6 ms·

Reading these comments makes me wonder if there is something wrong with US cursive or the way it was taught. I learned cursive in first grade GDR and continued

Reading these comments makes me wonder if there is something wrong with US cursive or the way it was taught. I learned cursive in first grade GDR and continued school in Austria where we had to (and enjoyed) writing copious essays weekly over and over again. It's actually amazing to watch the penmanship shift over those years and develop into a idiosyncratic style or to see the speed and form impacted by topic, time and material. The ability to use basic materials to communicate and express knowledge and civilization should include a wide array of skills from cursive all the way to tool classes. When you finish high school the goal should have been to hand over the foundations of civilization and let you go from there. Rhetoric, grammar, broad knowledge of history and science, firm skills in math and your ability communicate seem to me the basics of an enlightened age. A touch typing course is really not that hard or difficult to add on. But there is something refined and cultivated in training your brain's neural net to become skillful as far as mastering the basics of self-education (reading with clear and deep understanding) and self-expression (communicating clear discursive thoughts) goes.

CodeWriter23 9y ago
They simply do not teach cursive in LA Unified.
7952 9y ago
I agree that it is good to learn skills for their own sake. But do you really think that cursive is actually good at communicating information? If people find it difficult to write legibly then it is not really achieving that goal. I found cursive a constant problem at school that made the teacher obsess about presentation rather than content. And as an adult I find it hard to read peoples idiosyncratic scrawl. Text should be easy to read, that is the most important thing.
- novalis78 9y ago
  In a sense that's definitely true. In another it seems to also depend on the cursive system. I recently went to Freud's museum and was able to read his letters without problems. Over a hundred years of using the same cursive system. It's beautiful, elegant and to a degree a form of art - Western calligraphy, if you will. The synergy of fine motor skills, art, history, neatness, self-expression and cultural transmission in conjunction with expressing yourself seem to be worth something. It's perhaps not even the cursive itself, but the training, persistence and effort that goes into creating something useful through your own hands that teaches so many valuable lessons. Easy is not always better - especially patience with oneself and persistent effort in mastering a skill could perhaps be beneficial for the next generation.

CodeWriter23 9y ago

They simply do not teach cursive in LA Unified.

7952 9y ago

I agree that it is good to learn skills for their own sake. But do you really think that cursive is actually good at communicating information? If people find it difficult to write legibly then it is not really achieving that goal. I found cursive a constant problem at school that made the teacher obsess about presentation rather than content. And as an adult I find it hard to read peoples idiosyncratic scrawl. Text should be easy to read, that is the most important thing.

novalis78 9y ago
In a sense that's definitely true. In another it seems to also depend on the cursive system. I recently went to Freud's museum and was able to read his letters without problems. Over a hundred years of using the same cursive system. It's beautiful, elegant and to a degree a form of art - Western calligraphy, if you will. The synergy of fine motor skills, art, history, neatness, self-expression and cultural transmission in conjunction with expressing yourself seem to be worth something. It's perhaps not even the cursive itself, but the training, persistence and effort that goes into creating something useful through your own hands that teaches so many valuable lessons. Easy is not always better - especially patience with oneself and persistent effort in mastering a skill could perhaps be beneficial for the next generation.