Why? What are they teaching now that wasn't taught "back in the day" that is more important? |
Who needs fine motor skills anyways. |
Test prep! |
Who knew that cursive was the only way to hone fine motor skills. Thousands of years of children who never possessed fine motor skills, all because cursive hadn’t been invented yet! |
There's a difference between buttoning your shirt or tying your shoes once a day and writing for several hours a day when it comes to fine motor skills. Also writing, particularly in cursive rather than block print tends to show better memory connections and very different brain activity. Kids who practice my language make such connections to read each character through repetition of writing it. But since this isn't stuff that is tested in the classroom, it won't show up on any sort of SOL, so school boards don't care. |
If I teach cursive, what should I remove from the curriculum? |
Just send home a couple textbooks and teach cursive and these people will be ecstatic. Their kids won’t be prepared for future learning or their eventual careers, but the parents will get warm fuzzies. |
The 2 weeks of I'm a math person in 3rd grade for starters. |
You're joking right? There is so much wasted time in the school day, it's ridiculous. My kid is in HS now. Even there, there is a TON of down time. We are on the 3d week at school and only now done with pep rallies, team building, etc. to get to some homework and substantive lessons (albeit still mostly review). It was even worse than that in ES. Use some of that fluff time to teach cursive. |
DP, third grade teacher. I honestly don’t know what you are talking about. We have had no down time. The first unit lasts only the first two weeks and covers pictographs, bar graphs, reading analog clocks and thermometers. |
When my kid was in 3rd grade 2 years ago they were home during the pandemic and they were sitting in my office. The first two weeks of math instruction was largely presentations about how everyone was a math person rather than review of content or new instructional content. I was quite upset at the time. |
Yeah, well, you get what you pay for. Consider yourself lucky your kid isn’t taught by a barely educated military veteran. |
Sounds like you should homeschool, so you can spend 10 days of intensive cursive Boot Camp. I’m sure it’ll pay dividends down the road |
As I wrote up thread, FCPS did teach my kid cursive in 3rd grade and provided a workbook. I said to drop the everybody is a math person part of the curriculum in response to a teacher who asked would could be dropped to provide time for cursive. |
| There should be absolutely no time spent in school on cursive. Kids who want to learn can do it outside like a musical instrument. It is no longer important for living in society. |