Comments about ‘Handwriting: A formative art or vital tool?’

Handwriting matters ... But does cursive matter?

Research shows: the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive. They join only some letters, not all of them: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. (Citation on request and there are actually handwriting programs that teach this way.)

Reading cursive still matters -- this takes just 30 to 60 minutes to learn, and can be taught to a five- or six-year-old if the child knows how to read. The value of reading cursive is therefore no justification for writing it.

Remember, too: whatever your elementary school teacher may have been told by her elementary school teacher, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over signatures written in any other way. (Don't take my word for this: talk to any attorney.)

Yours for better letters,

Kate Gladstone CEO, Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
Director, the World Handwriting Contest
Co-Designer, BETTER LETTERS handwriting trainer app for iPhone/iPad

Penmanship? Really? Who cares? Yeah, kids should learn to write, but if asked my daily split between typing versus printing, I would respond 90/10. Curriculum needs to adapt with ever changing technology.

The reality is that in today's workplace, typing is a far more valuable skill than printing by hand.

"Better handwriting also generally equals better grades, said Graham, with Vanderbilt University."

May be true but most unfortunate. Cursive skills have no correlation with intelligence, critical thinking or any truly worthwhile attribute. Practicing hand writing is a waste of time. Teach keyboarding instead.

I disagree. I believe that penmanship has a lot to do with creativity and determination. You have to work towards good penmanship unlike typing where you have a couple of options on fonts and an automatic spellchecker.

Great article!

Is the point because of common core requirements and NCLB, there is not time to teach penmanship.

Solution; Try incorporating penmanship with the common core. Teach penmanship with all other subjects.

I think it is important to be able to write on paper correctly. Penmanship is a skill. If a teacher has not been taught the skill, they won't be able to teach it.

I am happy that teachers have standards, such as NCLB and Common Core.

And everyone knows a love letter in cursive is so much hotter than an email.

I totally agree with this article. Practicing handwriting doesn't take away from anything, but it developes so much. Good handwriting is one indication of self-mastery. It shows you can control your hand and make it do what you want it to do. It is so important for doctors, dentists, mechanics, engineers, cooks, artists, etc., to be able to control your hands.

They've basically removed PE and recess from young children. This was wrong. Kids need to know how to play and socialize together more than most things in their early years. Hello, they're kids. I've met so many adults that do not know how to talk or work with others, let alone others of a different race or background. PE and recess are important too.

I learned to type in one semester. Have students take keyboarding in fifth grade when their hands are big enough to use a keyboard.

Does handwriting matter at all? The only things I write anymore are notes that I'm going to read later. The only cursive I use is my signature. Everything else is typed in some form or fashion.

Perhaps its time we embraced the 21st century and stopped worrying about teaching kids cursive. Use that time instead to teach typing skills, and how to use the built in spellchecker.

Spell check will knot save you from common word transposition ore spelling errors. Two often wee rely one technology too makeup for are own ignorance.

Note: The above paragraph passed spell check perfectly. Technology will only get you so far.

Learning the letters of the alphbet by hand versus typing them is like comparing home cooking to fast food. Students who like fast food miss out on the opportunity to savor real food. It takes time to know the difference, something missing in the 'keep up with technology' crowd.

Z | 8:57 a.m. Sept. 22, 2011
South Jordan, UT

Teach spelling and critical reading of the printed word. If you want to write love letters in cursive then take it as a hobby. Too many important things to learn and too many other important skills to develop than waste time on this. Change your font if you want cursive. Don't teach children how to use a rotary phone.

I'm intrigued with how cursive writing and penmanship is so individual. Most everyone is taught the same "proper and correct" way to write in elementary school, and yet there is such a diversity.

A friend who is seriously educated and seriously employed in a field that requires lots of writing has very basic, just barely legible, not at all pretty handwriting.

On the other hand, a couple of others I know, with just basic college education, have the most eye catching, eye pleasing, almost calligraphy or font-like writing. It is like an art form for them.

After many years of trying to improve my own to be more pleasing and artful, I've decided maybe it is partly art. Like music, if you don't have any talent for it, you can only improve it with practice so much.

Cursive is worthless. Handwriting need only be legible, not "Neat". Nobody is gonna give you a gold star or sharing time for your handwriting once you leave the 3rd grade.

Even typing is overrated. Unless you're a secretary or transcriptionist, 60+ words per minute is unnecessary.

Highly paid jobs (Doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.) don't need to be able to type quickly or write "neatly". Spend more time teaching kids math and science.

In reality, if people wanted to teach real "21st" century skills, they'd start teaching kids basic programming in elementary school. That skill is far more useful to the future than handwriting or typing speeds.

This article points out how our way of approaching education is deeply flawed. Everyone's opinion seems to be equally viewed, and the subject (handwriting and cursive) becomes a matter of individual taste, when in actuality, it is a vital academic question, with definitive answers.

The research is clear that handwriting and penmanship (not talking cursive here) are vital skills for the early brain to develop and master. They impact learning to read in incredibly powerful ways, and learning to read is the basic foundational skill for successful academic learning.

Cursive writing has been shown to be especially powerful for students whose brains need reinforcement in the blending stage of reading. Teaching cursive to ALL kindergarten students to ensure that all benefit from this extra reading reinforcement is a practice at our schools, and in many high performing schools. Teaching print has no value in and of itself - teaching handwriting is important and cursive provides significant extra benefit in academic brain development, so we teach cursive only in our schools. Students can infer printing and by about 5th grade can print without ever having "learned" how.

Decisions in education should be made on results with students, not people's opinions.

Why bother with handwriting when you have a laptop? Soon we will be able to place some kind of devise to the frontal lobe of our skull, think some thoughts and have it printed out on an output device.

It's not so much that people need to write in their careers anymore, as it is that learning to write is an extremely effective way to learn and improve fine motor skills, attention to detail, and persistence. Of course kids need to keep up with technology and learn keyboarding and other technological skills, but they won't ever be as effective with fine motor skills as writing an essay by hand is.

@Z: Yes, but those aren't spelling errors. You are using phononyms to try and make a point about spelling. Doesn't really work.

@RedNFreckled: Kids learn fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination by playing video games. Welcome to the 21st century.

If one wants to see spelling errors, one need to look no farther than a lot of posts on this site. One could say they are typos, but too many coincidences for it to be typos.

@RedNFreckled: . . . and when was the last time you wrote an essay by hand?

The answer to that question for me is at least 15 years ago!

The only time I use handwriting is when some bureaucrat hands me a form to fill out and does not have a computerized version, which is ineffective because it is going into a computer anyway and he would be transcribing my doodles with a high possibility of error. I can type at 40wpm, and there is no way in the world I could write this fast. Hand motion does help the thinking process, but it can be typing and clicking.

Handwriting for practical purposes belongs with the type writer, slide rule, and abacus. As a form of art it is OK, but not beyond that.

I agree that teaching basic programming skills at a young age should ideally replace the handwriting instruction.

When I taught fifth grade in 1999, I thought it was a waste of time to require children to write in cursive. I let them write the way they felt the most comfortable. Currently, as a substitute teacher, I require that their writing be legible enough that I can read it. How will I know if their answers are correct if I can't read their writing?