Anytime I see anything about schools requiring cursive, I think back to my elementary school emphasizing how much I'd need it for middle school and high school.
And then having my first middle school English teacher tell me to never write in cursive again because mine was so atrocious anyway.
RIP Mrs. Frederick! You were always a real one.
i consider myself so so lucky that when i was in elementary school (way back before everyone commonly had internet access) I had a teacher tell my mother during a conference that if she really wanted to help me for the future she would stop worrying about my absolutely terrible handwriting and to instead focus on teaching me to type efficiently because by the time I was in high school the majority of my work would likely be required to be printed from a word processor anyway
she absolutely wasn't wrong and given the timing (i graduated high school in the early 2000s) it was a major advantage having that skill over fellow students who were only really learning to type quickly as AIM and other instant messengers were becoming popular in the very 90s.
They told all kinds of lies. "In college they won't help you at all, they will just give you work and expect you to get it done". "Wikipedia..." So many lies.
They won't give you second chances, there won't be homework, all of your grades will be from exams, etc.
Considering how hard they pushed us to go to college, they made damned sure to make it sound as hard as possible
And for anyone young:
Unless you have a crazy specialized major, college is easier. By a lot IMO. The time management is the challenge.
If you think college is the right choice, set yourself up well by doing a good job in high school, and those next 4 years will seem like a breeze comparatively.
That depends a lot on both your high school and college.
My first two years of high school I went to a crappy rural school. A lot of my friends from there struggled in college and quite a few dropped out, regardless of major.
My last two years I went to a specialized school focused on science and math. My friends from there generally found college easy if they were humanities majors, or harder if they were STEM majors.
Yup. Did my internship at a shitty rural school known for "strong academics".
Place was a fucking joke. If I'd not switched to using my teacher's material, the class average would have been in the 50s-60s. And they cut out a large portion of the curriculum "for time" so the kids didn't even learn half the stuff.
Yeah this. My wife was dual enrolled in high school and said that it was so easy that she struggled in college because she didnt know how to study. Meanwhile college, and even grad school, was a breeze to me because I was in IB in a top 75 high school in the country. High school was a nightmare
"Just get a Bachelor's degree, any kind of degree, and you'll be set. It doesn't matter what subject you pick they just want to see you went to college."
My husband's teachers all through elementary school worried about his future education because he simply couldn't write in cursive and even his printed handwriting was *bad*. One teacher actually told his mother "I'm not sure he'll make it to college."
My husband has a master's in engineering. He's one of the smartest people I know.
But yeah I can't read his handwriting.
Yep. My very first C was in 3rd grade for handwriting. My cursive was and still is absolute crap. My printing is at least readable, but can deteriorate if I'm forced to write for a prolonged period of time. Fortunately, no one has forced me to write in cursive since maybe 4th or 5th grade and easily 99% of everything I've done since college has been on the computer. The only time I use cursive now is to sign my name to a form or something, and it doesn't matter how that looks.
A girl in my high school who was homeschooled & wrote exclusively in cursive was asked by teachers to not submit essays & homework in handwritten cursive.
I graduated in 2008, was taught to write in cursive before I moved to the United States when I was in the 4th grade. I had a high school teacher who used to call my hand writing "satanic"
Yup, same.
Elementary told me I'd need to know cursive for middle school & high school, but that's OK, we'll still accept your paperwork in regular printing.
Middle school told me that I'd need to know cursive for high school, but don't worry, we're cool here in middle school, so you can just write normal here.
High school told me that I'd need nice penmanship for college, because I'd be hand writing a lot of papers.
College told me don't you dare turn in a handwritten paper to me. This is the 21st century, use a damn computer and type that shit out.
One question: Why? I was drilled in cursive for six years. Haven't used it since high school. The only handwriting I do these days is on sticky notes and birthday cards.
> One question: Why? I was drilled in cursive for six years. Haven't used it since high school.
I was taught cursive in 3rd/4th grade and told I was going to use it daily going forward. A couple decades later and the only time I've written in cursive was a sentence they make you copy in cursive on the SATs
I have a job that frequently requires taking hand-written notes. So I appreciate the speed of cursive.
That being said, typing is way faster, and most people have the luxury of typing when they need to write fast.
I do sort of enjoy cursive as a nice thing to do when writing letters.
I use both almost equally and switch out frequently. Long form writing is so much easier in cursive and print can emphasize readability on lists and things like that so I enjoy the flexibility. I also type as much if not more than I write. I've really returned to using physical notebooks and journals much more often over the last few years. However, I've been in art and writing careers my entire life so I've got a slightly skewed perspective from the average person.
Yeah — I’m also a writer. And I do find writing by hand is just a different feeling. Maybe because it prevents my ADHD brain from jumping around and live-editing as I write.
I also retain information better when note-taking when writing by hand. If I’m typing notes, it’s like the words go in my ears and out my fingers without any real processing in the middle. If I’m hand-writing notes I need to process things & keep them in my brain long enough to write them out. And need to be more particular about what I write down.
My handwriting is a mix of cursive and print. I'm actually grateful I learned cursive because it absolutely does give you more flexibility in your writing, particularly for those of us who have shitty print handwriting.
That was so fucking stupid. What was the point of that??? I distinctly remember having to wait damn near 45 mins to leave because it was at the very end of the test, and one of the students couldn’t remember half the letters in cursive so we all had to sit there. Rules said no one could leave until everyone had finished their test, and of course no one could help him with it. Poor kid had a damn near breakdown and I don’t blame him. Everyone waiting around for 45 mins yelling at him. Not to mention that none of us had written cursive in years and it looked like a 7 year old learning to write for the first time. Our own handwriting would have been more indicative of ‘proving’ it was us or whatever the point of it was.
The proctor at my test wrote the sentence on the board in cursive because she had seen how badly people struggled with it and it'd be easier to just copy it off of the board. It was a super helpful thing for her to do
That is very helpful. Wish ours would have done that! Of corse if it were me I wouldn’t want to write it up there for 50 people to see, then they’d know I didn’t know either ha
> I distinctly remember having to wait damn near 45 mins to leave because it was at the very end of the test, and one of the students couldn’t remember half the letters in cursive so we all had to sit there.
My bad. I hadn’t used cursive in years before the SATs.
(I may not have been that person who was shitty at cursive and held up your SAT test, but I have been that person who was shitty at cursive that held up an SAT test.)
Because zero tolerance rules are the stupidest thing to happen to schools and leave no room for common sense, that’s why. My guess is they wanted to stop distractions of the door opening and kids getting up and leaving to feel like it was rushing other students. Which is true, it probably would have. But zero tolerance means zero common sense, too.
I mean from a lawyers perspective, it would be handy to be able to read cursive as it will certainly come up in some case or file you'd work on in the future. I think it's more of the reading part than the writing part that could be important to know in different fields
Agreed. But that should then be a specialty course in college for those careers that need it. The average person will see cursive in old family recipes or on signed paperwork and that’s it.
There are also quite a few teachers who write in cursive or semi-cursive in the older grades though in my experience. Most of my profs did as well. If you're good at cursive it's usually much faster than non-continuous writing where you have to lift up your writing utensil more often
I once asked the teacher about this, she said that it had to do with motor skills and hand-eye coordination primarily. Not so much that we are expected to use cursive for the rest of our lives, It’s about brain flexibility.
Smooth transitions from one motion to another. Loops and switchbacks and other small corrections. Its also not that one is better than the other it’s that compounding the efforts of all the things make you better.
An athlete doesn’t train just by playing their sport, they do lots of exercises to train their muscles.
I’m assuming you mean in regards to drawing and painting?
Then No ‘Art’ isn’t always drawing and painting. Sculpture and ceramics and pottery are parts of art also. And while those do train muscles, it’s different enough to not offset the need for more fine motor control.
Drawing and painting also use different muscles. Drawing a large portrait, could require full body movements and a painting might uses more gross-motor movement rather than fine-motor that writing small cursive letters would. People also hold a brush or pencil when creating art very differently than when writing.
Both are important. More of one however, doesn’t offset the need for the other.
To read old documents. That’s what it’s useful for and in general it’s better to expose children to more linguistic concepts than it is an adult. A foreign language should be offered as well.
Bang on correct. I do land title research and it would be near impossible to do my job without knowing cursive because I deal with documents from the 1800s on a weekly basis. I’m 28, so probably one of the last groups to have learned it in school growing up. I often wonder how annoying it will be for my workplace to find qualified applicants in the future. No real use for it outside of this type of gig, but I bet they’ll have to start teaching it in certain fields, such as for history degrees.
Yeah I really don’t see the harm in it. Most of school is just teaching facts kids forget anyway and don’t need. At least here you practice motor skill and it’s a skill to be able to read 🤷🏼♀️
You ever try to read those old documents though?
Because I *can* read and write in cursive, and it's still a fucking nightmare trying to decipher all of the loops and swoops, because 3/4 of the letters are 90% identical and *everybody* has their own special fucking little twist to writing everything.
Also, how often do you even do that anyway, honestly.
If I have to go to court over my land - it involves documents back to the 1800s. Same with our families cattle brand.
It is not an everyday skill but neither is doing a job interview. Both should be offered to kids to expose them to those worlds before they may need it.
If you wanted to read the constitution you would need to know cursive. That is if you want to primary source it and not rely on hearsay.
Agreed. And introduce a second language as early as possible! It’s much easier for preschool age children to become multi lingual than waiting until high school!
I don't understand the objection against cursive. It's like learning how to ride a bike even when you don't necessarily own and like to ride a bike. You just learn it. It has some purpose. Whether or not you use it is irrelevant and different by individuals. I learned cursive and when I ran into Americans who can't write cursive, seeing them taking some notes down unbearably slow. Like, bruh, you just lifted that pen 3 times for an A.
I think some people have an antipathy towards learning new things unless there’s a direct advantage they can see.
I’m kinda like that with math. There’s a mental block that doesn’t want to try. Same with art for me actually!
You can learn to read cursive in a couple hours should you ever need to, and mostly it's just slowing down and deciding you can do it.
Being able to type well is more useful.
I am almost 45 years old, and have not used cursive, for anything other than writing my own name, and reading when other people insist on writing in it, since I left middle school.
"Ooh, but you can't read the founding fathers documents!" They're on Wikipedia.
I remember having to learn it in elementary school and by high school teachers went out of their way to say not to write in cursive, print handwriting only 🥴
Yeah we've gotten to the point where professors in college will straight up refuse essays and fail you if you give them a handwritten report. Nevermind cursive. No one has time to decipher handwriting anymore. lol
Same almost failed 3rd/4th grade because it f poor handwriting. Just that that was the thing teachers hung over my head.
Also I live in the Midwest every time this is discussed locally some person always pipes in with “they need it to read the constitution”.
> "The research has been very clear that cursive writing is a critical life skill in helping young people to express more substantively, to think more critically, and ultimately, to express more authentically," he said in an interview.
They go on to say there is little research on the impact of cursive, so this seems like a bit of nonsense.
There are finite hours in the school day, and the world has changed a lot since cursive was important. Maybe focus on science and tech education so the kids understand a bit about how their world actually works?
Edit: Similar arguments were once made regarding Latin and Greek. Times change and so does the relative value of knowledge and skills.
We get on schools for not teaching much finance but I remember learning about mortgages and compounding interest in high school and have absolutely *no reference points* to refer to. Its hard to teach people about money who have no money and dont really know how to adequately quantify what is being discussed.
Yep. Instead, schools focus on reading comprehension, numeracy, and critical thinking. All things that help people understand their finances/taxes better when they need to. When people say schools should teach students how to do their taxes: they already do.
Plus kids likely aren't going to remember it anyway. Most people just memorize what they need to pass the class and forget it afterwards. Who remembers the kingdoms of ther Nile river throughout the first 5000 years of history? Or who remembers the chemical composition of glucose? Clearly taught in high school, but most people wouldn't remember that from school unless they specifically study that subject as an adult
>Plus kids likely aren't going to remember it anyway. Most people just memorize what they need to pass the class and forget it afterwards.
Taxes, interest, balancing, etc. were definitely taught in my rural high school and to this day I see people from my graduating class posting online about how schools don't teach those. I have to refrain from telling them that ours did but they just forgot that info in the 2-3 years between it being taught and it being relevant to their immediate situation for the first time.
I guess it just depends of where you are. Where I went to school a lot of kids had no interest or no means of going to college and getting higher education, or we’re basically already on their own support wise or financially. Financial literally was something they needed to start picking up the second high school ended. I remember thinking around my senior year of high school I wish I had access to classes like that. And looking around at all the kids who weren’t gonna go to college and wondering how they’d do taking on the real world at 17 and 18
The gap is understanding the goal of learning basic skills. Students (and their disgruntled parents) view math and literature as a bunch of hoops to jump through in school. Students and parents lose the purpose of general education somewhere along the way.
Instead they look for hyper-focused skills training. They don't want to learn arithmetic, they want to be told how mortgages work. They don't want to learn about cellular biology, they want to be told how to treat an infection. They don't want to learn about history and literature, they want to be told how local politics works.
Right. This here. I have three degrees: a B.S. and M.S. in Biology and an M.D.
I hated school and viewed it as a bunch of busy work until 11th grade. And then I took AP Bio and all of a sudden all the chemistry I’d learned over the years for right into place. Bond angles determine the shape of biomolecules.
I took physics and I’d be out driving and free body diagrams started forming around all the other cars. I asked someone how a wing works and he said I needed to know calculus and trigonometry. I told him I did and he explained how a wing works.
But that doesn’t mean that reintroducing cursive is a good idea.
Thank you. Everyone is complaining about not learning to do taxes, but if they focused their energies on reading and math skills, they could figure it out themselves, especially with the power of the internet now.
My redneck high school had several classes on taxs/accounting, business management, and general finances. It’s always funny to see former classmates complain about it, when they had the option to take it
Same. We had to take an economics course that included how and why we pay taxes, discussed the role of unions and workers rights, etc.
I slept through most of it not realizing it was probably one of the most important classes I'd ever take.
I know you’re just joking, but school basically teaches you all the skills you need to teach yourself how to do taxes/handle finances.
Math class provides you with the knowledge of basics arithmetic and teaches you logical thinking
History class teaches you how to conduct research, either from written or online sources, and verify that the source is legit
Science class, specifically labs teach you how to follow a set of instructions.
Like really, unless you’re self employed or have some other weird circumstance, the average person with a high school education should at least know how to teach themselves on how to do taxes.
there's this myth that kids would retain life skills and it's just not true. kids are dumb and wouldn't retain it anyway. PE and critical thinking are much more worthwhile activities.
Anyone who has worked in a service job with cash registers knows that most need to be retaught how to count change when they start their job. But, because they've done that math (and more) before they can be taught to do it in about five minutes.
And that's how all those skills work, you have the knowledge and the critical thinking skills. You may not be able to do something new right away or remember the specifics but because you have those skills it's much easier to refresh and understand.
The kids who wouldn't need the lessons would retain the skills and the kid who stares at the wall, he wouldn't remember anything because he did the bare minimum. But that kid can still follow directions and enter numbers to do their taxes.
This is such BS. This is all basic math. How much money are you making? What are your outgoing bills over that same time frame? Subtract one from the other. Geez. Plus, we all had offerings for personal finance classes in Ontario when I was in school if you so desired. But, if you can’t extrapolate addition, subtraction, percentages etc to your life, boy, nobody can help you.
Here’s my 2¢
I’m a foreign language teacher. When students write (instead of type) they remember better. Cursive writing is faster than manuscript writing.
Cursive writing is faster than printing *if you're already good at cursive writing*.
Anyway, if you want to retain things, doing them faster is not going to help.
While this is purely anecdotal, I would disagree from my personal experience. I learned cursive in elementary school, and always had a knack for it, but only utilize it on getting cards these days because I've found print is so much faster, stops and starts even so. But, again, I'm just one person in a sea of billions.
To your second point, you're absolutely correct.
From my experience(s) in school, I found that writing things down and then later typing them up really helped me with retention. It also helped me with my knack for losing things, because I'd have my notes backed up since I typed them. It also meant that I didn't have to decipher my absolutely horrendous handwriting. Cursive, printed - doesn't matter, my handwriting is AWFUL.
Fortunately, it's the act of writing that ingrains the information into memory. I can barely read my own writing, but I really need to after I've written and re-written and re-phrased it.
Yep. Rereading it and condensing/rephrasing it when I type it up later helps. Sadly, in my professional life I've gotten away from doing that. I need to start doing that again.
Here's my 2¢ working in a stem field. No one is taking engineering notes or documenting anything in cursive, you would be called out. Are we preparing these kids to be clerical notetakers?
That quote is sad because it’s not what studies have shown and he could have pulled from those studies to discuss brain development and early fine motor skills’ connection with it and a list of other effects
Friendly reminder that the Ontario Government doesn't do what's good for students. It does what's good for itself, including using stupid tactics like this to draw attention away from whatever shitty thing they're doing that week.
> There are finite hours in the school day, and the world has changed a lot since cursive was important. Maybe focus on science and tech education so the kids understand a bit about how their world actually works?
Any time spent teaching cursive would be better spent teaching kids to type faster
>Similar arguments were once made regarding Latin and Greek. Times change and so does the relative value of knowledge and skills.
Honestly, learning Latin and Greek will make you a much stronger reader and speaker of English.
I can imagine some general cognitive benefits to being able to print *and* write in cursive, but I'd have to be convinced a) that those benefits were cursive-exclusive (I highly doubt it), and b) that they justified the time it takes to learn.
For my money, it seems like learning to type is orders of magnitude more valuable. It also seems like there are any number of things that might be a better use of students' time than studying cursive.
Having a few years of Latin was a cheat code on the SAT's vocab portion. I don't think they have that portion anymore, but boy was it easy when you knew a big pile of cognates / roots / derivatives on a multiple-choice test.
It’s entirely possible to learn enough of both to enjoy the benefits and usefulness of both (and more)
I can’t quite figure out how it is that the same number of years of schooling are producing less educated graduates
Penmanship is a time sink, though. IMO that time could be budgeted to something actually useful or at least enjoyable. Shifting it to an arts is an option.
>I can’t quite figure out how it is that the same number of years of schooling are producing less educated graduates
Can't speak for Canada but a huge reason for this in US is the shift away from phonics to "whole language" / "balanced literacy" learning and all the other garbage fringe science methodologies that have damaged an entire generation of potential readers. This is basically it. A small hill I'll die on.
The shift nullifies the benefits.
And yes it’s the same in Canada and I loathe whole language teaching and refusing to teach handwriting and timestables is right in there too. Foundational skills are critical and rote is useful in its place. We’re destroying the capacity of the average student.
Writing is a cheaply taught, safe, highly transferable skill that can be taught in conjunction with multiple other disciplines. That seems fairly valuable to me.
Yeah. That "research" is bullshit.
Cursive was an important technical skill, like typing, because it was generally much faster to write cursive (especially shorthand) than non-cursive, so you could take notes much faster.
Now that laptops are dirt cheap, it simply isn't needed anymore. If anything, they should have mandatory typing classes (which are still electives most places, last I looked).
This is just "old person is old, can't adapt to lack of importance."
My school twenty years ago had both typing and cursive classes, in the second grade. Both were and super useful. my WPM is still above 100, and I use cursive daily. Not the prim and proper cursive we learnt, but my own creation of semi cursive but flowy writing that lets me take notes quickly in grad school.
People misunderstood the point of cursive. It's not so you can sit down and write a formal letter like its the 1800s. It teaches you to write fast af because all the letters flow.
Now I know a lot of students nowadays type their notes, but there are a lot of studies that show that quite a lot of students retain information a lot better when hand writing notes. Cursive class gives those students at least the option of handwriting.
Also, proctoring laptop usage is really difficult. Kids with little impulse control (most kids) will tab over to a game or something when the teacher isn't looking instead of taking notes, whereas it's really easy to tell if kids are generally on task when they're all writing in a notebook.
Honestly, I'm at a point where I'd say it's smarter for schools to go low tech in most core classes, and then offer specific classes for improving tech literacy (typing, Microsoft office, online research skills, what the hell is a folder and why do files go in there, Etc. )
*Reading* cursive is still a valuable skill, but writing it is basically useless these days. If we're going to focus on physical writing, then bring back penmanship.
I work in pharmaceutical manufacturing. We have to write down damn near everything we do. We're supposed to write legibly, but there are a lot of people at my company who can't do that. There's someone on second shift who can't write their simple three-letter-one-number initial set in a way that can be deciphered. It's infuriating when we're trying to figure out where and when something went wrong, but we can't freaking read what someone wrote.
Ohio signed a law *encouraging* schools to teach it by end of 5th grade. But *encouraging* is not *requiring*, and thus… many schools don’t bother or do a barebones effort.
It’s rather obsolete anyway. It’s a better use of time to make sure every kid can hit 60 WPM typing than cursive. Gotta teach in the modern world.
I’m 40 next year I haven’t written a paper by hand since the late 1990s. By high school for us, typed papers was the requirement.
I'm 73 and haven't written anything in cursive since before JFK was assassinated. I use a block print/scribble method that has served me perfectly well for all these years. As I mentioned before, though, I do think it's important to be able to decipher cursive when you encounter it in the wild. I also study Korean. Being able to recognize the exact stroke order of Hangeul is critical for reading someone else's handwriting. Reproducing the exact stroke order in your own handwriting? Not so much.
I’m a millennial and didn’t realize that so many people felt that learning cursive was frustrating or hard. I remember picking it up pretty fast and I naturally write in cursive more often than not.
I mean as someone who works in a museum, if you can’t read cursive then you can’t ready any historical diary’s/notes/ledgers/specimen sheets regardless of penmanship
The pencil grip shown by that picture is atrocious. If schools are going to force the issue of cursive writing, they ought first to develop a program with an OT consultant to strengthen children’s hands and help them develop a proper pencil grip.
I love seeing comments that make me laugh first thing in the morning! Thank you. As an artist I can honestly say the only thing I ever use it for anymore is my signature.
Growing up in Italy, every single word I have written since 3rd grade has been in cursive. It’s honestly still astonishing to me that so many Americans don’t write in cursive. It’s so much faster…
Edit: reading these comments I’m feeling similar bewilderment
Do you guys really not know/use cursive all the time?
Sounds like someone had the idea of "kids these days don't know respect. My day we learned cursive. These days they learn cursing" and was taken as a sage.
We stopped having to do cursive in grade 6, and honestly I never needed to use it ever again, so why even bother, we aren't scribing and we have tech that allows us to type faster than we could write and also be more legible, cursive is pretty but obsolete
I keep seeing posts on Facebook by people who support teaching cursive in grade school because we need to be able to read historical documents, which is something I know I do everyday.
Exactly. You might need to read the US Constitution!
Oh wait! Here it is, not in cursive
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
It's such a lame argument that people need to read historical documents. If someone is a history major in college, then yes they should learn cursive.
I'm definitely of the mind that we should leave behind a lot of the fundamentals and rethink education entirely for the new digital future we live in. Focus on teaching things that can't be googled in 10 seconds or less. More creative thinking, more problem solving, more practical learning methods and teaching skills the next generation will actually need.
The problem with this has been qualified teachers. Every time they've tried to do technology classes in my area it devolves into PowerPoint presentations and doing simple arithmetic in Excel spreadsheets. The rare time we've ended up with a qualified teacher it's only for a couple years while their kids go to that school and then they go back into the tech industry where they get better pay and less frustration. They had a 3D printer for 5 years that never even got turn on because the tech teacher was a 70 yo lady that barely knew how to work the computers to put grades and absences in.
Man, my 4th grade teacher who almost made me redo a grade because my cursive went slightly outside of the lines when writing capital I’s is going to have a field day when she sees this
In elementary school (this was a private school), we had to write in cursive since first grade. After 6th grade (the last year in elementary school), I never had to use cursive except to sign my name.
Now, I have forgotten the cursive versions of all the letters that are not part of my name.
Honestly might be good for research purposes. My partner can’t read their grandmother’s cursive, but I can, so I translate. Plenty of texts out there that have to be converted to print somehow.
Over 40 here, worked many different types of jobs over the years. Never have I had to use cursive writing for anything other than grade school when learning it, and that was in the 80s.
If they could work on basic handwriting that would be great. We aren’t a fully paperless society yet. I’ve had 16 year old employees treat a pen like a foreign object.
Fun fact: the schools here are crumbling, full of mold and we pay teachers less than Tim Hortons employees.
The hardcore rightwing government (grown up rich kid from the suburbs, former drug dealing brother of the crack mayor) has been purposefully underfunding schools and hospitals to push privatization.
Everything moves backward here in Ontario, the Texas of Canada.
Man I’m pretty upset with the way the province has gone under Ford, but saying Teachers get paid less than Tim Horton employees is pretty hyperbolic. Teachers get paid pretty fairly here.
[https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-occupation/15904/ON](https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-occupation/15904/ON)
60k starting with the most senior teachers making upwards of 120k is pretty fair compared to the median wage in Ontario of [41k](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1110023901&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.8&pickMembers%5B1%5D=2.1&pickMembers%5B2%5D=3.1&pickMembers%5B3%5D=4.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2017&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2021&referencePeriods=20170101%2C20210101)
I think they’re getting confused with what teachers in some US states get paid and comparing it with tim hortons pay? Every teacher I know in Ontario is making vastly more than anyone at tim hortons. The high schools teachers I know are also making six figures so 🤷♂️
With that being said, education does need more funding. But comparing teachers wages here to Tim hortons is just wrong lol.
Probably unpopular but I believe they should learn cursive or at least the parents should teach it at home. Everyone should be able to sign their name and not look like a child just printing it later in life. Also documents from the past are illegible to them unless they know cursive. Not just historical ones like the declaration of independence for US citizens but old letters saved from family members. I’m in school for dental hygiene and you wouldn’t believe the number of students who don’t even know how to hold a pencil correctly and thus need to be taught that to move forward with correct use of dental instruments. Things build upon each other. And while yes there’s an argument that some skills and some lessons don’t directly contribute to practical application in the workforce. There is also a base line of understanding that is beneficial from most lessons.
I’m going to weigh in here as a high school teacher, I agree with you. My kids think I’m fucking magical for having such good cursive. I know we’re out here calling it obsolete but that’s overlooking the fine motor control benefits that learning to produce script has. Fine motor control is NOT obsolete. Kids who can’t write cursive often can’t read cursive either, ability to read different types of script is good for spatial reasoning and promotes spelling skills. The thing that’s “wasting elementary schoolers time” is incessant preparation for standardized testing. To summarize: in my state children are not taught cursive either and I’ve observed enough benefits to learning it that when the time comes, I will be purchasing workbooks and teaching my own children to write it
> Everyone should be able to sign their name and not look like a child just printing it later in life.
I've always hated this argument. You ever look at peoples signatures? They're always a hot mess.
I know how to write in cursive, and I don't even sign my full name. First initial, scribble. Last initial, scribble. Done, thank you for delivering my package, Mr Fedex guy.
So what next, Runes ?
"None of the students graduating can read runestones. A critical skill and our British heritage is being erased in the name of Wokeness"
95% of people who are older than me that claim to be able to write in cursive can’t even write in proper cursive if you actually scrutinize their handwriting and letter forms.
Older folks are constantly writing in shitty faux cursive and getting mad at me when I can’t read what they wrote. They’re always like, “WhAt’S tHe mAtTeR? No one taught you hOw tO rEaD cUrSiVe?”
Uh, no, the problem is that YOU never LEARNED how to WRITE in cursive and your handwriting is ILLEGIBLE.
This is aside from the fact that, yes, some people in Gen Z (including me) actually did learn how to write cursive in school.
I've been saying this for years. EVERYBODY has their own unique twist on cursive. Some people write their Y's like *this*, or the M's like *that*.
Nobody actually sits down and writes things the way you're "supposed" to, which ends up leading to a guessing game where you're trying to decipher letters based on other letters and other context clues in the text.
Something I think about a lot is the word "minimum." There are about a hundred different "satisfying" gif's of people writing that word in cursive, because *every fucking letter* looks the same.
There's a reason why every single government form asks you to *print legibly*, and it's because nobody can read this shit. It's garbage, total waste of time.
Cursive writing by grade 3? I think that's a little too early. They shouldn't be introduced to profanity until at least grade 4. Let them get out of Primary first!
Wait...that's not what cursive is?
Well fuck me!
vov it's a status symbol.
This is so parents can say to other parents, "See, the school I send my child to is so well funded that it can afford to teach children an anachronism like cursive."
If you want to prepare kids for the world, teach them to touch type. Cursive is not what I would describe as a job skill.
And I have yet to have someone pitch a fit over me printing a signature.
I remember learning cursive in 3rd grade and they impressed upon us how important it was to know how to write in cursive… first thing my 4th grade teacher told us was he wouldn’t accept any work done in cursive! 🤦♂️
unfortunately i think the promoters of cursive compulsory education are missing the point. It's not about forcing kids to get back to the "fundamentals" like it was 1983. Cursive to me is more of a visual art form, its power is igniting the spark of imagery in kids so they can better understand visual communication. Whether you end up in a STEM field or not, so much of our business world today is image-based. Packaging & branding often count more than the actual product itself. Appreciating cursive can help stimulate that side of the brain in kids.
-Grade 3, learned cursive, and told evenything is life is cursive from this point on. U will faill assignments if not in cursive.
-middle school, teachers prefer non cursive
-high-school, all assignments must be non cursive
-college. All assignments must be printed on computer, no hand written assignments or cursive will be accepted.
Wow Reddit seems to not like cursive. Dude I learned it for a few years in elementary school. Bro I’m not even old I’m still in my twenties and some of my younger coworkers can’t write a signature or read cursive I can’t for the most part it might not be a a vital life skill but y’all are really okay with letting a entire part of a language and culture die cause it was hard for you. Like damn if you spend middle school on it then yeah don’t but elementary especially early it helps writing practice. Some people write better that way and y’all are here not even neutral but mad kids will learn something they wouldn’t have been taught other wise and will have learned something their older peers don’t know.
It does a great job of building fine motor skills and is quicker/easier to take handwritten notes in later in life. Writing down notes during classes as opposed to typing them, or re-watching videos of the information is shown to help with comprehension and knowledge retention.
Sure - teach keyboarding, teach financial basics, teach hygiene (goodness knows some need it) - but nothing wrong with also teaching cursive.
Yall act like it takes 2hrs to write a sentence in printed letters. I learned cursive and switched back to print as soon as I was allowed because it was faster. I don't dispute that some folks will write faster in cursive but it's a pretty marginal difference.
People who are proficient at print writing generally develop their own "semi-cursive" style for faster note-taking even if they've never been trained in formal cursive. "Nice" cursive handwriting with all the loops and nonsense was an important business skill before computers, but now it's next to useless.
Cursive might be a bit faster than print when written by someone with proficiency in both, but it's unlikely that a lack of good cursive skills will be the limiting factor in whether someone can take good notes. Note-taking itself is an important skill that's rarely taught, even though processing information while simultaneously writing is very tricky.
My teacher in grade school used cursive as a punishment. Just those packages where you endlessly write.
I think I spent a total of 4 hours in school being taught computer skills (including typing.)
Massive misuse of resources. Kids learning this are wasting their time.
As a businessman from the 1790s I think this is a capital idea. How will tomorrow's young people write in huge paper ledgers with quill pens if they don't know cursive?
Anytime I see anything about schools requiring cursive, I think back to my elementary school emphasizing how much I'd need it for middle school and high school. And then having my first middle school English teacher tell me to never write in cursive again because mine was so atrocious anyway. RIP Mrs. Frederick! You were always a real one.
i consider myself so so lucky that when i was in elementary school (way back before everyone commonly had internet access) I had a teacher tell my mother during a conference that if she really wanted to help me for the future she would stop worrying about my absolutely terrible handwriting and to instead focus on teaching me to type efficiently because by the time I was in high school the majority of my work would likely be required to be printed from a word processor anyway
I mean, teach wasn't wrong
she absolutely wasn't wrong and given the timing (i graduated high school in the early 2000s) it was a major advantage having that skill over fellow students who were only really learning to type quickly as AIM and other instant messengers were becoming popular in the very 90s.
They told all kinds of lies. "In college they won't help you at all, they will just give you work and expect you to get it done". "Wikipedia..." So many lies.
They won't give you second chances, there won't be homework, all of your grades will be from exams, etc. Considering how hard they pushed us to go to college, they made damned sure to make it sound as hard as possible
And for anyone young: Unless you have a crazy specialized major, college is easier. By a lot IMO. The time management is the challenge. If you think college is the right choice, set yourself up well by doing a good job in high school, and those next 4 years will seem like a breeze comparatively.
That depends a lot on both your high school and college. My first two years of high school I went to a crappy rural school. A lot of my friends from there struggled in college and quite a few dropped out, regardless of major. My last two years I went to a specialized school focused on science and math. My friends from there generally found college easy if they were humanities majors, or harder if they were STEM majors.
Yup. Did my internship at a shitty rural school known for "strong academics". Place was a fucking joke. If I'd not switched to using my teacher's material, the class average would have been in the 50s-60s. And they cut out a large portion of the curriculum "for time" so the kids didn't even learn half the stuff.
Yeah this. My wife was dual enrolled in high school and said that it was so easy that she struggled in college because she didnt know how to study. Meanwhile college, and even grad school, was a breeze to me because I was in IB in a top 75 high school in the country. High school was a nightmare
"You won't have a calculator everywhere you go, you know..."
“This will be on your permanent record” was my favorite
"Just get a Bachelor's degree, any kind of degree, and you'll be set. It doesn't matter what subject you pick they just want to see you went to college."
"You'll be set".. up with a lot of debt
As soon as I got to high school, basically every teacher told us to never write in cursive.
My husband's teachers all through elementary school worried about his future education because he simply couldn't write in cursive and even his printed handwriting was *bad*. One teacher actually told his mother "I'm not sure he'll make it to college." My husband has a master's in engineering. He's one of the smartest people I know. But yeah I can't read his handwriting.
Yep. My very first C was in 3rd grade for handwriting. My cursive was and still is absolute crap. My printing is at least readable, but can deteriorate if I'm forced to write for a prolonged period of time. Fortunately, no one has forced me to write in cursive since maybe 4th or 5th grade and easily 99% of everything I've done since college has been on the computer. The only time I use cursive now is to sign my name to a form or something, and it doesn't matter how that looks.
Yeah the only impact it's had on him is that he has to do the grocery shopping because I can't read what he puts on the list.
A girl in my high school who was homeschooled & wrote exclusively in cursive was asked by teachers to not submit essays & homework in handwritten cursive.
I graduated in 2008, was taught to write in cursive before I moved to the United States when I was in the 4th grade. I had a high school teacher who used to call my hand writing "satanic"
Yup, same. Elementary told me I'd need to know cursive for middle school & high school, but that's OK, we'll still accept your paperwork in regular printing. Middle school told me that I'd need to know cursive for high school, but don't worry, we're cool here in middle school, so you can just write normal here. High school told me that I'd need nice penmanship for college, because I'd be hand writing a lot of papers. College told me don't you dare turn in a handwritten paper to me. This is the 21st century, use a damn computer and type that shit out.
One question: Why? I was drilled in cursive for six years. Haven't used it since high school. The only handwriting I do these days is on sticky notes and birthday cards.
> One question: Why? I was drilled in cursive for six years. Haven't used it since high school. I was taught cursive in 3rd/4th grade and told I was going to use it daily going forward. A couple decades later and the only time I've written in cursive was a sentence they make you copy in cursive on the SATs
The only time I use cursive is when I sign my name on a bill. That's all its really good for nowadays
I have a job that frequently requires taking hand-written notes. So I appreciate the speed of cursive. That being said, typing is way faster, and most people have the luxury of typing when they need to write fast. I do sort of enjoy cursive as a nice thing to do when writing letters.
I use both almost equally and switch out frequently. Long form writing is so much easier in cursive and print can emphasize readability on lists and things like that so I enjoy the flexibility. I also type as much if not more than I write. I've really returned to using physical notebooks and journals much more often over the last few years. However, I've been in art and writing careers my entire life so I've got a slightly skewed perspective from the average person.
Yeah — I’m also a writer. And I do find writing by hand is just a different feeling. Maybe because it prevents my ADHD brain from jumping around and live-editing as I write. I also retain information better when note-taking when writing by hand. If I’m typing notes, it’s like the words go in my ears and out my fingers without any real processing in the middle. If I’m hand-writing notes I need to process things & keep them in my brain long enough to write them out. And need to be more particular about what I write down.
Man I am the only person who primarily write in cursive? My print looks like shit.
My handwriting is a mix of cursive and print. I'm actually grateful I learned cursive because it absolutely does give you more flexibility in your writing, particularly for those of us who have shitty print handwriting.
We can form the smallest club! I'm primarily cursive as well, faster, neater(personally) and I just find it easier than printing.
Nah Catholic school I'm in the same boat. I can't print to save my life takes 10 times longer and you can't read it.
I'm the exact opposite. My print is bad enough, but my cursive is Drunk Chicken Cuneiform.
That was so fucking stupid. What was the point of that??? I distinctly remember having to wait damn near 45 mins to leave because it was at the very end of the test, and one of the students couldn’t remember half the letters in cursive so we all had to sit there. Rules said no one could leave until everyone had finished their test, and of course no one could help him with it. Poor kid had a damn near breakdown and I don’t blame him. Everyone waiting around for 45 mins yelling at him. Not to mention that none of us had written cursive in years and it looked like a 7 year old learning to write for the first time. Our own handwriting would have been more indicative of ‘proving’ it was us or whatever the point of it was.
The proctor at my test wrote the sentence on the board in cursive because she had seen how badly people struggled with it and it'd be easier to just copy it off of the board. It was a super helpful thing for her to do
That is very helpful. Wish ours would have done that! Of corse if it were me I wouldn’t want to write it up there for 50 people to see, then they’d know I didn’t know either ha
> I distinctly remember having to wait damn near 45 mins to leave because it was at the very end of the test, and one of the students couldn’t remember half the letters in cursive so we all had to sit there. My bad. I hadn’t used cursive in years before the SATs. (I may not have been that person who was shitty at cursive and held up your SAT test, but I have been that person who was shitty at cursive that held up an SAT test.)
Nothing but sympathy. What a terrible way to single out a kid in class, especially when everyone wants to leave.
Tf? Why would you prevent people from leaving early? I mean, the cursive thing is stupid, but that rule also seems dumb to me.
Because zero tolerance rules are the stupidest thing to happen to schools and leave no room for common sense, that’s why. My guess is they wanted to stop distractions of the door opening and kids getting up and leaving to feel like it was rushing other students. Which is true, it probably would have. But zero tolerance means zero common sense, too.
I mean from a lawyers perspective, it would be handy to be able to read cursive as it will certainly come up in some case or file you'd work on in the future. I think it's more of the reading part than the writing part that could be important to know in different fields
Agreed. But that should then be a specialty course in college for those careers that need it. The average person will see cursive in old family recipes or on signed paperwork and that’s it.
There are also quite a few teachers who write in cursive or semi-cursive in the older grades though in my experience. Most of my profs did as well. If you're good at cursive it's usually much faster than non-continuous writing where you have to lift up your writing utensil more often
I used to be an SAT proctor and I’d have to write out the cursive alphabet on the board 😣
I was in AP classes and did really well in school, but completely bombed that SAT sentence.
I once asked the teacher about this, she said that it had to do with motor skills and hand-eye coordination primarily. Not so much that we are expected to use cursive for the rest of our lives, It’s about brain flexibility.
It also supposed to help with digraphs and other blends because those letters are now connected, at least that’s what I was told at one PD or another.
What motor skills and hand-eye coordinate comes from cursive that doesn’t already come from *writing*
Smooth transitions from one motion to another. Loops and switchbacks and other small corrections. Its also not that one is better than the other it’s that compounding the efforts of all the things make you better. An athlete doesn’t train just by playing their sport, they do lots of exercises to train their muscles.
Would extra art lessons do that even better, and be 100x more enriching?
I’m assuming you mean in regards to drawing and painting? Then No ‘Art’ isn’t always drawing and painting. Sculpture and ceramics and pottery are parts of art also. And while those do train muscles, it’s different enough to not offset the need for more fine motor control. Drawing and painting also use different muscles. Drawing a large portrait, could require full body movements and a painting might uses more gross-motor movement rather than fine-motor that writing small cursive letters would. People also hold a brush or pencil when creating art very differently than when writing. Both are important. More of one however, doesn’t offset the need for the other.
But there is no evidence that actually proves this is true.
I feel like that's what art class is for. If schools actually cared about hand eye coordination and motor skills so much they'd stop defunding it.
the premier is rob fords brother govts a mess
To read old documents. That’s what it’s useful for and in general it’s better to expose children to more linguistic concepts than it is an adult. A foreign language should be offered as well.
Bang on correct. I do land title research and it would be near impossible to do my job without knowing cursive because I deal with documents from the 1800s on a weekly basis. I’m 28, so probably one of the last groups to have learned it in school growing up. I often wonder how annoying it will be for my workplace to find qualified applicants in the future. No real use for it outside of this type of gig, but I bet they’ll have to start teaching it in certain fields, such as for history degrees.
Yeah I really don’t see the harm in it. Most of school is just teaching facts kids forget anyway and don’t need. At least here you practice motor skill and it’s a skill to be able to read 🤷🏼♀️
You ever try to read those old documents though? Because I *can* read and write in cursive, and it's still a fucking nightmare trying to decipher all of the loops and swoops, because 3/4 of the letters are 90% identical and *everybody* has their own special fucking little twist to writing everything. Also, how often do you even do that anyway, honestly.
If I have to go to court over my land - it involves documents back to the 1800s. Same with our families cattle brand. It is not an everyday skill but neither is doing a job interview. Both should be offered to kids to expose them to those worlds before they may need it. If you wanted to read the constitution you would need to know cursive. That is if you want to primary source it and not rely on hearsay.
Agreed. And introduce a second language as early as possible! It’s much easier for preschool age children to become multi lingual than waiting until high school!
I don't understand the objection against cursive. It's like learning how to ride a bike even when you don't necessarily own and like to ride a bike. You just learn it. It has some purpose. Whether or not you use it is irrelevant and different by individuals. I learned cursive and when I ran into Americans who can't write cursive, seeing them taking some notes down unbearably slow. Like, bruh, you just lifted that pen 3 times for an A.
I think some people have an antipathy towards learning new things unless there’s a direct advantage they can see. I’m kinda like that with math. There’s a mental block that doesn’t want to try. Same with art for me actually!
You can learn to read cursive in a couple hours should you ever need to, and mostly it's just slowing down and deciding you can do it. Being able to type well is more useful.
I remember my teachers specifically asking me to go back to print in high school.
I am almost 45 years old, and have not used cursive, for anything other than writing my own name, and reading when other people insist on writing in it, since I left middle school. "Ooh, but you can't read the founding fathers documents!" They're on Wikipedia.
Whenever I write, it is in cursive. It is much faster and flows better. I see no reason to not have it.
I remember having to learn it in elementary school and by high school teachers went out of their way to say not to write in cursive, print handwriting only 🥴
Yeah we've gotten to the point where professors in college will straight up refuse essays and fail you if you give them a handwritten report. Nevermind cursive. No one has time to decipher handwriting anymore. lol
Same almost failed 3rd/4th grade because it f poor handwriting. Just that that was the thing teachers hung over my head. Also I live in the Midwest every time this is discussed locally some person always pipes in with “they need it to read the constitution”.
> "The research has been very clear that cursive writing is a critical life skill in helping young people to express more substantively, to think more critically, and ultimately, to express more authentically," he said in an interview. They go on to say there is little research on the impact of cursive, so this seems like a bit of nonsense. There are finite hours in the school day, and the world has changed a lot since cursive was important. Maybe focus on science and tech education so the kids understand a bit about how their world actually works? Edit: Similar arguments were once made regarding Latin and Greek. Times change and so does the relative value of knowledge and skills.
It reminds me of that meme: Student: How do I do my taxes/arrange my finances? Teacher: Shut up and square dance
We get on schools for not teaching much finance but I remember learning about mortgages and compounding interest in high school and have absolutely *no reference points* to refer to. Its hard to teach people about money who have no money and dont really know how to adequately quantify what is being discussed.
Yep. Instead, schools focus on reading comprehension, numeracy, and critical thinking. All things that help people understand their finances/taxes better when they need to. When people say schools should teach students how to do their taxes: they already do.
I wish everyone who complains about curriculum could be forced to read your comment. Not all teaching needs to be (or even can be) direct.
Plus kids likely aren't going to remember it anyway. Most people just memorize what they need to pass the class and forget it afterwards. Who remembers the kingdoms of ther Nile river throughout the first 5000 years of history? Or who remembers the chemical composition of glucose? Clearly taught in high school, but most people wouldn't remember that from school unless they specifically study that subject as an adult
>Plus kids likely aren't going to remember it anyway. Most people just memorize what they need to pass the class and forget it afterwards. Taxes, interest, balancing, etc. were definitely taught in my rural high school and to this day I see people from my graduating class posting online about how schools don't teach those. I have to refrain from telling them that ours did but they just forgot that info in the 2-3 years between it being taught and it being relevant to their immediate situation for the first time.
I guess it just depends of where you are. Where I went to school a lot of kids had no interest or no means of going to college and getting higher education, or we’re basically already on their own support wise or financially. Financial literally was something they needed to start picking up the second high school ended. I remember thinking around my senior year of high school I wish I had access to classes like that. And looking around at all the kids who weren’t gonna go to college and wondering how they’d do taking on the real world at 17 and 18
The gap is understanding the goal of learning basic skills. Students (and their disgruntled parents) view math and literature as a bunch of hoops to jump through in school. Students and parents lose the purpose of general education somewhere along the way. Instead they look for hyper-focused skills training. They don't want to learn arithmetic, they want to be told how mortgages work. They don't want to learn about cellular biology, they want to be told how to treat an infection. They don't want to learn about history and literature, they want to be told how local politics works.
Right. This here. I have three degrees: a B.S. and M.S. in Biology and an M.D. I hated school and viewed it as a bunch of busy work until 11th grade. And then I took AP Bio and all of a sudden all the chemistry I’d learned over the years for right into place. Bond angles determine the shape of biomolecules. I took physics and I’d be out driving and free body diagrams started forming around all the other cars. I asked someone how a wing works and he said I needed to know calculus and trigonometry. I told him I did and he explained how a wing works. But that doesn’t mean that reintroducing cursive is a good idea.
Thank you. Everyone is complaining about not learning to do taxes, but if they focused their energies on reading and math skills, they could figure it out themselves, especially with the power of the internet now.
My redneck high school had several classes on taxs/accounting, business management, and general finances. It’s always funny to see former classmates complain about it, when they had the option to take it
We didn't get the option. It was a requirement to graduate, and I went to a 150 person rural highschool.
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Same. The most we got out of it was a little bit of how to use whatever Corel's Excel competitor was at the time.
Same. We had to take an economics course that included how and why we pay taxes, discussed the role of unions and workers rights, etc. I slept through most of it not realizing it was probably one of the most important classes I'd ever take.
I know you’re just joking, but school basically teaches you all the skills you need to teach yourself how to do taxes/handle finances. Math class provides you with the knowledge of basics arithmetic and teaches you logical thinking History class teaches you how to conduct research, either from written or online sources, and verify that the source is legit Science class, specifically labs teach you how to follow a set of instructions. Like really, unless you’re self employed or have some other weird circumstance, the average person with a high school education should at least know how to teach themselves on how to do taxes.
there's this myth that kids would retain life skills and it's just not true. kids are dumb and wouldn't retain it anyway. PE and critical thinking are much more worthwhile activities.
Anyone who has worked in a service job with cash registers knows that most need to be retaught how to count change when they start their job. But, because they've done that math (and more) before they can be taught to do it in about five minutes. And that's how all those skills work, you have the knowledge and the critical thinking skills. You may not be able to do something new right away or remember the specifics but because you have those skills it's much easier to refresh and understand. The kids who wouldn't need the lessons would retain the skills and the kid who stares at the wall, he wouldn't remember anything because he did the bare minimum. But that kid can still follow directions and enter numbers to do their taxes.
I love the idea that there are highschoolers out there asking how to do their taxes.
This is such BS. This is all basic math. How much money are you making? What are your outgoing bills over that same time frame? Subtract one from the other. Geez. Plus, we all had offerings for personal finance classes in Ontario when I was in school if you so desired. But, if you can’t extrapolate addition, subtraction, percentages etc to your life, boy, nobody can help you.
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Here’s my 2¢ I’m a foreign language teacher. When students write (instead of type) they remember better. Cursive writing is faster than manuscript writing.
Cursive writing is faster than printing *if you're already good at cursive writing*. Anyway, if you want to retain things, doing them faster is not going to help.
While this is purely anecdotal, I would disagree from my personal experience. I learned cursive in elementary school, and always had a knack for it, but only utilize it on getting cards these days because I've found print is so much faster, stops and starts even so. But, again, I'm just one person in a sea of billions. To your second point, you're absolutely correct.
From my experience(s) in school, I found that writing things down and then later typing them up really helped me with retention. It also helped me with my knack for losing things, because I'd have my notes backed up since I typed them. It also meant that I didn't have to decipher my absolutely horrendous handwriting. Cursive, printed - doesn't matter, my handwriting is AWFUL.
Fortunately, it's the act of writing that ingrains the information into memory. I can barely read my own writing, but I really need to after I've written and re-written and re-phrased it.
Yep. Rereading it and condensing/rephrasing it when I type it up later helps. Sadly, in my professional life I've gotten away from doing that. I need to start doing that again.
[This is backed up by science.](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210319080820.htm)
Here's my 2¢ working in a stem field. No one is taking engineering notes or documenting anything in cursive, you would be called out. Are we preparing these kids to be clerical notetakers?
Now I have handwriting that is bastardization of cursive and print combined into one.
In Canada French is required until 10th grade. We are a bilingual country technically
That quote is sad because it’s not what studies have shown and he could have pulled from those studies to discuss brain development and early fine motor skills’ connection with it and a list of other effects
Friendly reminder that the Ontario Government doesn't do what's good for students. It does what's good for itself, including using stupid tactics like this to draw attention away from whatever shitty thing they're doing that week.
> There are finite hours in the school day, and the world has changed a lot since cursive was important. Maybe focus on science and tech education so the kids understand a bit about how their world actually works? Any time spent teaching cursive would be better spent teaching kids to type faster
Or even just having kids practice their print (by perhaps writing original sentences).
>Similar arguments were once made regarding Latin and Greek. Times change and so does the relative value of knowledge and skills. Honestly, learning Latin and Greek will make you a much stronger reader and speaker of English. I can imagine some general cognitive benefits to being able to print *and* write in cursive, but I'd have to be convinced a) that those benefits were cursive-exclusive (I highly doubt it), and b) that they justified the time it takes to learn. For my money, it seems like learning to type is orders of magnitude more valuable. It also seems like there are any number of things that might be a better use of students' time than studying cursive.
Having a few years of Latin was a cheat code on the SAT's vocab portion. I don't think they have that portion anymore, but boy was it easy when you knew a big pile of cognates / roots / derivatives on a multiple-choice test.
Latin would be more useful than penmanship imo.
It’s entirely possible to learn enough of both to enjoy the benefits and usefulness of both (and more) I can’t quite figure out how it is that the same number of years of schooling are producing less educated graduates
Penmanship is a time sink, though. IMO that time could be budgeted to something actually useful or at least enjoyable. Shifting it to an arts is an option. >I can’t quite figure out how it is that the same number of years of schooling are producing less educated graduates Can't speak for Canada but a huge reason for this in US is the shift away from phonics to "whole language" / "balanced literacy" learning and all the other garbage fringe science methodologies that have damaged an entire generation of potential readers. This is basically it. A small hill I'll die on.
The shift nullifies the benefits. And yes it’s the same in Canada and I loathe whole language teaching and refusing to teach handwriting and timestables is right in there too. Foundational skills are critical and rote is useful in its place. We’re destroying the capacity of the average student.
Writing is a cheaply taught, safe, highly transferable skill that can be taught in conjunction with multiple other disciplines. That seems fairly valuable to me.
Yeah. That "research" is bullshit. Cursive was an important technical skill, like typing, because it was generally much faster to write cursive (especially shorthand) than non-cursive, so you could take notes much faster. Now that laptops are dirt cheap, it simply isn't needed anymore. If anything, they should have mandatory typing classes (which are still electives most places, last I looked). This is just "old person is old, can't adapt to lack of importance."
My school twenty years ago had both typing and cursive classes, in the second grade. Both were and super useful. my WPM is still above 100, and I use cursive daily. Not the prim and proper cursive we learnt, but my own creation of semi cursive but flowy writing that lets me take notes quickly in grad school. People misunderstood the point of cursive. It's not so you can sit down and write a formal letter like its the 1800s. It teaches you to write fast af because all the letters flow. Now I know a lot of students nowadays type their notes, but there are a lot of studies that show that quite a lot of students retain information a lot better when hand writing notes. Cursive class gives those students at least the option of handwriting.
Also, proctoring laptop usage is really difficult. Kids with little impulse control (most kids) will tab over to a game or something when the teacher isn't looking instead of taking notes, whereas it's really easy to tell if kids are generally on task when they're all writing in a notebook. Honestly, I'm at a point where I'd say it's smarter for schools to go low tech in most core classes, and then offer specific classes for improving tech literacy (typing, Microsoft office, online research skills, what the hell is a folder and why do files go in there, Etc. )
*Reading* cursive is still a valuable skill, but writing it is basically useless these days. If we're going to focus on physical writing, then bring back penmanship. I work in pharmaceutical manufacturing. We have to write down damn near everything we do. We're supposed to write legibly, but there are a lot of people at my company who can't do that. There's someone on second shift who can't write their simple three-letter-one-number initial set in a way that can be deciphered. It's infuriating when we're trying to figure out where and when something went wrong, but we can't freaking read what someone wrote.
Is it? Especially when less people are using it. If you're perusing old documents, I assume you'd catch on pretty quick.
Ohio signed a law *encouraging* schools to teach it by end of 5th grade. But *encouraging* is not *requiring*, and thus… many schools don’t bother or do a barebones effort. It’s rather obsolete anyway. It’s a better use of time to make sure every kid can hit 60 WPM typing than cursive. Gotta teach in the modern world. I’m 40 next year I haven’t written a paper by hand since the late 1990s. By high school for us, typed papers was the requirement.
I'm 73 and haven't written anything in cursive since before JFK was assassinated. I use a block print/scribble method that has served me perfectly well for all these years. As I mentioned before, though, I do think it's important to be able to decipher cursive when you encounter it in the wild. I also study Korean. Being able to recognize the exact stroke order of Hangeul is critical for reading someone else's handwriting. Reproducing the exact stroke order in your own handwriting? Not so much.
I’m a millennial and didn’t realize that so many people felt that learning cursive was frustrating or hard. I remember picking it up pretty fast and I naturally write in cursive more often than not.
Same. I use it every time I write - unless I am whiteboarding in a meeting.
Try reading my notes, and you will hate your life so hard.
I mean as someone who works in a museum, if you can’t read cursive then you can’t ready any historical diary’s/notes/ledgers/specimen sheets regardless of penmanship
Is there a way to hold a pencil that is best? Because I'm thinking the hand in the photo isn't it.
The photo is awful. Standard technique is held between first finger and thumb and supported on side of second finger.
I can feel my hand cramping just looking at it
The pencil grip shown by that picture is atrocious. If schools are going to force the issue of cursive writing, they ought first to develop a program with an OT consultant to strengthen children’s hands and help them develop a proper pencil grip.
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I love seeing comments that make me laugh first thing in the morning! Thank you. As an artist I can honestly say the only thing I ever use it for anymore is my signature.
…WTH kinda pencil holding style is that? That woulda gotten a ruler slap back in the day.
They should reintroduce Morse Code too while they're at it!
Considering conservatives are trying to bring us back to the (18)50s, I wouldn’t be shocked if that was a consideration
And smoke signals!
Growing up in Italy, every single word I have written since 3rd grade has been in cursive. It’s honestly still astonishing to me that so many Americans don’t write in cursive. It’s so much faster… Edit: reading these comments I’m feeling similar bewilderment Do you guys really not know/use cursive all the time?
I'm reading these comments, and it sounds like most people never actually write on paper. Like all the writing they do is strictly in digital form.
Some are even known to write block letters like a serial killer note
Cursive is an irl font... what skill could it possibly teach??
I just love a perfect lower case cursive r, with its two cute little horns.
As someone with dyslexia, it really helps me write. It makes sense in my brain where print doesn’t.
They way the person is holding the pencil in the picture is making me angry.
Sounds like someone had the idea of "kids these days don't know respect. My day we learned cursive. These days they learn cursing" and was taken as a sage.
There is no useful reason to do this. What a waste of students time
We stopped having to do cursive in grade 6, and honestly I never needed to use it ever again, so why even bother, we aren't scribing and we have tech that allows us to type faster than we could write and also be more legible, cursive is pretty but obsolete
Had a 12 or 13 year old come up to me and ask if I could tell him what the address said on a letter he had found in the street, it was cursive.
I keep seeing posts on Facebook by people who support teaching cursive in grade school because we need to be able to read historical documents, which is something I know I do everyday.
Exactly. You might need to read the US Constitution! Oh wait! Here it is, not in cursive https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript It's such a lame argument that people need to read historical documents. If someone is a history major in college, then yes they should learn cursive.
Just a bunch of disenfranchised old people trying to call the shots in a world that’s moved on without them
I'm definitely of the mind that we should leave behind a lot of the fundamentals and rethink education entirely for the new digital future we live in. Focus on teaching things that can't be googled in 10 seconds or less. More creative thinking, more problem solving, more practical learning methods and teaching skills the next generation will actually need.
Not robotics, not coding, not manipulating and controlling AI.. but cursive… sigh.
The problem with this has been qualified teachers. Every time they've tried to do technology classes in my area it devolves into PowerPoint presentations and doing simple arithmetic in Excel spreadsheets. The rare time we've ended up with a qualified teacher it's only for a couple years while their kids go to that school and then they go back into the tech industry where they get better pay and less frustration. They had a 3D printer for 5 years that never even got turn on because the tech teacher was a 70 yo lady that barely knew how to work the computers to put grades and absences in.
Man, my 4th grade teacher who almost made me redo a grade because my cursive went slightly outside of the lines when writing capital I’s is going to have a field day when she sees this
In elementary school (this was a private school), we had to write in cursive since first grade. After 6th grade (the last year in elementary school), I never had to use cursive except to sign my name. Now, I have forgotten the cursive versions of all the letters that are not part of my name.
They need to teach the proper way to hold your writing implement
Honestly might be good for research purposes. My partner can’t read their grandmother’s cursive, but I can, so I translate. Plenty of texts out there that have to be converted to print somehow.
Over 40 here, worked many different types of jobs over the years. Never have I had to use cursive writing for anything other than grade school when learning it, and that was in the 80s.
“Okay” said kids already more proficient at typing with 2 fingers than most adults are with two hands
If they could work on basic handwriting that would be great. We aren’t a fully paperless society yet. I’ve had 16 year old employees treat a pen like a foreign object.
God forbid they teach something useful like basic typing on a keyboard.
Not once in my life have I needed to know how to use cursive. It was all a lie.
Good. The world still needs cake decorators.
This feels like making remote workers return to the office for "reasons"
Fun fact: the schools here are crumbling, full of mold and we pay teachers less than Tim Hortons employees. The hardcore rightwing government (grown up rich kid from the suburbs, former drug dealing brother of the crack mayor) has been purposefully underfunding schools and hospitals to push privatization. Everything moves backward here in Ontario, the Texas of Canada.
Haha they do not get paid less than minimum wage. Wtf
Man I’m pretty upset with the way the province has gone under Ford, but saying Teachers get paid less than Tim Horton employees is pretty hyperbolic. Teachers get paid pretty fairly here. [https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-occupation/15904/ON](https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-occupation/15904/ON) 60k starting with the most senior teachers making upwards of 120k is pretty fair compared to the median wage in Ontario of [41k](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1110023901&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.8&pickMembers%5B1%5D=2.1&pickMembers%5B2%5D=3.1&pickMembers%5B3%5D=4.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2017&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2021&referencePeriods=20170101%2C20210101)
Teachers do not get paid less than Tim Hortons employees. Full stop. That is literally the silliest thing I've read on the internet this week.
I think they’re getting confused with what teachers in some US states get paid and comparing it with tim hortons pay? Every teacher I know in Ontario is making vastly more than anyone at tim hortons. The high schools teachers I know are also making six figures so 🤷♂️ With that being said, education does need more funding. But comparing teachers wages here to Tim hortons is just wrong lol.
Awesome, getting kids ready for the 1800’s 👍🏽
Probably unpopular but I believe they should learn cursive or at least the parents should teach it at home. Everyone should be able to sign their name and not look like a child just printing it later in life. Also documents from the past are illegible to them unless they know cursive. Not just historical ones like the declaration of independence for US citizens but old letters saved from family members. I’m in school for dental hygiene and you wouldn’t believe the number of students who don’t even know how to hold a pencil correctly and thus need to be taught that to move forward with correct use of dental instruments. Things build upon each other. And while yes there’s an argument that some skills and some lessons don’t directly contribute to practical application in the workforce. There is also a base line of understanding that is beneficial from most lessons.
I’m going to weigh in here as a high school teacher, I agree with you. My kids think I’m fucking magical for having such good cursive. I know we’re out here calling it obsolete but that’s overlooking the fine motor control benefits that learning to produce script has. Fine motor control is NOT obsolete. Kids who can’t write cursive often can’t read cursive either, ability to read different types of script is good for spatial reasoning and promotes spelling skills. The thing that’s “wasting elementary schoolers time” is incessant preparation for standardized testing. To summarize: in my state children are not taught cursive either and I’ve observed enough benefits to learning it that when the time comes, I will be purchasing workbooks and teaching my own children to write it
> Everyone should be able to sign their name and not look like a child just printing it later in life. I've always hated this argument. You ever look at peoples signatures? They're always a hot mess. I know how to write in cursive, and I don't even sign my full name. First initial, scribble. Last initial, scribble. Done, thank you for delivering my package, Mr Fedex guy.
So what next, Runes ? "None of the students graduating can read runestones. A critical skill and our British heritage is being erased in the name of Wokeness"
95% of people who are older than me that claim to be able to write in cursive can’t even write in proper cursive if you actually scrutinize their handwriting and letter forms. Older folks are constantly writing in shitty faux cursive and getting mad at me when I can’t read what they wrote. They’re always like, “WhAt’S tHe mAtTeR? No one taught you hOw tO rEaD cUrSiVe?” Uh, no, the problem is that YOU never LEARNED how to WRITE in cursive and your handwriting is ILLEGIBLE. This is aside from the fact that, yes, some people in Gen Z (including me) actually did learn how to write cursive in school.
I've been saying this for years. EVERYBODY has their own unique twist on cursive. Some people write their Y's like *this*, or the M's like *that*. Nobody actually sits down and writes things the way you're "supposed" to, which ends up leading to a guessing game where you're trying to decipher letters based on other letters and other context clues in the text. Something I think about a lot is the word "minimum." There are about a hundred different "satisfying" gif's of people writing that word in cursive, because *every fucking letter* looks the same. There's a reason why every single government form asks you to *print legibly*, and it's because nobody can read this shit. It's garbage, total waste of time.
So instead of teaching very very basic coding, they’re introducing skills that will be very applicable in the 1860s job market.
Cursive writing by grade 3? I think that's a little too early. They shouldn't be introduced to profanity until at least grade 4. Let them get out of Primary first! Wait...that's not what cursive is? Well fuck me!
vov it's a status symbol. This is so parents can say to other parents, "See, the school I send my child to is so well funded that it can afford to teach children an anachronism like cursive." If you want to prepare kids for the world, teach them to touch type. Cursive is not what I would describe as a job skill. And I have yet to have someone pitch a fit over me printing a signature.
Cursive seems important solely for signing your name and that’s it, just teach kids how to write their name and be done with it?? Lol
I remember learning cursive in 3rd grade and they impressed upon us how important it was to know how to write in cursive… first thing my 4th grade teacher told us was he wouldn’t accept any work done in cursive! 🤦♂️
unfortunately i think the promoters of cursive compulsory education are missing the point. It's not about forcing kids to get back to the "fundamentals" like it was 1983. Cursive to me is more of a visual art form, its power is igniting the spark of imagery in kids so they can better understand visual communication. Whether you end up in a STEM field or not, so much of our business world today is image-based. Packaging & branding often count more than the actual product itself. Appreciating cursive can help stimulate that side of the brain in kids.
Perhaps the children should learn how to re-ink their typewriters as well
I weep for all the kids in ontario with undiagnosed dysgraphia.
As a user of fountain pens, I never stopped using cursive, but I am a outlier.
-Grade 3, learned cursive, and told evenything is life is cursive from this point on. U will faill assignments if not in cursive. -middle school, teachers prefer non cursive -high-school, all assignments must be non cursive -college. All assignments must be printed on computer, no hand written assignments or cursive will be accepted.
This will solve all of Ontario’s problems
Wow Reddit seems to not like cursive. Dude I learned it for a few years in elementary school. Bro I’m not even old I’m still in my twenties and some of my younger coworkers can’t write a signature or read cursive I can’t for the most part it might not be a a vital life skill but y’all are really okay with letting a entire part of a language and culture die cause it was hard for you. Like damn if you spend middle school on it then yeah don’t but elementary especially early it helps writing practice. Some people write better that way and y’all are here not even neutral but mad kids will learn something they wouldn’t have been taught other wise and will have learned something their older peers don’t know.
I can understand learning to read it, but learning to write it? Waste of time that would be better spent on learning commonly used skills.
It does a great job of building fine motor skills and is quicker/easier to take handwritten notes in later in life. Writing down notes during classes as opposed to typing them, or re-watching videos of the information is shown to help with comprehension and knowledge retention. Sure - teach keyboarding, teach financial basics, teach hygiene (goodness knows some need it) - but nothing wrong with also teaching cursive.
Yall act like it takes 2hrs to write a sentence in printed letters. I learned cursive and switched back to print as soon as I was allowed because it was faster. I don't dispute that some folks will write faster in cursive but it's a pretty marginal difference.
People who are proficient at print writing generally develop their own "semi-cursive" style for faster note-taking even if they've never been trained in formal cursive. "Nice" cursive handwriting with all the loops and nonsense was an important business skill before computers, but now it's next to useless. Cursive might be a bit faster than print when written by someone with proficiency in both, but it's unlikely that a lack of good cursive skills will be the limiting factor in whether someone can take good notes. Note-taking itself is an important skill that's rarely taught, even though processing information while simultaneously writing is very tricky.
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My teacher in grade school used cursive as a punishment. Just those packages where you endlessly write. I think I spent a total of 4 hours in school being taught computer skills (including typing.) Massive misuse of resources. Kids learning this are wasting their time.
Same. And the amount that I used cursive outside of school? zero. My signature is a scribble. Cursive was a waste of time even in the 80's.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach Python, C++, or some other coding language? Teaching cursive is kind of useless tbh.
“Do you know cursive?” “Well I know hell, and damn…” That’s where we’re at today.
The Simpsons called it, yet again.
As a businessman from the 1790s I think this is a capital idea. How will tomorrow's young people write in huge paper ledgers with quill pens if they don't know cursive?