California Educator

JUNE/JULY 2012

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Cursive is unnecessary By Dustin Ellis Should fancy loops and flowing letters of cur- sive still be taught to students? Is cursive writ- ing an obsolete skill no longer relevant in today's technological society? CURSIVE IS UNNECESSARY, as was calligraphy before it. Writing is a means to communicate, and we are past the world of the physical art of writing. Whatever could be created by the pen can now be recreated by the computer. This is the world our students live in. If they can print, they can communicate in the written word. If they need it to be beautiful, computers have many font options to do just that. According to state standards, kids must learn cursive in third grade. When they come to me in fourth grade, they are out of practice and their cursive is a train wreck. Half of what they write is unreadable. Writing needs to be a functional thing, and students should be able to do that any way they can. I've heard colleagues say students write The new Common Core State Standards for English do not require cursive. However, under the new standards, states are allowed to teach cursive if they choose, and California still does. Some states, like Georgia, are considering abandoning longhand lessons altogether, since cursive is not on standardized tests. This issue is being hotly debated in teacher lunchrooms around the state. We asked two CTA members to weigh in. Here' s what they have to say. June/July 2012 www.cta.org 45 faster in cursive, but I have timed my students, and they take longer to write in cursive than if they are printing. I have noticed this on test prep for STAR exams. When it comes to the argument that cursive helps fine motor skills, I disagree. Cursive is not all that different from printing. Students can still learn to make curves in printing as well as straight lines, which is not possible with cursive, since it is all circular. One hundred years ago, every student learned calligraphy. Some people had to pay an artist to do calligraphy for them. But calligraphy is now dead, for all intents and purposes, and you don't need it to be a successful writer. The same is now true of cursive. I want my students to be compatible and competitive with what the world is going to look like in 20 years. Cursive is not going to be a part of that world. In the next 10 years, every piece of historical source documents will be digitalized and translated into standard font. Students who will go on to become historians can learn cursive, but most of them are not going to be spending a lot of time looking at source documents. There is so much information that teachers have to cover nowadays for state tests, plus there is character education and much more. At the beginning of school, I send home a packet and ask students to practice cursive and turn it in to me in a month. It's not perfect, but it's one of the trade-offs I have to make. I teach in a high-performing school, and many parents say they want more "challenges" for their child, and they put cursive in this context. But I am not going to spend a lot of time on this because this is the age of iPads, cell phones and computers. When a kid can text 70 words per minute, does he really need to learn cursive? Dustin Ellis is a fourth-grade teacher at Big Springs Elementary School in Simi Valley and a Simi Education Association member. NO

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