Education & Career

Cursive: Helpful or Harmful?

Name one situation where you would find it helpful to be able to replicate this
Name one situation where you would find it helpful to be able to replicate this

Each year, a new set of students enter grade two and each year said group is confronted with a task they did not know enough about to dread - cursive: a beautiful style of handwriting, a faster alternative to printing, and a way of improving motor and learning skills. The only palpable drawback is that it takes quite a while to learn how to write this way. It seems as if the pencraft has more pros than cons. But if you read the fine print -or fine cursive, or in the case of second graders: illegible cursive, you will find that all is not as it seems with cursive. Things are twisted, bent, and double-crossed.

Take a look at the time and material wastage. For a teacher to teach a willing and capable child how to write in cursive, experts say it may take anywhere from two weeks to a month or even longer. If the child is in second grade and still cannot print well, then mastering cursive will take longer, perhaps causing other language units to be missed or crammed due to time being spent on cursive instead of those units. If teachers are preparing students for future grades in which they will have to continue writing this style, this approach seems acceptable. However, in fact, students do not use cursive again until grade 5, 6 or maybe even later when writing commences to be a large part of their academic habits. By then though, all foregoing practice on expensive triple lined paper is wasted because of the time that has elapsed. Students would then need to go and re-learn how to write cursive, taking up more valuable time.

In a report from the Canadian Education Statistics Council, at least 30% of children do not know how to read or write proficiently by the end of grade 6. Considering this, why spend time on teaching how to write and read in cursive when almost 1 out of 3 students do not know how to do either of these in standard print. Taking into account that in the world we live in almost all we do is on our digital devices whose interfaces are in print, and that other than school, there are virtually no reasons to write in cursive (a signature is rarely used, and can be done with a few flicks/flourishes of the wrist instead of a multi-week unit on cursive). What good to children - or to anybody for that matter - is learning cursive? Maybe teachers should take the two to four weeks of time paying detailed attention to the 30%+ and helping them along their way instead of teaching less than 70% of the class something that is not useful, memorable, or beneficial.

Cursive: Helpful or Harmful?

If the population of sixth graders was 1,920,900 (the population of kids 10-14 in Canada) then over 576,270 of them would be illiterate, under 1,344,630 would be literate and all, would have experience reading and writing in cursive, regardless of their understanding of what they were reading or writing. If each class had 30 students, around 9 students would be illiterate. In 64,030 classes of 30 each with 9 students illiterate, a total of 576,270 students who would fall in the category of those unable to read or write but if they could, they would have great handwriting. I compare this scenario to trading an arm for a leg. Yes, we have taught some students how to write prettier, but upon choosing this, we are taking away the opportunity for a teacher to give a struggling reader some one-on-one time and giving them a chance for a better academic future.

Each year, a new set of students leave grade two and go off to enjoy their summer vacations. And each year said group forgets all of the things they learned that year, not to mention cursive. Since they will not be practicing this the next year or the one after that, only a lucky few will be adept at it once they enter a higher grade in which it is required. And an unlucky few will have a good amount of trouble disguising their illiteracy when that year rolls along. If only the education system found an interesting and advantageous way to help these could-be-readers. How does a “Learn to spell through typing” course sound for first graders or a “Read your favourite movies” workshop? Whatever we do, we should prioritize getting everyone up to a high enough level -so that some of us are not destined to be illiterate before adding extras.

Let me add that even though I can read and write (in both print and cursive) the world is evolving and cursive, is immensely unhelpful. You can't use it in legal documents or standardized tests. Moreover, there are several different ways to write each letter, and it's tedious and time-wasting to learn them all again once you switch teachers. Cursive is also not used in online content or in books or magazines where most of us spend most of our time.

May I also add that the majority of the work that high school students do nowadays is digitally and the idea of cursive- to be able to write quickly without our hands cramping- is irrelevant.

That said, Learning to read cursive may actually be more helpful than learning to write cursive as infrequent as it may be, cursive is found on billboards, in advertisements and if you still write letters, in the mail.

Cursive: Helpful or Harmful?
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