theuncertainty

While he was at the Waldorf school, DS took great pride in his handwriting and making his letters "fancy" (cursive). Now that he's been at a public school for a couple years, I have to hound him to make his letters legible. (That word will be marked wrong on a spelling test. I can't tell if that's an "e" or an "a".) I get that part of that is just him getting older, but no time is spent on handwriting - or even printing.

Personally, I love looking through old handwritten documents. Not necessarily to read them, but to look at the letters. I love my grandmother's Ms and Ws - so much sharper and loop-y, at the same time, than the generally rounded Ms and Ws of the D'Nealian cursive I learned. And if you go back far enough, just sorting through what the letters are can take a bit of time - the standards for how letters are formed changes so much.

And grammar.... My French professor in college (from Belgium) lamented teaching us anything because we couldn't even speak English, or understand how sentences were put together. One of her required books for the class was an English grammar book.

This summer, DS and I will be playing with calligraphy and Spencerian writing. It's been rather difficult finding the offset pens that Spencerian writing requires, but I found some online that I'll be ordering.

BTW, any one looking to practice handwriting: the thicker page protectors are awesome for write-on-erase-and-reuse, and an ultra fine point dry erase marker is pretty close to writing with a pen rather than a marker.

StacyR

Dandylion....have faith...
My 8 year old son is learning to read and write using cursive. He is dyslexic and the connection in letters helps him to not mix up sounds. Cursive has been a godsend.
Many other families of dyslexic children know this secret as well...we will not let it die

Ileana

The fact is...unless removing cursive from public education becomes a national mandate, states removing cursive from the curriculum are putting their students at a disadvantage in the work place and in college. They simply won't have the same skills their peers have.

dandylion

Yjamls.everyone for the interesting responses that this thread has gotten...
So much that I didn't know...
I especially, didn't know that cursive writing helped dyslexic children!!

dandylion

amy55

Hey dandy,

I saw a think on Huff Post today about cursive writing. Wish I knew how to post articles.

I love cursive writing. I also do calligraphy but I do it my own way. I always got a 95 in grammar school on my penmanship. (lol)

amy

dandylion

Thanks. amy. I will check that out!

dandylion

Thumper

Even when I was in college and we had to peck on a typewriter I never once needed to use cursive.

My kids do learn cursive in grade school and it is such a waste of time in my opinion. They never use it. The older kids don't even remember how and they are only 15 and 17. They are required to use computers. Even my 4th graders are required to turn their reports in from a computer.

I complete many reports and notes at work. All on a computer. I leave notes for people - on technology. If it wasn't for signing my name wouldn't even need a pen. Even that is going by the wayside. We sign on a screen of some kind.

I take notes for a board I belong too and I do write them out in cursive because that is how I learned to take notes and my kids think I'm lame because then I type them out and send them in an email. It would make way more sense to record the meeting or type it on my ipad and send before I even leaving the meeting.