I really enjoyed reading this. I, too, learned to write on a typewriter and find it difficult to break the habit of putting two spaces between sentences. (See?) However, until reading this I couldn't remember why!
“The inability to read handwriting deprives society of direct access to its own past" ". . . you are wrong”
Actually, Faust is right about this. There's a difference between being able to WRITE in cursive, and being able to READ it. Historians study paleography for a reason.
I enjoyed reading today's column. I learned cursive writing as I attended Catholic grade schools and the nuns LOVED cursive, although my handwriting did not measure up to their standards. Oh well. I also learned how to diagram sentences and can still, to this day, recite all of the prepositions by heart. And I also said the abc's backwards before I learned to say them forwards because my grandfather used to say them backwards as a joke. I picked that up! As far as typing is concerned, I still allow for two spaces at the end of each sentence, as you no doubt can tell. And I won't give that up!
I think there is some pleasure to be had in the esoteric knowledge of things like knowing all the prepositions or being able to diagram sentences, but the point I'm hoping is clear is that these things have nothing to do with learning to express oneself in writing. They are independent from developing that particular skill.
Ironically, I can't tell that you put two spaces after a period because the Substack software automatically eliminates them from the text. I'm all for people engaging in the individual practices that make sense to them, but (with very limited exceptions) everything you read has one space after a period.
I'm surprised nobody has defended cursive on the grounds of its learning benefits. I'll quote the N Y Times: "Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing." Giving a Google search to "benefits of learning cursive" has loads of similar authoritative articles.
I looked up that article you quoted and that claim is entirely unevidenced because there is no convincing evidence that cursive "stimulates the brain like nothing else." The originator of that statement also ran a company selling services to help students improve their handwriting. I find both her lack of evidence and obvious self-interest in promoting this claim to be two strikes against its veracity. She's promoting folklore.
The evidence she cites on the SAT is not a function of the quality of thought, but (as shown subsequently), the bias of scorers who believe that students writing in cursive were smarter or more prepared. They were influenced by the folklore.
Any study you find about the benefits of cursive is usually quite old and is a comparison between cursive and block lettering, but (thankfully for those of us who cannot write cursive), we now have technology that allows for far faster composition, not just typing, but voice to text software, which has been an incredible boon to students with a variety of disabilities.
I personally can't dictate to save my life. I wish I could because it would allow me to produce even more. But even this isn't new. My father (a lawyer) never learned to type, so he would "write" his briefs by dictating them and then having a secretary type them up, after which he would edit by hand. It's a skill he had to develop because he lacked another one (typing). What we can do for students is to help them figure out the methods and processes that allow them access to self-expression, rather than consigning them to practices that have no empirical foundations.
Adjusting to change has been occasionally tough for me. I'll never forget the first time I saw a student writing a draft of their assignment on their phone. I thought they were farting around when I'd given them time to work in class, but they showed me the speed and proficiency they could achieve on the phone keyboard and it made sense that this would be the student's practice. Ultimately, they had to format and polish on the computer, but drafting on the phone worked really well for this person (and others). I had to get over my bias that had me believing there was no way anyone could write on a phone because of my inability to type with any accuracy or proficiency on mine.
Yes, I can see that article was not the best example of the value of cursive, and your points are well taken. To be clear, my own experience with beginning cursive was equally as unsuccessful as yours; the only "U" (Unsatisfactory) grade I got in elementary school was in penmanship, and I was in tears when I brought my report card home because I thought I was in Big Trouble (instead, they chuckled and said I was doing just fine). However, as a former teacher I rail against curricula lost to standardized testing because of the administrative attitude that if it's not on the test, it's not worth teaching. Fine motor skill work has value (especially with less art time now, another victim of testing), and I can't imagine that every bit of current curricula is so precious that kids can't at least learn cursive -- perhaps without grading and without it being compulsory on papers.
I'm with you on the distorting effects of standardized testing on curriculum - it's the core thesis to a huge part of my book - but in terms of cursive specifically as a way to build fine motor or as something to be maintained in curricula because it's part of the past, I just can't muster any evidence to support it. Lots of things have fallen out of the curricula as society and culture evolve, often (though not always) for good reasons. We don't need engineers to be able to use a slide rule anymore, and when used as part of a strong math curriculum, graphing calculators allow students to learn and practice much more than before the technology was ubiquitous.
It's a difficult territory to negotiate as all choices require trade offs. One of the explicit choices the curriculum I promote in my books makes is to deemphasize academic "forms" in order to make more space for the kind of critical thinking that underpins the academic conversation these forms are meant to be part of.
When I look back at the course of my career, I sort of can't believe the things I've given up that I once would've thought were necessary or sacrosanct (including traditional grading itself), but there's been a liberatory aspect to literally questioning everything, including those things I hold dear.
It was a faculty meeting. The fourth grade teachers were complaining about how hard it was to get students proficient in cursive. As a group, they asked us fifth grade teachers if we required students to take spelling tests using cursive. We fifth grade teachers looked at each other astonishment. As a group, we didn't require cursive in anything. As long as we could understand the students' writing we were fine with their method. The fourth grade teachers were astonished in turn. And then began the discussion of how many hours they spent on cursive in the fourth grade curriculum. (Don't even ask about the time spent in fourth grade memorizing state capitals.)
I've encountered this up and down the educational system. Because of my book, I've spent a lot of time talking to teachers at various levels, and they're often surprised at the difference between what they think is going to happen to students in college writing contexts and what actually happens.
I also think fault lies with colleges which have not done enough to communicate what's changed in terms of approaches an curriculum over the years. That was another of the big motivators to write that book.
This essay brought back memories for me. My 5th grade teacher wrote on my report card, "Michelle is so smart, it's a shame she doesn't have legible penmanship." Thank goodness my ability to write legibly has become less important in the last 30+ years! And my handwriting has only gotten worse now that I hardly ever use it.
That's funny about the two spaces after sentences--I totally still do that, thanks to the rules taught in my high school keyboarding class.
My children always brought their grandmother's notes to them, written in cursive, for me to read because they could not. Sad but true. My Dad, an engineer, never wrote cursive but his block printing was perfect. The two spaces after a period created a disagreement between myself and a younger colleague but I bailed on that, it is quicker. Your history on the reason is neat to know. To your point about drafts on the phone, my Luddite son, with his flip phone, can out type anyone on that keyboard to send a text. It is a thing of joy to behold!
For those with learning issues of any type, the technology of today, beginning with Dragon Speak, and text to voice, et al, are amazing tools for all to learn and produce. Auto-correct can have its challenges but the use of spell check and grammar check made me feel lazy as I was once proud of my spelling skills. However, those tools make my actual writing freer to create when I don't have to worry and allow me to focus fully on the process.
I really enjoyed reading this. I, too, learned to write on a typewriter and find it difficult to break the habit of putting two spaces between sentences. (See?) However, until reading this I couldn't remember why!
“The inability to read handwriting deprives society of direct access to its own past" ". . . you are wrong”
Actually, Faust is right about this. There's a difference between being able to WRITE in cursive, and being able to READ it. Historians study paleography for a reason.
Indeed, this is my point that I could've made more clearly. It's a skill necessary for historians, not all of America's schoolchildren.
I enjoyed reading today's column. I learned cursive writing as I attended Catholic grade schools and the nuns LOVED cursive, although my handwriting did not measure up to their standards. Oh well. I also learned how to diagram sentences and can still, to this day, recite all of the prepositions by heart. And I also said the abc's backwards before I learned to say them forwards because my grandfather used to say them backwards as a joke. I picked that up! As far as typing is concerned, I still allow for two spaces at the end of each sentence, as you no doubt can tell. And I won't give that up!
I think there is some pleasure to be had in the esoteric knowledge of things like knowing all the prepositions or being able to diagram sentences, but the point I'm hoping is clear is that these things have nothing to do with learning to express oneself in writing. They are independent from developing that particular skill.
Ironically, I can't tell that you put two spaces after a period because the Substack software automatically eliminates them from the text. I'm all for people engaging in the individual practices that make sense to them, but (with very limited exceptions) everything you read has one space after a period.
I always reading you, but today has me laughing out loud. You are spot on! Please be cranky more often.
I'm surprised nobody has defended cursive on the grounds of its learning benefits. I'll quote the N Y Times: "Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing." Giving a Google search to "benefits of learning cursive" has loads of similar authoritative articles.
I looked up that article you quoted and that claim is entirely unevidenced because there is no convincing evidence that cursive "stimulates the brain like nothing else." The originator of that statement also ran a company selling services to help students improve their handwriting. I find both her lack of evidence and obvious self-interest in promoting this claim to be two strikes against its veracity. She's promoting folklore.
The evidence she cites on the SAT is not a function of the quality of thought, but (as shown subsequently), the bias of scorers who believe that students writing in cursive were smarter or more prepared. They were influenced by the folklore.
Any study you find about the benefits of cursive is usually quite old and is a comparison between cursive and block lettering, but (thankfully for those of us who cannot write cursive), we now have technology that allows for far faster composition, not just typing, but voice to text software, which has been an incredible boon to students with a variety of disabilities.
I personally can't dictate to save my life. I wish I could because it would allow me to produce even more. But even this isn't new. My father (a lawyer) never learned to type, so he would "write" his briefs by dictating them and then having a secretary type them up, after which he would edit by hand. It's a skill he had to develop because he lacked another one (typing). What we can do for students is to help them figure out the methods and processes that allow them access to self-expression, rather than consigning them to practices that have no empirical foundations.
Adjusting to change has been occasionally tough for me. I'll never forget the first time I saw a student writing a draft of their assignment on their phone. I thought they were farting around when I'd given them time to work in class, but they showed me the speed and proficiency they could achieve on the phone keyboard and it made sense that this would be the student's practice. Ultimately, they had to format and polish on the computer, but drafting on the phone worked really well for this person (and others). I had to get over my bias that had me believing there was no way anyone could write on a phone because of my inability to type with any accuracy or proficiency on mine.
Yes, I can see that article was not the best example of the value of cursive, and your points are well taken. To be clear, my own experience with beginning cursive was equally as unsuccessful as yours; the only "U" (Unsatisfactory) grade I got in elementary school was in penmanship, and I was in tears when I brought my report card home because I thought I was in Big Trouble (instead, they chuckled and said I was doing just fine). However, as a former teacher I rail against curricula lost to standardized testing because of the administrative attitude that if it's not on the test, it's not worth teaching. Fine motor skill work has value (especially with less art time now, another victim of testing), and I can't imagine that every bit of current curricula is so precious that kids can't at least learn cursive -- perhaps without grading and without it being compulsory on papers.
I'm with you on the distorting effects of standardized testing on curriculum - it's the core thesis to a huge part of my book - but in terms of cursive specifically as a way to build fine motor or as something to be maintained in curricula because it's part of the past, I just can't muster any evidence to support it. Lots of things have fallen out of the curricula as society and culture evolve, often (though not always) for good reasons. We don't need engineers to be able to use a slide rule anymore, and when used as part of a strong math curriculum, graphing calculators allow students to learn and practice much more than before the technology was ubiquitous.
It's a difficult territory to negotiate as all choices require trade offs. One of the explicit choices the curriculum I promote in my books makes is to deemphasize academic "forms" in order to make more space for the kind of critical thinking that underpins the academic conversation these forms are meant to be part of.
When I look back at the course of my career, I sort of can't believe the things I've given up that I once would've thought were necessary or sacrosanct (including traditional grading itself), but there's been a liberatory aspect to literally questioning everything, including those things I hold dear.
It was a faculty meeting. The fourth grade teachers were complaining about how hard it was to get students proficient in cursive. As a group, they asked us fifth grade teachers if we required students to take spelling tests using cursive. We fifth grade teachers looked at each other astonishment. As a group, we didn't require cursive in anything. As long as we could understand the students' writing we were fine with their method. The fourth grade teachers were astonished in turn. And then began the discussion of how many hours they spent on cursive in the fourth grade curriculum. (Don't even ask about the time spent in fourth grade memorizing state capitals.)
I've encountered this up and down the educational system. Because of my book, I've spent a lot of time talking to teachers at various levels, and they're often surprised at the difference between what they think is going to happen to students in college writing contexts and what actually happens.
I place a vast majority of blame on the system, rather than teachers themselves. I wrote about part of that system recently at Slate: https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/08/advice-to-first-year-college-students-on-freshman-comp.html
I also think fault lies with colleges which have not done enough to communicate what's changed in terms of approaches an curriculum over the years. That was another of the big motivators to write that book.
John, on another note, I had not seen the cover of your writing book, and all I can say is OMGWTFBBQ. It's gorgeous.
This essay brought back memories for me. My 5th grade teacher wrote on my report card, "Michelle is so smart, it's a shame she doesn't have legible penmanship." Thank goodness my ability to write legibly has become less important in the last 30+ years! And my handwriting has only gotten worse now that I hardly ever use it.
That's funny about the two spaces after sentences--I totally still do that, thanks to the rules taught in my high school keyboarding class.
My children always brought their grandmother's notes to them, written in cursive, for me to read because they could not. Sad but true. My Dad, an engineer, never wrote cursive but his block printing was perfect. The two spaces after a period created a disagreement between myself and a younger colleague but I bailed on that, it is quicker. Your history on the reason is neat to know. To your point about drafts on the phone, my Luddite son, with his flip phone, can out type anyone on that keyboard to send a text. It is a thing of joy to behold!
For those with learning issues of any type, the technology of today, beginning with Dragon Speak, and text to voice, et al, are amazing tools for all to learn and produce. Auto-correct can have its challenges but the use of spell check and grammar check made me feel lazy as I was once proud of my spelling skills. However, those tools make my actual writing freer to create when I don't have to worry and allow me to focus fully on the process.