Is cursive writing necessary?

As an occupational therapist, I usually try to impart life skills in the students with whom I work. My perspective is that reading cursive and having a signature are the life skills. We have cursive fonts on computers if a teacher requires. After high school, there are no other requirements for cursive.

Cursive is a “standard” in Grade 3 in most English systems, Grade 2 in French Canada, and is the only style taught in Europe where they never print (and have higher test scores in general than North America, so it can work).

Many teachers refuse to accept work in printing. I personally have mixed feelings about this. If you intend to teach a topic, yes you have to demand it or else your expectations are a joke. On the other hand if you are grading writing ability, anything legible will do. And you can’t tell people to write except when they write, that’s a joke and has failed in spelling too. I am not sure what to do about this logical conflict.

In high school and university, teachers and professors write the way they write. If they are European-educated they literally cannot do printing, never learned it. Board notes are a very large part of good classes, especially in math and science which require too many visuals and equations to computerize well. Handouts may often be handwritten, especially if the teacher makes them up at home or on lunch hour - not everyone has a computer permanently attached. So if a student is going to be able to have full access to educational opportunities, reading cursive is vital. Since the most effective way to learn to read cursive is to learn to write it, that is the way to go if at all possible.

Cursive does *not* have to be prettified and curlicued and all that. You can get your cursive very nice, smooth, easy and **fast** — that’s the advantage, once you learn, it’s faster than printing and less fatiguing with smooth motions and ten times fewer lifts. The way to do this is to (a) learn printing with effective directionality — left to right and top to bottom, just like reading, and (b) to turn the good printing into simple cursive by simply stopping lifting the pen.

Many people here speak very highly of a program called “Handwriting Without Tears”. I have never used it but have seen excerpts here. It looks like a good program, although there’s a little more cuteness than I prefer. I have also made up a short description of how I tutor kids, many previously totally unable to write, and you’re welcome to a copy no strings attached if you email me at [email protected]
(Apologies to those who have asked for the reading outlines. I’m still having trouble emailing longer files.)

My LD son now in 7th grade(reg. ed) cannot write in cursive at all except for his signature nor can he read much cursive; he has had intervention in elementary that did not help and in 5th grade we pulled him out of spec. ed. completely; I can tell you in publilc middle school the teachers want EVERYTHONG typed or if it’s worksheets done in printing. The same goes for our very competative hish school….everything typed. All of his 7th grade vocabulary/spelling tests are from printed worksheets and he gets A’s; the teachers print on the blackboards as well. His lack of cursive skill has not hurt him at all.

My older 2 are now 16 and 18-they are not LD and actually had beautiful and quickly learned cursive in the early grades

They preferred to print, however, and received some grief for printing in 4/5 grades(one teacher decided that ds2 only need do spelling tests in cursive which I found a good compromise) Through the junior high years, only one of all the boys’ teachers balked. By high school? Absolutely no one said a word!

When my third LD son struggled with cursive, I had “no cursive” written into his IEP immediately-several teachers tried to talk me out of it, but I knew from my other boys how little it mattered!

My husband prints exclusively(except for signature). He managed a PhD.

Still, be aware there may be some speed bumps if you decide to go anti-cursive(there is bound to be some teacher who will give your dc grief)But perhaps that one spot of grief is well worth avoiding the big grief of adding one more difficulty to a struggling child’s plate. It was for us!

My son can read cursive and write it. But he is more automatic in printing and even there he is at the bottom of the curve. His teacher was having them turn in written assignments in cursive and he was having a tough time. He had to print it and then recopy it and he was having trouble not skipping words and lines (he finally can copy print reliably).

I talked to her and she agreed to let him print. I told her that my eighth grade daughter (in same parochial school) started typing everything in sixth grade. I didn’t think it was worth the aggrevation and stress for him to have to do it just to be typing everything in a year (he is in fourth grade).

Beth

Thanks for all the replies!

I already feel like I’m so overwhelmed by everything else that needs remediating that adding cursive writing to the list would only make it more difficult for me to concentrate on other areas. So I’ll go ahead and request this be added this to his IEP (or 504?).

This year my son’s 4th grade teacher is having all the students write their spelling pretest and test in cursive. Because my son can’t write cursive quickly he’s only able to do every 3rd word on the pretest. Also, the spelling test is not just spelling words but long sentences which must be written in cursive. Even worse, if any words are incorrect in the sentence (not just the spelling words), the entire thing is incorrect. My dyslexic son is lucky if he can get one sentence correct, let alone in cursive!!!!! I recently had my son go to the LMB clinc which really helped with reading and spelling, but this cursive situation has really dampened his feelings of achievement. In fact, spelling this year has only been a lesson in failure.
He never wants to study spelling (which he has never complained about in the past), because there’s no possible way he could ever pass these tests, even if he knows his spelling words.

I am working with a student in Handwriting without Tears, however I am using the printing version. This particular student is very severe, dislikes cursive, and isn’t likely to be in any classes where he is going to have to use cursive.

The thing I really like about hwtears is that it is so multisensory. There is this one exercise where you have the kid write the letter on a small chalkboard. You write it, they write over it with a little sponge, then dry it with a small piece of paper towel, then the write it again with chalk. There are suggestions given on improving grip and posture that are real helpful. This kid has had a death grip and these are very helpful. I too think it is a bit on the cutesy side as well. But I don’t use any of that stuff. I did teach the helicopter trick for picking up a pencil, but kind of reworded it. I use the manual and don’t have him write in the book at all.

There are pros and cons on cursive vs manuscript. Manuscript most resembles text in books, is usually easier to read, is pretty much (perhaps except for a few classes) always acceptable, etc. It is developmentally easier.

Cursive is often less tiring, faster, and with some kids the picking up and replacing the pencil can be difficult and even physically uncomfortable.

I think they used to teach that dyslexic kids ALWAYS find cursive easier. I believe that is not entirely true based on my own admittedly limited experience.

—des

I would ask IEP team to give your son accommodations for typing. You can get an inexpensive standalone wordprocessing keyboard which works well for this purpose. It is called AlphaSmart. The point should be to learn to spell and not getting hung up on the writing. Frequently students who have this kind of writing difficulty are called disgraphic. Learning to tight is one solution for the students. The current AlphaSmart 3000 costs about $200. You can get an older model on eBay for less then $50.

Jim — Michigan
www.geocities.com/jnuttallphd

I have dyslexia and spelling problems so I dictate all of my responses using Dragon NaturallySpeaking v7.3, which is an excellent program.

Des,
Handwriting without tears is one more thing on my “wish list” of programs I’d like to use with my son. We’ve been focusing so intensively on reading that it’s something I’ve put on the backburner.

Jim,
I think typing is definitely the future for my son! Also, I’ve heard of Dragon Naturally Speaking,and that sounds like something he’ll eventually need as well. Thanks for sharing the info about the Alphasmarts! I’ll have to look further into that.

Laura, this is the great thing about Hwtears! You CAN work on it in very little time a day. In fact the book recommends that you not work on it for more than 15 minutes a day. The thought being that GOOD practice is better than lots of practice. You strive to have good copying instead of just a lot of it. It is definitely working great with the one student I am using it on. If we get 15 minutes a session we are doing well (I see him 3 days a week where the emphasis is definitely reading). His parents do some work with him. He is really showing LOTS of improvement.

The price is very very reasonable. I would not bother with the “student” books. Just get a teacher book and some paper, unless your student is quite young. I definitely agree with Victoria on the cutesiness thing. And I think an older student would be insulted. My student has never seen the books. For printing capitals, you make copies of the “squares”. (She should have these on paper and I would buy them.)

—des