Cursive writing, which stopped being taught to kids, is making a comeback

[Daisys and Diamonds]

When I was young we called it “real writing”, as opposed to printing, which was for little kids. We looked forward to learning it when we were all grown up in grade 2 !

year that sounds familar

 

[natasha-cupcake]

I'm a second career teacher (spent the first half of my working years in healthcare). Back around 2012, 2013-ish, when I first started teaching, I used to write out these really long, detailed critiques and corrections when I graded student work. I mean I went into a lot of explanation and detail, thinking I was being thorough and that my students were really benefitting from all the attention I gave to their work. I always put in extra time and effort to write really neatly and precisely, too. This went on for a couple of years. Well, I had no clue that cursive wasn't taught anymore or that most of them couldn't read a single word I wrote. To make it worse, none of them ever, EVER said a word about it. When I think of all the hours, I wasted pumping out beautiful but indecipherable cursive notes, I could almost cry. Such a doofus!!

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

Does anyone else write in a combination of print and cursive? I Never realized I do this until I started writing on cakes. For example if I’m writing “about” I will print the a, b and o but write the u and t in cursive and connected.

Me! I do, I do! We had to write cursive all throughout school. Palmer method, I think. It was required all throughout school. We were the last group before 'internet' existed. My mother was left handed and had the most beautiful natural script I'd ever seen, they would make her write things at all the places she would volunteer.

I don't really use it with any regularity anymore. It's more legible than my usual upper case block printing, of which I found an old computer font once that mimics it and the name of this font was controlled rage.

That pissed me off.

My kids hated that we always had Roman numeral(regular) clocks and we made them read them. I never understood that. It's a clock. I always had all three varieties in the house. They can read and write cursive, though almost never use it.


*I just asked my youngest who made the very clear distinction that she's Gen Z; she stated that she's read that they've been doing studies and found that much of Gen Alpha can't read/write well, read/write cursive, read Roman/Analog clocks and they have an issue with imagination and imagery. They also have issues with context and pronunciation because of all the tablet use.

 

[stracci2000]

My husband was surprised that when he asked a recent hire to sign something and she printed it. He said, no you have to sign it. She said I don't know how.

she stated that she's read that they've been doing studies and found that much of Gen Alpha can't read/write well, read/write cursive, read Roman/Analog clocks and they have an issue with imagination and imagery. They also have issues with context and pronunciation because of all the tablet use.

This is really scary. People can't write their signature? Can't read clocks?
Are there no clocks in classrooms anymore?
Our heavy reliance on computers is ruining humanity and no one can stop it.

 

[Tonks]

It would be great if they bring it back but it has already missed a large chunk of Gen Z. My kids are 17 and never learned cursive. I’m sure if they wanted to devote time to it they could still do it, but i don’t see it happening. Most of their school work is typed and even math is done on tablets.

 

[YadaYadaYada]

@ItsMainelyYou, I had to look up the generation spans because I only know I’m Gen X! Anyways, our youngest is an Alpha and yes I can see a big difference between him and older son who is Gen Z. To be fair though, the younger one did not go to preschool AND was taken out of kindergarten after 6 months because of Covid.

Glad to hear I’m not the only hybrid writer! At a bare minimum kids shouldn’t be graduating high school without being able to sign their name properly. Maybe if they spent less time with all the junk standardized testing it would leave more room for necessary life skills.

 

[Garnetgirl]

who remembers between printing and writing when you learnt to slope and we had a card that went under our page with dark black slopping guide lines
now im trying to remember when we went from a pencil to a pen ? now that was excitting

Now you’ve just brought back a forgotten memory for me, @Daisys and Diamonds, about the paper with the sloping lines. Learning cursvive definitely required some effort.

In my school, we went from pencil to ink in grade 3. We had to use a fountain pen; no ballpoint because that would have been too easy. My fingertips were always a shade of dark blue!

 

[Matata]

Our heavy reliance on computers is ruining humanity and no one can stop it.

Not to worry, AI will tell us what to do, how to do it, and when to do it

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

This is really scary. People can't write their signature? Can't read clocks?
Are there no clocks in classrooms anymore?
Our heavy reliance on computers is ruining humanity and no one can stop it.

Right?! Millions can't.
I found that especially odd, we had Roman and an analog clock in the classroom. The 'big one' and a smaller Roman. We had to tell the time everyday when we were itty bitty little and write it down. Remember choosing the weather, day and date? Do they still do that? The cutthroat competition of the gold stars. Not red, not blue or green. Not silver. Gold.
How many gold do you have?!

@ItsMainelyYou, I had to look up the generation spans because I only know I’m Gen X! Anyways, our youngest is an Alpha and yes I can see a big difference between him and older son who is Gen Z. To be fair though, the younger one did not go to preschool AND was taken out of kindergarten after 6 months because of Covid.

Glad to hear I’m not the only hybrid writer! At a bare minimum kids shouldn’t be graduating high school without being able to sign their name properly. Maybe if they spent less time with all the junk standardized testing it would leave more room for necessary life skills.

Guilty! It's my most legible. I also remember we thought it scandalously funny that we had to learn to 'put down/give them our John Hancock' in elementary.
I would like to say I've matured.
I haven't.
Covid has generations of kids that have 'lost time' in education, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who came out totally unscathed.

Not to worry, AI will tell us what to do, how to do it, and when to do it

AI creeps me right the f* out.

 

[Starstruck8]

In my school, we went from pencil to ink in grade 3. We had to use a fountain pen; no ballpoint because that would have been too easy.

Fountain pen? Pure luxury...

How about a scratchy steel-nib dip pen? Our desks had an inkwell set into a hole in the back edge. We copied edifying model sentences into our copybooks. I never mastered this.

This was in Queensland (Australia) in the 60s/70s.

 

[Garnetgirl]

Fountain pen? Pure luxury...

How about a scratchy steel-nib dip pen? Our desks had an inkwell set into a hole in the back edge. We copied edifying model sentences into our copybooks. I never mastered this.

This was in Queensland (Australia) in the 60s/70s.

Now that you remind me ….. grade 3 was a steel-nib pen; in grade 4, we
“graduated” to fountain pens. What a difficult start to cursive writing. That was in Canada in the 1960’s.

 

[stracci2000]

Not to worry, AI will tell us what to do, how to do it, and when to do it

It's happening so fast.
We've only had personal computers in our homes for about 25 years. I remember getting our first computer in 1997. Now we all carry them in our pockets, and we cant make a move without them.
Who knows what's gonna happen in the near future.

 

[Matata]

It's happening so fast.
We've only had personal computers in our homes for about 25 years. I remember getting our first computer in 1997. Now we all carry them in our pockets, and we cant make a move without them.
Who knows what's gonna happen in the near future.

Two weeks ago we had two consecutive days with phone/internet/tv outages for 12 hrs each due to vandalism. It wreaked havoc everywhere with businesses and hospitals particularly. It was a scary reminder of how vulnerable to being cut off from vital services we are with our heavy reliance on internet especially. Also concerning are the basic skills we've lost and are losing because of our reliance on tech. I know there many cashiers, for example, who don't know how to make change.

 

[stracci2000]

Two weeks ago we had two consecutive days with phone/internet/tv outages for 12 hrs each due to vandalism. It wreaked havoc everywhere with businesses and hospitals particularly. It was a scary reminder of how vulnerable to being cut off from vital services we are with our heavy reliance on internet especially. Also concerning are the basic skills we've lost and are losing because of our reliance on tech. I know there many cashiers, for example, who don't know how to make change.

Back in November, our hospital system was hit by ransomware, right after my yearly checkup and mammogram.

All their Internet services were down, including the portal where you interact with the doctor and can see your test results. It took over a month to get this rectified.
Therefore, I had to wait for letters in the mail to see my blood work and mammogram results......just like in the old days.

 

[Gloria27]

I vow to write in cursive from now on just to confound the youngsters

With as many upper case Qs and Zs as I can squeeze in!

That looks like a simplified cursive not the true old style (normal) cursive.

 

[empliau]

That looks like a simplified cursive not the true old style (normal) cursive.

It's what they taught in the US schools in the 1960s (and my great-aunts, in school in the late teens and early 20s wrote a perfect version of that hand.) Are you perhaps in the UK? I know handwriting can be different - Nancy Mitford, writing in the1940s, makes jokes about the difficulty of reading French handwriting, and I have needed on occasion to read French writing. It is, for me, very difficult!

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

Now you’ve just brought back a forgotten memory for me, @Daisys and Diamonds, about the paper with the sloping lines. Learning cursvive definitely required some effort.

In my school, we went from pencil to ink in grade 3. We had to use a fountain pen; no ballpoint because that would have been too easy. My fingertips were always a shade of dark blue!

in the mid 2970's our desks still had the hole for the inkwell but thankfully the days of fountain pens were behind us by then
do you remember King Charles had to sign something in the first few days of his reign and the pen misbehaved and he had a wee moment and some people said he was bad tempered when he was just just tired and mourning his mother
those pens are nothing but trouble !!

i did once try one -a modern one hoping my writting might look neater
everyone needs a biro ! I hope Queen Cam keeps one in her handbag for emergencies !

now trying to remember when we were allowed to start using twink !

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

It's what they taught in the US schools in the 1960s (and my great-aunts, in school in the late teens and early 20s wrote a perfect version of that hand.) Are you perhaps in the UK? I know handwriting can be different - Nancy Mitford, writing in the1940s, makes jokes about the difficulty of reading French handwriting, and I have needed on occasion to read French writing. It is, for me, very difficult!

that's very interesting that it stayed pretty much the same over two generations
mum and dad's hand writting looked much less pretty (for a better word) than my grandparents and my great aunts whom i used to write to, and i had a lovely old neighbour born in the year 1900 who wrote to me after she moved away, she printed for me but it was very very pretty printing
mum and dad were born durring WW2 and my grandparents i think 1917, NZ was a very British country back then but our education system used to lead the pack back then, nowdays we have slipped down to mediocre

 

[VRBeauty]

Does anyone else write in a combination of print and cursive? I Never realized I do this until I started writing on cakes. For example if I’m writing “about” I will print the a, b and o but write the u and t in cursive and connected.

I do this, and I have done for pretty much as long as I can remember. I’d have to really think about it to actually connect all my letters in true cursive style - it would slow me down significantly!

 

[empliau]

in the mid 2970's our desks still had the hole for the inkwell but thankfully the days of fountain pens were behind us by then
do you remember King Charles had to sign something in the first few days of his reign and the pen misbehaved and he had a wee moment and some people said he was bad tempered when he was just just tired and mourning his mother
those pens are nothing but trouble !!

i did once try one -a modern one hoping my writting might look neater
everyone needs a biro ! I hope Queen Cam keeps one in her handbag for emergencies !

now trying to remember when we were allowed to start using twink !

Oh @Daisys and Diamonds . You are wonderful, but dissing fountain pens - them's fightin' words! Fountain pens are amazing tools if you know how to use them. If you don't want a bit of ink on your hands, or don't know what your doing, stick to a biro! Camilla showed that she has the temperament for it - he handed her the inky pen and she didn't turn a hair.

 

[Gloria27]

It's what they taught in the US schools in the 1960s (and my great-aunts, in school in the late teens and early 20s wrote a perfect version of that hand.) Are you perhaps in the UK? I know handwriting can be different - Nancy Mitford, writing in the1940s, makes jokes about the difficulty of reading French handwriting, and I have needed on occasion to read French writing. It is, for me, very difficult!

I'm over the pond indeed, and know how to use a proper ink pen to write old style cursive.

 

[oncrutchesrightnow]

It never occurred to me that someone who could not write cursive, could not read it. Maybe that’s why it was initially dropped in some schools. Then one day somebody’s livelihood or citizenship depended on reading historical documents and, oops, it would be horrific if the next generation could not access primary sources written in their own language in years when their parents were alive.

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

It never occurred to me that someone who could not write cursive, could not read it. Maybe that’s why it was initially dropped in some schools. Then one day somebody’s livelihood or citizenship depended on reading historical documents and, oops, it would be horrific if the next generation could not access primary sources written in their own language in years when their parents were alive.

i can not read a single recepie of either my mother's or grandma's

 

[oncrutchesrightnow]

i can not read a single recepie of either my mother's or grandma's

Post ‘em here and I’m sure someone would translate

 

[AGBF]

When I was in school we were graded in handwriting and I always did terribly. I wrote very messily and couldn't care less what anything looked like. Sometime in Junior High I noticed a friend had a notebook with Peacock Blue colored ink and that her handwriting looked good. I am not sure when it started, certainly not in high school, but at some point as an adult I began to write for the beauty of how my writing looked. I was surprised that I, who had failed all my handwriting classes, had the skill to write so well. People compliment me constantly on my handwriting now and cannot get over how beautiful the checks I write look!

 

[missy]

My cursive writing is abominable. No matter how I tried I struggled with making it legible. No wonder I went into the profession I did lol
But I so appreciate lovely handwriting and am glad it is making a comeback. It would be a shame for future generations not to experience and enjoy the beauty of cursive writing