Cursive - Teach It Or Don't?

[Salandriagado]

Guess it might just be cultural then. The only thing I've seen people ever write in print was their family name and it's because it's a convention to make sure people don't mistake a letter reading it.

I suspect not teaching cursive is a largely American thing. In my experience it's very much the norm here in the UK to write in cursive as well; I do know people who prefer to write in non-cursive, but it's the exception rather than the rule.[/quote]

When Americans say "cursive", they mean something very different to what we mean when we say cursive (do any of us actually say cursive? I've never heard it called that anywhere but online). They mean a single, very specific handwriting style, which is frankly awful.

[Diopolis]

Everyone needs to learn to read it. As far as writing it, just enough to sign your name.

[United New England]

I think calligraphy should be taught in art classes, but cursive doesn’t need to be an academic subject.

[The Caleshan Valkyrie]

They should still teach shorthand.

[Cosmopolitan borovan]

Cursive is useless dont teach it. Only used for art and signature

[Page]

Hell yes people should learn cursive. Although writing cursive letters or documents isn't important anymore for the most part. People very rarely do this in the digital age. It is only truly important to write your signature. The people who're too lazy to write a legible signature and just make an illegible scribble, that pisses me off. I can't be the only one who minds.

I can only speak for myself, but my signature started off in legible cursive and then evolved into illegible scribble over many years. A few years pass and I write it even faster, a few more years and still faster, and now you can't even discern a name. But that's okay. Signatures aren't supposed to be one's readable name, they're supposed to be unique so they can be verified for authenticity. Back before nearly everyone was literate, lots of peoples' signatures were simply a x or some other shape.

[Page]

They should still teach shorthand.

Shorthand relies on learning an entire new alphabet of symbols - it's a lot of memorization, and no one uses it except stenographers. The time spent on that would be better spent learning a little bit of a foreign language.

[Alanis Star]

To sidetrack a little, I thought of learning shorthand, because it I'll save me so much time and put in more information in my writing. But with me currently in University now, typing became the new norm (I admit that writing is better for memory retainment than typing, but that's another topic).

As opposed to what many has said here, I have to disagree that children's handwritings are awful not because of cursive... At least for Burmese people, anyway. I have burned though book after book writing the textbooks in the separated handwriting, and Burmese isn't exactly a language whose script looks good in cursive.

In other words, my handwriting was nice only because I took many beatings to my hand for poor handwriting, coupled with the round characters of the script itself. Probably a Southeast Asian thing again.

[The Huskar Social Union]

That fancy squiggly bollocks and fuck off.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

No, teach kids to communicate exclusively in emojis and then send them down the mines. They won't develop complex enough thought to question the system.

Economics, history, and the biology of what it takes to kill a canary are each more relevant to why you shouldn't go down into that coal mine than cursive writing. By your logic we need LESS cursive, to make room for more courses about questioning the system.

EDIT: Or alternatively teaching ONLY cursive and not other forms of writing.

[Gowinia]

I learned cursive in first grade. I think it's a good idea to teach it to kids this age as an introduction to handwriting.

[The Caleshan Valkyrie]

They should still teach shorthand.

Shorthand relies on learning an entire new alphabet of symbols - it's a lot of memorization, and no one uses it except stenographers. The time spent on that would be better spent learning a little bit of a foreign language.

Fine then. Learn them younguns some Esperanto.

[Gowinia]

Shorthand relies on learning an entire new alphabet of symbols - it's a lot of memorization, and no one uses it except stenographers. The time spent on that would be better spent learning a little bit of a foreign language.

Fine then. Learn them younguns some Esperanto.

That would actually not be a bad idea. Esperanto is easy to learn on itself and if you speak it, it will be easier for you to learn other languages.

[Chan Island]

As phones and other such devices become ubiquitous, I think cursive will become obsolete. Bin it.

[Northwest Slobovia]

Is it useful? Should kids be learning it in school? What are the consequences of a generation growing up without it?

No, no, and about the same as that generation not learning how to write with a quill pen.

[Barboneia]

They taught us cursive in the first grade, I believe, and I retained none of it. Hell, my regular handwriting is pretty shit. I don’t really see an issue in teaching it, but hope that the students remember it better than I did.

[Senkaku]

It was a giant fucking waste of time when I was in elementary school and I've never used it again lol, get rid of that shit

[Aureumterra]

I never learned cursive nor did I know that such thing existed until I was about 20 or so

But really, I don’t even think a cursive version of my language even exists

[Kaggeceria]

Cursive was invented to use ink wells more efficiently. We don't need ink wells anymore. Ergo, we don't need cursive writing anymore.

[Moon Dust]

Of course we need it. Signatures for example use the concept of it. Typing isn't everything. No pun intended.

[Katganistan]

Then provide tablets or laptops for every kid in every school so they can make themselves understood. Many standardized statewide and nationwide tests still require students to write essays in handwriting, and people are too lazy to learn how to write legibly.

The unfortunate consequence of this is that when teachers are grading the state exams which require students to hand write their responses, and are pressured to grade 150 essays a day, for a week, with an average time allotted to each essay of no more than four minutes, students do poorly on tests not because they don't know the material, but because it can't be read.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/does-messy ... ssay-score

[Walpolez]

Welp, it seems unnecessary, all I know is it's pretty useless to learn a way to write the alphabet and then have to know another alliteration of it, if that makes sense?
I mean the people in here are right it hurts like heck, or at least it did to me, but then again my writing teacher gives us extra points if we write our name in cursive..soo
But if you are the percentage of people who write in cursive, other people may or may not understand it, and if they want to understand it they're gonna have to go through some nonsense to do it. Personally, I don't think they should teach it in school.

[Kowani]

Cursive is useless
/thread

[Internationalist Bastard]

Can I make a confession?
I never learned cursive, my signature was always just an angry scribble resembling my name

[Southern States 2]

I learned cursive a while ago and instantly forgot it so it's not worth teaching cursive