Anonymous wrote:Time to ditch screen learning and get back to basics. Textbooks, phonics, cursive, math facts. Kids will be better off in the long run. Stop chasing the latest fads like Lucy Caulkins, and listening to people Jo Boaler.

In the meantime, all parents should just send their kids to government school. Maybe the education will improve after the kids graduate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know some schools are teaching it and some don’t. I wish our elementary school did. My child just had to sign to get a learners permit and couldn’t do it. And yes, we practiced at home (but not enough obviously). Will work on it over the summer.

I wish my younger kids had time to work on it.

Your child couldn’t get a learner’s permit because the signature wasn’t in cursive? What did they want, perfect script?

He signed. His signature was a mess. He got the permit. But he should know how to confidently sign his name. I will have him practice more. But this seems like a massive failure of the school system that my child doesn’t have this basic skill.

Too bad the summer is so short and we don’t are very long to work on it.

Anonymous wrote:Time to ditch screen learning and get back to basics. Textbooks, phonics, cursive, math facts. Kids will be better off in the long run. Stop chasing the latest fads like Lucy Caulkins, and listening to people Jo Boaler.

+1000

we taught it at home.

Time to ditch screen learning and get back to basics. Textbooks, phonics, cursive, math facts. Kids will be better off in the long run. Stop chasing the latest fads like Lucy Caulkins, and listening to people Jo Boaler.

Anonymous wrote:Cursive has gone the way of calligraphy and provides no value. Proper typing classes would be a much better use of the kids' time. Almost anything provides more value than cursive in 2026.

Not going to argue with you that a typing class would be hella useful.

But cursive is having quite the rebound, as we are approaching a major bifurcation, between colleges/profs that ignore the fact that all work generated online is coming directly out of a large language model, and ones which require all graded work to be proctored and handwritten.

Anonymous wrote:They have found a connection with cursive.
https://www.thewindwardschool.org/school-blogs/cursive-handwriting-boosts-brain-memory/

If you click through the links to the actual study, it goes back to the exact same Norwegian one that was behind the article someone posted earlier in the thread. The actual Norwegian study says that "handwriting beats typing" when taking notes and recalling what you learned, and nothing about cursive specifically. It's only the articles that are citing that study that are adding the "cursive" onto it to push their agenda and get more clicks.
So yes, physically recalling the letters and making them takes more effort and helps your brain recall the knowledge better than tapping keys to take notes. Cursive has nothing to do with it other than being one option for that handwriting.

Anonymous wrote:They have found a connection with cursive.
https://www.thewindwardschool.org/school-blogs/cursive-handwriting-boosts-brain-memory/

This has been known for a long time. The brain/hand connection is huge.

They have found a connection with cursive.
https://www.thewindwardschool.org/school-blogs/cursive-handwriting-boosts-brain-memory/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just don't get these parents who don't understand the value of cursive. Not everything is done on the computer anymore, and cursive is easier and faster to write than block print. My 4th grader has learned cursive in school and now primarily uses cursive to write. With Benchmark, the kids are doing a lot more writing, so it's beneficial to be able to write more quickly.

They kept telling us this in school and as someone who learned both, I don't buy it. I'm an old school millennial who took notes mostly by hand up through college and I ended up note taking mostly in print.

Most of us probably have landed with a hybrid approach. I find it faster to be able to connect my letters, but my letters are a combination of cursive and print letters (I hate the cursive capital letters for example)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cursive has gone the way of calligraphy and provides no value. Proper typing classes would be a much better use of the kids' time. Almost anything provides more value than cursive in 2026.

Tell that to kids with dyslexia.

The better thing is to use special font for Dyslexia. My kid changes books on her kindle to it.

As an adult who was taught in school in the 80’s I could say I never use it. My kid did learn basics in ES a couple of years ago. Her regular handwriting is beautiful and she prefers it to cursive

Anonymous wrote:they teach kinds with dyslexia cursive because it helps with reading.

I teach dyslexic kids to read and teach cursive (I am a CALT). However, the research that suggests cursive is meaningfully better for supporting reading than manuscript print is slim. The theory is that connection between letters, and the way you flow from one to the other, helps with blending. Cursive can also be helpful in reinforcing things like letter spacing and staying on the line. But I would never suggest that cursive is meaningfully better than manuscript print. However, handwriting is incredibly important! It is critical for learning to read, and it is critical for retaining information when taking notes.

Anonymous wrote:I know some schools are teaching it and some don’t. I wish our elementary school did. My child just had to sign to get a learners permit and couldn’t do it. And yes, we practiced at home (but not enough obviously). Will work on it over the summer.

I wish my younger kids had time to work on it.

Again, your signature doesn't have to be cursive. It can be whatever mark you want. Just needs to be consistent.

Anonymous wrote:I know some schools are teaching it and some don’t. I wish our elementary school did. My child just had to sign to get a learners permit and couldn’t do it. And yes, we practiced at home (but not enough obviously). Will work on it over the summer.

I wish my younger kids had time to work on it.

Your child couldn’t get a learner’s permit because the signature wasn’t in cursive? What did they want, perfect script?