Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania has decided what kids in his state need to learn. It’s cursive handwriting.
Letting our kids be kids also means getting back to the basics. That’s why, earlier this year, | signed into law a bipartisan bill that requires cursive handwriting to be taught in Pennsylvania schools.
It may seem strange, but cursive handwriting is a fundamental skill that all of our kids should learn. They may not get why now, but that’s how they’ll sign their very first check — or maybe even someday, a bill that gets to the Governor’s desk (trust me, you’ll want good penmanship for that).
Nope. It’s not an essential skill anymore. You can sign a check with a barely legible scrawl…it’s still accepted. The President of the US can sign bills with a peculiar string of pointy squiggles that is completely illegible…it still works, unfortunately. When I have to sign a series of papers, it starts out OK, but I use a kind of sloppy block printing, and by the time I’m done the “yers” in my last name has eroded down into a kind of uneven flood plain. That’s a really stupid reason to force kids to write in cursive.
Also, Shapiro has a law degree, not an education degree. He is not qualified to tell people what educational initiatives are “fundamental”. Leave that to educators.
It reminds me of my early disaffection with Bill Gates. He was doing all this philanthropy, and one of his pet projects was reforming US education…by taking it out of the hands of teachers and promoting charter schools. Like Bill Gates, Shapiro is meddling in subjects in which he has no authority and is going to end up doing more harm to education.
Cursive is cool. So is calligraphy. Both should be electives. Weird part is everyone’s block printing is unique. Add to that its legibility and block printing should be the standard for legal documents.
My father was a obsessive small case journalist who wrote in cursive. He created thousands of pages in his version of cursive thus rendering illegible decades of family history.
One of my most haunting memories from my childhood is about being relentlessly bullied and mocked by my teachers for my awful handwriting. Neither dysgraphia nor autism was widely known back then, and they thought that an otherwise brilliant student like me was just lazy.
In the Uni, I stopped writing in cursive completely. I developed my own block-letter script and used that. It is still difficult to read unless I concentrate, but it is more readable than my attempts at cursive.
I “sign” all kinds of official, legal documents by clicking a button which inserts my name in a vaguely cursive font. Better than anything I could do with my actual hand. I guess Shapiro is a MASA Republican…Make America Stupid Again or Make Americans Silly Asses…take your pick.
Cursive handwriting – Everyone should know how to wright damn, fuck, and hell.
What is it about politicians that make them feel they have to meddle in the details of anyone’s profession? Do they go home at the end of the day feeling unsatisfied if they haven’t told surgeons how long to wash their hands for? Do think it’s an opportunity missed if they haven’t told delivery drivers not to park on the sidewalk? What will tomorrow bring? “Detectives, you must always check for fingerprints.” “Nurses, change the sheets every day.” Gah.
We weren’t learning cursive because it was useful in and of itself 30 years ago, when I learned it. The point, as I understand it, is to foster the development of fine motor skills and have a somewhat objective standard to measure against. Kids are still baking, and measuring the degree of fine motor control they have in 1st and 2nd grade gives you a really good model of how that baking is going. There may be better options these days, I’m not an educator, but it’s not on-its-face a stupid thing to teach in elementary school.
A front runner for the next Dem nominee for President. I continue to be unimpressed. Don’t know if he is better or worse than Newsome.
We will have better options, right?
Hey grampa, what’s this “check” he’s babbling about?
Cursive writing was easily the most worthless thing I learned in school, and I’m including all the lies I learned about the “greatness” of the US in history classes. It’s considerably slower than printing, especially when trying to make it at least semi-legible, and it’s significantly harder to read. There are no advantages, except to the minority of people who are able to make it pretty. Frankly, flattering the egos of a small number of students at the expense of the well-being of the rest is a terrible reason to require a subject in schools.
I tried for years to get it right, endured constant abuse from teachers to whom it came easily, but I never got past marginal proficiency in it. My cursive was never, ever good enough for anyone, and we were required to use it for years. One of the happiest days of my schooling life was when I heard the magical words “you may print if you prefer.”
I’ve got no problem with teaching it as an option in art classes, like calligraphy, but as far as I’m concerned, requiring every student to sit through that crap is tantamount to child abuse. Some children, because of the ways their brains and bodies work, will NEVER have “good penmanship” no matter how many hours they work at it. And, a decade of being told that your best is never anywhere near good enough? That shit’s corrosive.
Rich Woods @ #7 — Well, you could chalk it up to the fact that most of them are lawyers, but that’s just a prejudice of mine.
Shapiro is of course wrong: cursive writing isn’t a fundamental skills at all. In fact, writing isn’t a fundamental skill. Per what I read, cursive hasn’t been particularly “useful” since the invention of metal nibbed pens. There is some cognitive advantage for children to focus on handwriting, but I doubt that the particular style…cursive…really matters as much as just the eye-hand coordination.
I don’t really have a signature, I just start with something that could resemble the first letters and end with some squiggles. Nobody cares. When I have to sign for something like a parcel I draw whatever comes into mind, I think I once wrote MOOOOOOO! without any objecting.
Reading and writing is just a stopgap measure until we get our brain chip interfaces working.
Way to say you’re a dinosaur without saying you’re a dinosaur. Sign a what now? It’s been more than fifteen years since I last wrote a check (a cheque, actually), and at least ten years since I received and cashed one. Shops in the UK stopped accepting checks about twenty years ago (and even before that, you had to have a credit card or a “cheque guarantee card”, which, for most current accounts, was your debit card…).
The other thing is equally “fundamental”. Just make a zigzag with a Sharpie and post a photo with the damn thing on Twitter.
Also, cursive is torture if you have dyspraxia, and it’s objectively less legible.
vucodlak:
“Cursive writing was easily the most worthless thing I learned in school, and I’m including all the lies I learned about the “greatness” of the US in history classes. It’s considerably slower than printing, especially when trying to make it at least semi-legible, and it’s significantly harder to read.”
You must be thinking copperplate or Palmer or the like.
I’m thinking ‘not printing’, but still legible.
Printing is far slower for me; nothing to do with ‘pretty’, but for example, when I used to take minutes, I’d write as fast as possible, and that meant no printing (not calligraphy or total continuity, either).
So you can’t universalise from your specific problem.
cvoinescu @13,
Like you, I much prefer using my bank card, but I’m in the minority where I live. Our small, “beachy” towns are full of small businesses that prefer cash or checks. Often, at local restaurants, the bill is presented with a request for cash, and my husband has to request a credit card form to sign. We don’t like to carry cash.
I write a check to my gardener when he works at my house, so I have to keep a supply of checks.
Writing is tough for me. I have a severe intention tremor in my dominant hand. My cursive writing was never great, but now it is ridiculous!
The real educational scourge Shapiro should be worried about is AI. Maybe it’s a reflexive solution to a problem by focusing on something symbolic of that problem. Like a Luddite—old, good; new, bad.
remyporter@6– if the point of learning cursive is fine motor control, then why not teach a useful fine motor skill? Electives in art, music, drafting, crafting, woodwork, metalwork, and yes, cursive/calligraphy for those who want it.
I’m amazed that checks are even still a thing in the US. They were phased out about 20+ years ago in (most of?) Europe.
While I agree that cursive is not as important as it was many decades ago (how old is this governor?) could this be a plea for better literacy?
Pennsylvania falls in the middle third of all states for literacy. After all, the governor can’t even spell “cheque”.