My children are now older and despite being competent computer users with decent programming skills have discovered (on their own) the time-honored trick of rewriting your notes/thoughts (in cursive, on paper) before tests. It's a wonderful way to lodge concepts in the brain and enhance later recall. If you can't do this in handwriting, it takes way too much time.

But this is your assumption. While I agree that sometimes outlining on paper helps (although it really is possible to outline electronically as well, which is what I personally do 99+% of the time), my kids sometimes do this on paper. By printing. I just don't understand why cursive is considered so vastly superior.

When I learned cursive it was a separate block of time. We spent what seemed like a LOT of time copying letters over and and over again. And that stupid cursive capital Q has no value whatsoever.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you OP, I think there are numerous benefits to having good handwriting in general, and several benefits to knowing cursive in addition to printing.

My kids have practiced penmanship in both cursive and print for at least a few minutes a day since pre-school/K.

Benefits of cursive handwriting specifically, in my opinion:

- generally easier for most kids to learn than printing

- often quicker than printing

- cursive is necessary in order to sign forms & legal documents

- as we have seen on this thread, in many countries cursive is the more common (or, sometimes only) writing system used by educated adults, so knowing it could benefit kids who later work, live, or study in a country where this is the case

- cursive is generally regarded as more formal than printing; when handwritten correspondence is necessary it is probably preferable to write in cursive if your cursive is sufficiently good & legible

No, it's not. My legal signature has been in print my entire adult life. (My handwritten correspondence, too.)

Interesting. I don't doubt you or anything, but I am surprised. Every form I have ever seen has two blanks, one which says "printed name" and the other that says "signature". I always thought the two blanks implied that there was a difference between the two, and therefore that the latter signature had to be cursive. Is this really not the case?

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you OP, I think there are numerous benefits to having good handwriting in general, and several benefits to knowing cursive in addition to printing.

My kids have practiced penmanship in both cursive and print for at least a few minutes a day since pre-school/K.

Benefits of cursive handwriting specifically, in my opinion:

- generally easier for most kids to learn than printing

- often quicker than printing

- cursive is necessary in order to sign forms & legal documents

- as we have seen on this thread, in many countries cursive is the more common (or, sometimes only) writing system used by educated adults, so knowing it could benefit kids who later work, live, or study in a country where this is the case

- cursive is generally regarded as more formal than printing; when handwritten correspondence is necessary it is probably preferable to write in cursive if your cursive is sufficiently good & legible

No, it's not. My legal signature has been in print my entire adult life. (My handwritten correspondence, too.)

Anonymous wrote:

It is not rocket science to teach kids cursive and takes about 20 minutes a day give or take depending upon child's age. I taught my kid cursive by reading the instructor's manual. However, many teachers are not well versed in teaching phonics ans syllabication to students. Many students have suffered from educational neglect with the whole reading debacle and the lack of solid instruction in how to read.

I do wish they taught cursive. However, look at the curriculum. What would you have them give up for twenty minutes a day?

It doesn't need to be an EXTRA 20 minutes a day. Mine learned cursive in K in an international school. Cursive handwriting is fully integrated into the study of the letters and phonemes. By the end of K, they can write in cursive easily, and in first grade their fast handwriting allows them to move right into writing longer sentences and paragraphs. If you insist on teaching children only block printing, in most cases their hands can't keep up with their thoughts, and their writing may lag behind the writing of children who learned faster ways of writing (or typing/keyboarding, but obviously you don't send your first grader to school with his/her own laptop).

My children are now older and despite being competent computer users with decent programming skills have discovered (on their own) the time-honored trick of rewriting your notes/thoughts (in cursive, on paper) before tests. It's a wonderful way to lodge concepts in the brain and enhance later recall. If you can't do this in handwriting, it takes way too much time.

9:22 again. I can't remember the last time I hand wrote correspondence. Other than a child's thank you note.

when your kid takes the SAT, they will need to fill out personal info in cursive.

They only need to do it on the SAT registration form. Not for the SAT itself.

I agree with you OP, I think there are numerous benefits to having good handwriting in general, and several benefits to knowing cursive in addition to printing.

My kids have practiced penmanship in both cursive and print for at least a few minutes a day since pre-school/K.

Benefits of cursive handwriting specifically, in my opinion:

- generally easier for most kids to learn than printing

- often quicker than printing

- cursive is necessary in order to sign forms & legal documents

- as we have seen on this thread, in many countries cursive is the more common (or, sometimes only) writing system used by educated adults, so knowing it could benefit kids who later work, live, or study in a country where this is the case

- cursive is generally regarded as more formal than printing; when handwritten correspondence is necessary it is probably preferable to write in cursive if your cursive is sufficiently good & legible

Anonymous wrote:Just learned this yesterday: when your kid takes the SAT, they will need to fill out personal info in cursive. Who knew?

So add it to the SAT prep classes.

Just learned this yesterday: when your kid takes the SAT, they will need to fill out personal info in cursive. Who knew?

Anonymous wrote:I am from Europe and I only learned cursive from the get-go. No printing at all. Print was for reading books only, not for writing .

This is how it was done in the US about 100 years ago. Cursive was taught first. Cursive is easier for children to learn in fact than print. Many occupational therapists recommend it too.

I am from Europe and I only learned cursive from the get-go. No printing at all. Print was for reading books only, not for writing .

I printed my way through high school, college, and three advanced degrees. I'd love to say that I'm an exceptional super-amazing person, but I'm not.

Me too. And I was taught cursive back in the"old days" when we spent a significant amount of class time learning it in grades 2and 3. I hated it. My printing has always been faster. I never used cursive after 8th grade when the teachers stopped demanding it. I took all my high school, college and grad school notes in print. And once I got a computer, I have never used print or cursive for more than a grocery list since.

My 7th grader was taught cursive for about 2 months in third grade. It hasn't seemed to have affected her at all. She types almost everything anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here and I think 21:36 is who is dead wrong on many counts. PP faults tracking because of "dead end classification" of students. That is just plain wrong on every level. Tracking isn't supposed to be fire-and-forget missile firing, it's supposed to be about REMEDIATION and ASSESSMENT. If the student is behind grade level in one are or another, tracking is supposed to provide the remediation to get them BACK ON GRADE LEVEL, which is determined through ASSESSMENT. If it's dead-end classification, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. Talk about unthoughtful and know-nothing. PP obviously hasn't thought any of this stuff through.

Maybe it's supposed to be. But in the real world, it isn't.

And when people talk about tracking, they're not usually referring to remediation and assessment for low achievers -- they're referring to keeping low achievers out of (their) high-achieving students' classes.

Again, that's a school doing it WRONG. And because someone does it WRONG is not a valid reason for getting rid of tracking. The answer is to do it RIGHT.

Anonymous wrote:

That is your assumption and not what I envision with flexible ability grouping with frequent re-assessments and adjustments in placement as needed. There is no reason that flexible ability grouping in separate classrooms cannot be done which would allow students to get the teachers attention for the entire class time instead of just some of the class time. Flexible ability grouping would also allow students' needs to be more fully met by teachers. I realize that tracking was often done incorrectly in the past but that does not mean that it cannot be done in the manner I envision.

Then call it "flexible ability grouping". Because when you use the word "tracking", people assume that you mean something entirely different, even if you don't.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here and I think 21:36 is who is dead wrong on many counts. PP faults tracking because of "dead end classification" of students. That is just plain wrong on every level. Tracking isn't supposed to be fire-and-forget missile firing, it's supposed to be about REMEDIATION and ASSESSMENT. If the student is behind grade level in one are or another, tracking is supposed to provide the remediation to get them BACK ON GRADE LEVEL, which is determined through ASSESSMENT. If it's dead-end classification, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. Talk about unthoughtful and know-nothing. PP obviously hasn't thought any of this stuff through.

Maybe it's supposed to be. But in the real world, it isn't.

And when people talk about tracking, they're not usually referring to remediation and assessment for low achievers -- they're referring to keeping low achievers out of (their) high-achieving students' classes.

That is your assumption and not what I envision with flexible ability grouping with frequent re-assessments and adjustments in placement as needed. There is no reason that flexible ability grouping in separate classrooms cannot be done which would allow students to get the teachers attention for the entire class time instead of just some of the class time. Flexible ability grouping would also allow students' needs to be more fully met by teachers. I realize that tracking was often done incorrectly in the past but that does not mean that it cannot be done in the manner I envision.

cont. Another reason it was easier to move them up (and down) was that you could try it without the kid losing face if it didn't work.