Why the Education Establishment Hates Cursive, by Bruce Deitrick Price,
12/23/16
Modern educators are dismissive of
cursive. Indeed, many are hostile to such a degree that you should
immediately suspect that they are up to something.
Here is an education journalist
providing the Party Line: "Cursive writing is an anachronism. Spending any classroom time on it is comparable to
teaching how to use an abacus: it's interesting as a history lesson, and
probably offers some side benefits, but it is not at all practical as a
day-to-day skill in the modern, connected world."
A professor of education argues: "Cursive should be allowed to die. In
fact, it's already dying, despite having been taught for decades."
(You can depend on education professors to confuse "decades"
with "centuries.")
When you read such swaggering
attacks on cursive, you might assume that the question is
settled. The old geezer is dead, so take him off life support. You
rarely see thoughtful praise of cursive. Even people who are
sentimentally inclined to support cursive can't think of many reasons to do so.
I propose a higher truth: the
Education Establishment is always a reliable guide to what is good.
If our socialist professors rail against X, you know that X is
educational gold. Here are eight reasons why cursive is valuable and we
should fight to keep it in the classroom:
1) LEARN TO READ FASTER. The
main thing is that learning cursive accelerates learning to read. If it
did nothing else, this alone would still make it a huge asset. Cursive
obviously makes a child more aware of letter forms and how words are
spelled. Don
Potter, the phonics guru, states:
"Any attempt to educate American children that neglects the direct
development of fluent handwriting is doomed to fail. The little dribble of
handwriting done with the typical phonics programs is FAR below optimal."
2) HIGHER I.Q. Reading itself
has unexpected benefits. Namely, it makes you smarter.
Some researchers speculate that the brain
rewires itself to become better at reading.
K-12 is full of inferior methods that let children remain poor
readers for years. Their I.Q.s will not advance; their academic skills
will not improve. In contrast, cursive accelerates reading, which will
accelerate everything else.
3) PRECISION. Cursive requires
that young students do something precisely. Not sloppily, not
incompletely, not according to personal whim. Cursive says: This is
an M. Draw it exactly like the diagram. Practice until
you can do it correctly. Penmanship is the perfect path to precision. Precision is a valuable concept for
young people. They will learn to read faster and think faster, and it
will influence how they approach everything else. When you spell a word,
it needs to be spelled a certain way. Grammar says words must be used in
particular ways. So much of what they do in public
schools nowadays is a blanket endorsement of sloppiness. Kids can do
anything any way they want. That is not education. That's "academic child abuse."
4) FINE MOTOR SKILLS. Even
detractors of phonics acknowledge that it teaches fine motor skills.
Simply holding a pencil is a big accomplishment for little kids. We
know from the history of carpets that little kids
are capable of extraordinarily delicate work.
If children are working within the context of their family, this work can be
largely beneficial. They learn how to create something really
complicated, with lots of counting required. But where do kids today get a chance
to perform anything exacting, even for ten minutes? Few children build
models anymore. Videogames require the same actions over and over again.
Cursive demands both physical and mental dexterity.
5) CALLIGRAPHY. This word,
which is almost pure Greek, means beautiful writing. Learning
cursive introduces a child to the world of logos, type design, and
graphic design generally. Children can compare cursive writing to
typefaces they see in the newspaper. They can design their own names in
different ways – each is a logo. Many products have script logos; today's students cannot read these beautiful names.
6) HISTORY. When children
learn cursive, they can read the Declaration of Independence and many other
historical documents. They can read letters from older relatives.
7) INDIVIDUAL SIGNATURES.
Cursive allows for personal expression. A person's signature is
nearly as unique as a fingerprint. Nowadays, children learn to print
their signatures; these will not be distinctive, probably causing lots of
confusion in the legal system. Probably our collectivist educators like
the idea of all people looking the same and having almost identical signatures.
The world will be more boring.
8) TAKING NOTES. Handwriting
is faster than printing. That was the main reason they developed it.
If students want to take notes in the classroom, cursive is the obvious
choice.
The aforementioned education
journalist specifically squealed: "I shudder to think of the time I spent
learning cursive: 15 minutes of schooling, every day."
Let's think about that.
What, in the typical public school, is accomplished in the entire
day? Almost nothing, judging by literacy and other test scores. But
we're supposed to believe that "almost nothing" reduced by 15 minutes
is a big deal.
Let's turn it around.
Apparently, 15 minutes a day is all it takes to learn cursive. Now,
that's a bargain, readily and cheaply available for every child in America.
A mere 15 minutes a day will result in higher I.Q., faster and better
reading, a greater appreciation of the aesthetic aspects of type, faster
note-taking, one's very own signature, more coordinated fingers, and the
ability to find out what Thomas Jefferson is famous for. Cursive may be
the best deal offered in K-12 education.
QED: The pattern I see is that our
Education Establishment tends to promote methods that don't work. If you
are engaged in "the deliberate dumbing down of America," cursive is your natural enemy. Probably the real reason our experts
condemn cursive is because cursive actually works.
Bruce Deitrick Price explains theories and methods on his education
sites Improve-Education.org.
For info on his four new novels, see his literary site Lit4u.com.
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