Does your school district teach cursive handwriting?

[NVDisMom]

My 11yo learned in roughly third grade and was required to use it in third and fourth, fifth grade the teacher dropped the requirement. School districts are teaching slightly different styles all over the country, she was finding transferring students were having to relearn this school district's style. DD11 didn't have any problems with it either way, her penmanship, no matter cursive or printing has always been excellent.

My 9 yo is continuing to learn it this year and is required to use it all of the time. For her it is much more difficult of a transition. Her printing is hard enough to read, let alone the cursive and it slows her work progress tremendously. I see it as counter productive.

Let's be honest here...nearly no one uses cursive except to sign their name these days. And when they do, its impossible to read. I would rather see our children taught how to print very well and learn to sign their name before they enter high school.

 

[DisneyKT]

My sister and I just talked about this the other day. Our schools teach it very briefly in 3rd grade. I think they should really let the kids practice more but with all the mandatory testing now, there just isn't time.

 

[SC Minnie]

DD14 learned in 3rd grade and uses it. I think it was mandatory on test and such in late elem and middle school but no so much in HS.

 

[2girlsmom]

My 5th grader is required to write most papers in cursive still. My 3rd grader is just learning it now.

 

[DisLaw]

We have this discussion all the time at home! My DH prints everything, although to me it is a cross between cursive and printing and he can write sooo quickly. To me printing takes much longer, with lifting the pen off the paper after each letter. His printing though has all the letters connected they are just not in cursive format. Maybe it was my Catholic school upbringing but after 3rd grade it was cursive writing that was required. I remember thinking I was a real grown up and that printing was for babies.

So from then on I have written in cursive, including note taking in college and beyond. In my current job I have to do quite a bit of handwriting and I always write in cursive.

Now I have noticed that my kids are printing all the time as well (7th and 9th grade) I thought I remember them learning cursive at one time but to them printing is easier and teachers don't care. Of course, DH agrees while I think they should be writing in cursive.

To those who think no one uses cursive, I disagree. Every adult that I know (other than DH!!!) writes in cursive and despite computers and emails etc, there are still plenty things that need to be handwritten.... guess I am old fashioned! I write notes to teachers in cursive, thank you notes in cursive, notes on Christmas cards, etc.

Am I alone in this???

 

[daisax]

nearly no one uses cursive except to sign their name these days. And when they do, its impossible to read.

I guess I live in another universe, because I use it all day long and the notes I get from coworkers use it (I have ~20 coworkers who leave me notes for various reasons, phone messages, etc)

Don't have a problem reading their cursive (and mine was always good, so I know they don't have a problem with mine).

To me, printing takes longer and looks immature, unless you're blessed with the ability or training to print in that artistic way that architects and medical artists use!

I can understand kids not being taught it any more, with keyboarding being pretty universal in their lifetimes, but I'm shocked that adults who do a lot of daily writing think printing is quicker than cursive.

 

[mumom95]

My son learned cursive last year in 2nd grade. His cursive is better than his printing, I think because he takes his time with it. I sub in the district, and from what I've seen once they get out of the elementary schools (4th grade is the end), they no longer have to write in cursive. That is fine with me, I've never really understand why it is taught either.

Now, I do wish they would start teaching typing around the 5th grade, I think that should be a mandatory class.

 

[DisneyKT]

My son learned cursive last year in 2nd grade. His cursive is better than his printing, I think because he takes his time with it. I sub in the district, and from what I've seen once they get out of the elementary schools (4th grade is the end), they no longer have to write in cursive. That is fine with me, I've never really understand why it is taught either.

Now, I do wish they would start teaching typing around the 5th grade, I think that should be a mandatory class.

When I was going to school in The 80's, typing was a mandatory class.

 

[a1tinkfans]

What an interesting thread. My ds is in first year of high school (9) and was
just told this week,....
he will be taking his "standardized" tests using cursive only.
He is a bit panicked over this as he never writes script and insists he had it in elementary school one year and does not "know how." He is really freaked out.
Told him he better start practicing....crazy situation...too bad they can't type
their tests (he had typing thru elementary and then I bought one of those home programs) he types at least 50-60 wpm at this point with very little/no errors! Too bad I can't say the same with the errors part, LOL

My whole family knows I am famous for "Teh" rather than "the"

 

[barkley]

my kids started learning it in 2nd grade and the school system they are in has handwriting as a graded part of the curriculum until grade 7th. that's to say that they have daily handwriting assignments in a workbook for which they receive a letter grade. the teachers can require some or all assignments that entail writing to be done in cursive. with the current teacher (dd 8th and ds 5th share the same teacher), spelling is the student's choice of printing or cursive, some in-class writing assignments must be done in cursive, with those writing assignments that they have more time for or bring home to work on they can generaly be done in either cursive, printing or typed (but whatever is chosen must be legible or it can negativly impact the grade).

btw-ds has terrible fine motor skills and we've found that his cursive is beautiful. his occupational therapist has shared that many kids who have poor printing find cursive much easier to master because of it's flowing nature.


their school also has typing as a graded subject for grades 5th-8th (though they begin introducing keyboarding and mouse usage in 1st so the kids can be fairly proficient by 5th). while they are very proactive on teaching the kids to type they are very careful to not permit a student to use it exclusively for writing assignments due to their realization that computer programs have spell, grammer and punctuation programming that can hide student deficiencies. i had to point this out to a former teacher of my kiddos when she started assigning spanish homework and letting the students do it on their home computers-she remarked that she could'nt figure out why the students were doing so much better on their homework vs their in-class hand written assignments-showed her how even the word program they had loaded into the school computers had an elementary spanish language capacity that would correct all the errors in a written document with the click of the mouse

 

[poutytink]

My DS learned it in 3rd grade........he is now in 5th.....hasn't used it since he first learned it!

 

[C.Ann]

Yes - but DGD had already taught herself how to write cursive in the first grade.. She thought "printing" was for kindergarten only..

She just turned 10 - is in the 5th grade this year - and all homework must be done in cursive.. She loves it!

 

[teacherforhi]

What an interesting thread. My ds is in first year of high school (9) and was
just told this week,....
he will be taking his "standardized" tests using cursive only.
He is a bit panicked over this as he never writes script and insists he had it in elementary school one year and does not "know how." He is really freaked out.

Now that's crazy. We're specifically told that handwriting has no impact on the writing scores (unless, of course, it's unreadable).

 

[joviroxx]

Yep, they learned it in 3rd grade. My DS9 is in 4th this year and they have to write pretty much everything in cursive. All of his writing assignments, his spelling tests, his book reports, etc.

Shelby

Same here. My oldest started learning his letters in 2nd grade and now in 4th, everything that is handed in is cursive, but he goes to private school. They also have handwriting assignments everyday.

Studies have shown that improves sequential thinking and hand eye coordination. They should also learn it so that they can read it. Besides, signatures must be in cursive. There are a lot of thinks taught in school that we might not use again but I, for one, am glad they teach it in DS's school.

 

[vanillamickey]

I learned cursive in 2nd grade. I had to use it ALL through 4th grade. I hated it. We had to take spelling tests and this one person ALWAYS marked the words with an r wrong because "I wrote them wrong." I wrote them with a dot at the top and, according to him (and apparently the teacher) it was wrong. But that's how I learned it!! And let me tell you, is it hard to get out of that habit. (My last name contains an r )

Last year I had a kid in my MEGSSS class (I'm in 7th grade) who couldn't read cursive. The teacher wrote our notes ALL in cursive, and yet, the same kid wrote his own name in cursive.

 

[Cindy B]

Now that's crazy. We're specifically told that handwriting has no impact on the writing scores (unless, of course, it's unreadable).

Yes, that is true. I've taken many assessing writing courses -- and you are correct, as long as it is legible it will be scored.

 

[hrh_disney_queen]

*never mind

 

[Avalon_toon]

My son is really excited to learn cursive next year (grade 3) - but, we are such a computer nerd type family, I'm guessing most of his homework in later grades will by typed on the computer and then printed.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing... I haven't hand-written a letter in decades, I don't expect he'll be any different in that regard...

 

[dimimi]

No one will care in middle school or high school how the kids write. Any formal writing will by done on a word processor. Of course we need to learn cursive to sign our name, but other than that...no reason.

 

[clori]

My dd8 is in 3rd grade. She is learning cursive but hasn't learned all the letters yet. The teacher doesn't want us to teach them any letters at home only to practice what they have learned in class so I don't think they write much in cursive in the classroom yet. However at back to school night the teacher was telling us that there are two things that are traditionally done that she says there is a movement to end.

One thing she said was spelling tests. The teacher believes in them but says that research has shown kids can easily do well on spelling tests since it is memorization but still have trouble spelling the words in applied work. The other area she said there is a movement to end is teaching cursive. The teacher said that some people only think that signing a name should be taught since otherwise there is no need for cursive. Fortunately the teacher/school district disagree and cursive is still being taught. If they only learn how to sign their name what happens when they are older and perhaps get married and change their last names?

I personally think cursive should be taught but not graded as a a report card grade. However I do see that at one point most papers will need to be typed on word processing program. I will say that the typing 1 class I took in high school was probably the most practical class I had that helped out tons in college. Of course now typing on an electric typewriter is obsolete but it sure helped back then.