

2/23/2013 5:09:14 PM

Wonder if these same legislators will try to expand the kids minds through teaching of art, drama, and philosophy too?

2/23/2013 5:30:17 PM

^^Do you have any proof behind what you posted or are you just making shit up?

2/23/2013 5:40:35 PM

Quote :

"Learning to write in cursive changes the way the brain works while reading and writing. The 'flow' inherent in cursive brings a lot of stuff with it. Young children often confuse B and D, F and T, and G, Q and P. Using cursive, there is much more of a contrast in how each is formed, thus making them easier to use and remember. Unified hand movements across the word incorporate a muscle-memory process that aids spelling. Words become unified things, instead of letters written closely to one another. Printing is analogous to pecking on a keyboard with your index fingers. Cursive is like proper typing, where letter combinations become part of one fluid movement. Cursive makes errors more obvious, because each word has a 'look' to it, and a feeling when the flow is violated awkwardly. Cursive improves reading for the same reasons. Cursive prevents erratic spacing between words and letters, which is a common problem in young children. This erratic spacing in their own writing often makes it difficult for students to examine their own sentence structure and grammar."

Ignoring that this is all conjecture you made up, we're in the age of computers. Computers use print. Cursive is dead.

2/23/2013 5:51:40 PM

Quote :

"Cursive makes errors more obvious, because each word has a 'look' to it, and a feeling when the flow is violated awkwardly. Cursive improves reading for the same reasons"

This right here is absolute bullshit. Your brain processes words as a unit whether print or cursive.

Cursive is not a functional skill, I'd much rather they focus on more math or on something that has utility in the real world.

2/23/2013 5:59:28 PM

Quote :

"That might be cool to learn, but ultimately is unnecessary. Recording devices are cheap and ubiquitous. Factor in how many lectures and meetings are done on things like powerpoint which can be uploaded to a website and viewed there means that you really don't need to take super detailed notes. Don't get me wrong, I wish I knew shorthand for taking notes in my ancient history classes at NCSU, but it's just another thing you really don't need to know how to do and would be a bigger time waste than time saver in the short and medium term"

i never needed it in school because of exactly those reasons, it wasn't until being responsible for keeping meeting minutes or just personal notes while meeting with clients where i wished shorthand wasn't dead. but i also said that legislation to bring it back would be dumb and i would make fun of it equally, the curriculum should be set by educators and not politicians.

Quote :

"You all act like there was no serious study of education until 20 years ago."

yes, educators removed it from the curriculum and politicians with no background in education want to add it to back because they are experts in 20 years of serious study of education.

and you just made up all your other points, go away

2/23/2013 6:24:37 PM

Quote :

"yes, educators removed it from the curriculum and politicians with no background in education want to add it to back because they are experts in 20 years of serious study of education."

The bureaucrats who want it removed are the very type of Dept. of Ed. people who act like anything worth knowing in education has been published in the last 20 years. They have the same disease the people in this thread do.

The case against cursive isn't any stronger now than it was 50 years ago or 200 years ago. Typewriters, printing presses, and books used print. That's because machines work better with blocks and spaces. Now that computers and books use print, nothing has changed. Cursive was a priority then but not now, so the case against cursive necessarily presupposes that we have something right that generations before us didn't see. But nobody can tell me exactly what that is, except cry 'bullshit' about the benefits I've seen in flesh and blood kids.

Then, we make this change without any real study on the benefits that come from teaching writing a certain way. Nobody examines why cursive was dominant for so long. And it's just arrogant and ignorant to cast it off without real examination.

It is still common practice to teach cursive to those who need serious help in spelling, writing, and grammar, even in schools that don't teach it to every student. People who focus on such children aren't going to be giving it up any time soon, because it works.

2/23/2013 7:16:07 PM

Quote :

"Putting my old man hat on for a related rant - I have a sixth grader who told me that last year he looked on the internet to find out how to tell time. He's a really bright kid, two years above his grade level in math, but had simply never been taught."

So basically you're saying that as a parent you have never taken the time to look at a clock with your son and teach him a life skill that a parent should teach?

That's some mighty fine parenting.

2/23/2013 7:22:15 PM

Quote :

"Nobody examines why cursive was dominant for so long. "

It's pretty easy and requires little examination. It's a faster way to write, and when the majority of work was done by hand as opposed to with a keyboard it made sense for people to know it.

However, in the last 20 years it has become a less and less useful and relevant skill. There's not a lot to it. Knowing how to do math in your head and with paper and pen is still as useful as it has ever been and will remain a useful skill for the foreseeable future.

2/23/2013 7:26:00 PM

They should instead introduce mandatory keyboarding class. I know how to write in cursive, but I don't remember last time i had to do it. Meanwhile, I've been typing almost every day for the last decade and still tend to look at the keyboard when most of the time (keyboarding was an optional class in HS)

2/23/2013 7:50:45 PM

It would certainly be more useful, but I don't think it should be mandatory. In 15 years keyboards will probably be out of date, replaced by something else.

I learned cursive in 3rd grade, haven't used it ever since they stopped forcing us to use it in 5th grade or so. I don't even remember all of the cursive alphabet anymore. I can still read it, but just barely, and I don't think I could write in cursive now if you asked.

2/23/2013 7:53:57 PM

TULIPlovr, could you provide us with the educators lobbying for this? Where is the legislation coming from, which educators are calling for it?

Quote :

"The case against cursive isn't any stronger now than it was 50 years ago or 200 years ago. "

wait... is he trolling?

Quote :

"It is still common practice to teach cursive to those who need serious help in spelling, writing, and grammar, even in schools that don't teach it to every student. "

none of us saying that cursive is a waste of time are asking to codify blocking the instruction of cursive into law. we are all just saying that we think its a waste. if educators have the time in their curriculum and think its worthwhile, none of us are calling for a law blocking that.

on the contrary, some dumb ass republicans (without education backgrounds) are calling for a law that mandates that it be part of the curriculum.

[Edited on February 23, 2013 at 8:45 PM. Reason : .]

2/23/2013 8:40:14 PM

Sponsored by all republicans

Who would have guessed?

"WELL, IF THEY WANT EDUCATION BILLS, WE'LL GIVE THEM EDUCATION BILLS"

[Edited on February 23, 2013 at 8:44 PM. Reason : ]

2/23/2013 8:44:03 PM

Spoiler alert for TULIPlovr


... ALEC

2/23/2013 9:01:21 PM

Quote :

"It's pretty easy and requires little examination. It's a faster way to write, and when the majority of work was done by hand as opposed to with a keyboard it made sense for people to know it."

It's not easy. There are many reasons. The one you mentioned isn't one of them. And this shows exactly the combination of ignorance and arrogance I mentioned.

Quote :

"They should instead introduce mandatory keyboarding class. I know how to write in cursive, but I don't remember last time i had to do it. Meanwhile, I've been typing almost every day for the last decade and still tend to look at the keyboard when most of the time (keyboarding was an optional class in HS)"

I'm with you on keyboarding classes.

Quote :

"I learned cursive in 3rd grade, haven't used it ever since they stopped forcing us to use it in 5th grade or so. I don't even remember all of the cursive alphabet anymore. I can still read it, but just barely, and I don't think I could write in cursive now if you asked."

What if you decided to major in history? Or philosophy? Or political science? Or literature? Even with the cursive instruction you got, you'd be at a serious disadvantage when it came to reading primary source material from the past, because a lot of that is written in cursive. I think it's just plain sad that if you visited DC, you would have trouble reading the Declaration of Independence. It is a thing of beauty, and not just for its content.

We all know it is harder to learn such things later in life, when our brains aren't quite as absorbent. To leave a kid without any cursive instruction is to withhold the tools he might need later in life. It means he might struggle to read something that is already in his native tongue. That's just...sad.

Quote :

"TULIPlovr, could you provide us with the educators lobbying for this? Where is the legislation coming from, which educators are calling for it?"

I knew about ALEC. I don't know about any others. I don't care much for ALEC, but it's also not relevant. I'm able to think about an issue without caring much whether someone I don't like is standing with me.

Quote :

"So basically you're saying that as a parent you have never taken the time to look at a clock with your son and teach him a life skill that a parent should teach? That's some mighty fine parenting."

I'm not his parent. Having just explained that I am an independent tutor by profession, I assumed that people would know what "I have a sixth-grader who..." meant.

[Edited on February 23, 2013 at 10:08 PM. Reason : s]

2/23/2013 10:05:48 PM

I'd really like to know the link between compulsory cursive education and job creation.

Quote :

"I am an independent tutor by profession"

What credentials do you hold?

2/23/2013 10:26:58 PM

Quote :

"What if you decided to major in history? Or philosophy? Or political science? Or literature? Even with the cursive instruction you got, you'd be at a serious disadvantage when it came to reading primary source material from the past, because a lot of that is written in cursive. I think it's just plain sad that if you visited DC, you would have trouble reading the Declaration of Independence. It is a thing of beauty, and not just for its content. We all know it is harder to learn such things later in life, when our brains aren't quite as absorbent. To leave a kid without any cursive instruction is to withhold the tools he might need later in life. It means he might struggle to read something that is already in his native tongue. That's just...sad."

All of these things are digitized. And learning how to READ cursive is very, very easy. Learning how to write it is an entirely different story. This whole argument you're trying to make is absolutely bizarre, especially coming from a republican.

2/23/2013 10:31:50 PM

A healthy three-digit average SAT improvement among students.

Happy parents who refer me enthusiastically to friends.

Groups of such people so convinced of my competence that they have me teach group courses, which only came into existence because they found someone to teach it.

A double-degree in math/econ.

A contagious love of learning, and a strong respect for history.

And a lack of an education degree.

In other words - my small business only exists because the schools are incompetent. And the fact that I didn't study under the people who ruined the schools counts as an asset. I would never trust someone with an education degree of any kind, unless they only mentioned it sheepishly and with embarrassment. That is only slight hyperbole.

This last qualification is the most important.

2/23/2013 10:36:43 PM

So, you don't have any educational credentials.

Got it.

2/23/2013 10:39:34 PM

I'm glad I learned cursive. The abomination of writing that I do now is a crazy combo of cursive and print. Most of the people I know still write things down in some combo of the two; purely because it is a lot faster.

Writing stuff down isn't going away, and I support the requirement of 3-5/6th using cursive.

(I do have teaching degrees, so there)

2/23/2013 11:19:49 PM

I will fupport this legiflation only if the long f is mandated by law. The fuccefs of our children depends on their complete grafp of this fimple concept and I propofe that it is abfolutely necefsary for them to compete in any fubftantial manner in the current global economic fyftem.



[Edited on February 23, 2013 at 11:28 PM. Reason : TWW doefn't fupport unicode characters. forry. -fmc]

2/23/2013 11:23:11 PM

Quote :

"Quote : "TULIPlovr, could you provide us with the educators lobbying for this? Where is the legislation coming from, which educators are calling for it?" I knew about ALEC. I don't know about any others. I don't care much for ALEC, but it's also not relevant. I'm able to think about an issue without caring much whether someone I don't like is standing with me."

Its certainly relevant

we are saying let educators decide the curriculum, and you are saying let legislators with no education background write mandatory curriculum into law because of ALEC. what educators are pushing for this legislation? if educators aren't lobbying for this, we shouldn't pass it.

2/23/2013 11:35:07 PM

Quote :

"So, you don't have any educational credentials. Got it."

I'll play along with the troll.

I suppose the teachers whose kids come to me for help are highly qualified in your mind. Somehow, my students have had 'experienced, qualified educators' since elementary school, with many teachers with graduate 'education' in Education, and yet the kids show up at my door unable to identify appositives, prepositional phrases, or fragment sentences. They can't find the distance between two points on the xy-plane without a formula, or often even tell me 6x9. But some of these same kids have A's in AP Calculus. I've never had a high-school student answer all my elementary-level introductory questions correctly.

With every kid I work with, what I really want to do is stop their educational progress entirely and fill-in or round-out their fragile patchwork of task-oriented skills. But you just can't do that.

I have tutored the children of some very high profile local educrats. I've been referred to principals, and even a county system superintendent. Their kids show the exact same gaps as all the other kids. And by gaps, I mean Grand Canyons.

Yeah, I need to be more like the ones who made them that way.

2/23/2013 11:45:40 PM

In elementary school, I learned how to make candles. IT CHANGED MY LIFE.

2/23/2013 11:50:05 PM

TULIPlovr,

we are saying let educators decide the curriculum, and you are saying let legislators with no education background write mandatory curriculum into law because of ALEC. what educators are pushing for this legislation? if educators aren't lobbying for this, why was it proposed? If educators aren't asking for the state to write this part of the curriculum into law, we shouldn't.

seriously, why do we want to put this in law?

2/24/2013 12:05:16 AM

^^^ First of all, let me say that I have nothing against cursive. My kid will definitely learn cursive, even if it's not at school.

On the other hand, I do have a problem with the legislature mandating cursive. I also have a problem with people who attempt to present themselves as experts, but really aren't.

Do you have educational experience? Sure.

Are you good at tutoring? You say you are, and I have no reason to doubt that you are.

Unfortunately, those things don't make you an expert (or really any more qualified than most of us). Techs I work with have all kinds of experience, but they're not engineers. My dental hygienist does a fantastic job cleaning teeth, but she's definitely not a dentist. You make a living tutoring, but you're not an professional educator. Your anecdotes and specious correlations certainly don't convey any sense that you've actually done any research on the benefits of cursive. It's all a bunch anti-establishment (for lack of a better term) whining than any sort of defense of cursive (which no one is even arguing against).

It's also true that being credentialed is no guarantee of competency, nor is competency a guarantee of success. Your supposition that teachers are all 'highly qualified in [my] mind' is wrong.

My suspicion is the decline of cursive in school's has a lot more to do with the rising importance and resource consumption of standardized testing (i.e., No Child Left Behind) than some sort of organized 'case against cursive'. It's the same reason art and PE classes are being cut.

2/24/2013 12:07:37 AM

Quote :

"we are saying let educators decide the curriculum, and you are saying let legislators with no education background write mandatory curriculum into law because of ALEC. what educators are pushing for this legislation? if educators aren't lobbying for this, why was it proposed? If educators aren't asking for the state to write this part of the curriculum into law, we shouldn't. "

I know that's what you're saying, and I'm just disagreeing with it. I don't think teacher's associations or superintendents know any better than our legislators. Their positions don't give me any confidence in them, not even enough to give them the benefit of the doubt over someone else. But I like this bill because I like the content of the bill. Sometimes one will be right, and sometimes the other will, although most often it's neither.

^ See, if you had written that in the first place, I'd have found you far more reasonable

I don't buy that a tutor such as myself is analogous to a tech or a dental hygienist. In most cases, I am more knowledgeable on the subjects I teach than the people whose job I am doing for them. I am diagnosing and fixing problems, and having success at it. These are the problems that the 'professionals' created. It's not limited to a bad apple here or there. It's systemic and nearly universal. In my experience, there have been no exceptions.

I've worked with students who went to the Ivy League, and plenty who would have trouble at Durham Tech. The most revealing information comes from the Ivy League types. These kids are simply brilliant, and immediately grasp everything I teach them. Thus, I can conclude that if they don't know something, it's because they were never taught it.

These students left elementary school, and then had seven English teachers, and seven Math teachers, who let them go by without very fundamental things. Some of it isn't on the teachers - the textbooks and curricula are terrible, too. I have a hobby of collecting educational material, and the differences between elementary math textbooks from generations ago and today are stark.

These aren't specious correlations or meaningless anecdotes. First, I have a wider sample than any teacher you'll talk to. I work with students from public, private, and home schools, who are from Wake, Orange, and Durham counties. Secondly, the profound and measurable results I get reveal that the problems I'm seeing are not fictional, and they are fixable with even a little direct attention to them.

I'm not anti-establishment. I'm not a radical who is just off in his own little world who thinks he has all the solutions to all the world's problems. I'm simply pro-establishment, for the establishment that was torn down and replaced.

With cursive, I'll give you that some of it is due to testing, for the same reasons that art and PE are suffering. However, I think that the testing itself comes from the same attitude that would discard cursive, art, and PE. We now have a very low tolerance for teaching anything that doesn't have an easily identifiable dollar-sign on it in a kid's future. Most of those things with dollar-signs attached tend to be more easily measurable by standardized testing than other skills. Therefore, we want those things, and we want to test them. Take away the standardized tests, with that attitude remaining, and art, PE, and cursive will still suffer.

On cursive in particular, I have done a lot of research on the reason it was so common in the past, and its benefits now. And I've seen students transformed in front of me, like watching their brains get re-wired on the spot, when writing in cursive on a blackboard with chalk.

2/24/2013 1:02:23 AM