America struggles to save handwriting

In America, cursive writing is on the decline. Today, keyboards have replaced pencils, and grid lines have replaced mouse clicks. Students and teachers have every tool available to them except traditional writing.

While standardized tests may not test the ability to write flowing, curvaceous capital letters, cursive advocates argue that teaching handwriting is valuable and hope to save the tradition from being erased from the educational landscape.

ABC News reports that 41 states have adopted the “Common Core Standards for English,” which omit handwriting from their core curriculum. Now that handwriting is no longer required, schools across the country are debating whether to spend money on traditional handwriting instruction and training.

Proponents of cursive writing argue that teaching handwriting is valuable.

In New York, some schools are considering eliminating it altogether. Deb Fitzgerald, a middle school teacher at Van Schaick Elementary School in Cohoes, said she wants to skip the course and focus her class time on other topics.

Colorado schools are also engaged in a similar discussion. Some teachers believe that cursive is outdated and that students should be prepared for modern knowledge.

“Our schools are very paper and pencil-based,” says Susana Cordova, director of academics for Denver Public Schools. “But in innovative schools, they are always up to date with the latest technology. I know there is a place for handwriting on paper. But in our experience, the 30-minute daily cursive practice in the classroom probably shouldn’t continue.”

However, like the two spirals of the S, this debate has two sides.

Cindee Will, assistant principal at James Irwin Elementary School, said the choice to teach cursive wasn't about aesthetics or preference, but about giving children the mental tools they need to learn English.

The connected strokes, she explains, help guide the student’s eye from left to right and strengthen the connection between reading and writing. “When kids get to third and fourth grade, if they learn to type, they can do more mental work than if they were using a machine,” she says.

That reasoning is applied to the fullest at Camperdown Academy in Greenville, SC, a private school that teaches dyslexic students to overcome their disabilities. Camperdown teachers often use cursive writing, teaching students how to form words and develop increasingly difficult sentences. “Students improve so much when they can interact with what they’re learning.”

For others, the interaction of cursive is not only about the physical effects of writing, but also has value to community and heritage.

When Pam Bates found out that cursive writing would no longer be taught at her daughter’s school, she decided to take action. Bates opened and ran a cursive writing club and now helps 40 other students learn cursive writing by keeping a long-standing tradition alive. “I totally understand that we live in a world of technology,” she says. “But I’m from the old school generation who believe that you can’t forget where you came from. And the computer crashes are going to happen!”

Although easily seen as the enemy of the hand, technology has not been able to completely conquer the handwriting enthusiasts.

Carnegie Mellon University’s reCAPTCHA analysis program was developed to make it easier for machines to search and recognize printed text. However, when it comes to old handwritten manuscripts, the best translations are searched with human eyes. Luis von Ahn, a project team expert, eloquently declared: “No one reads handwritten manuscripts anymore!”

Whether future generations will still be taught how to read and write cursive texts remains unknown.

According to VietNamNet