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Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

nautil.us

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Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#51

Can an American give an example image showing a child's cursive handwriting, as is it taught there? The picture at the top of the article is only about 50% like the handwriting I was taught in the UK. I was taught something like this [1] (11 year old, England) except without the curly bits before the first letter of each word. [1] http://stanthonys.herts.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/hw...

Americans are genereally taight D'Nealian cursive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#52

> So was cursive faster than manuscript? No, it was slower. But fastest of all was a personalized mixture of cursive and manuscript developed spontaneously by pupils around the fourth to fifth grade. Even in France, a quarter of the French pupils who were taught cursive exclusively and were still mostly using it in the fourth grade, had largely abandoned it for a mixed style by the fifth grade. I was shocked at how c…

It's impossible to say whether those children would develop their own style of short hand if they'd never seen cursive to begin with. You don't need to spend hours writing in cursive to notice that certain letter combinations appear together often, and coincidentally start smushing those letters together into some sort of cursive-ish mixture.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#54

I think my elementary school years (early/mid 2000s) were some of the last years that cursive was taught in NYC. It looks like they're bringing it back this year[1]. I hated it at the time and switched to block lettering as soon as I was allowed, but I've noticed that my style has become increasingly (and organically) cursive ever since I began college and really needed to take notes quickly. Cursive may still be slo…

The study I remember suggested that cursive increases comprehension and retention because it's slower. The theory was that because it's slower, you paraphrase, summarize, and elide more, which engages comprehension and interpretation subsystems, rather than only exercising the speech-to-text subsystem of your brain.

It might also/alternatively be that the longer time necessary to write the information longhand keeps the information in your working memory long enough that your brain is more likely to automatically start to interpret it.

Then there's the tactile-based theory that writing letters longhand is more psychologically engaging than typing is. I'm skeptical of that, because once you learn to type you can feel when you hit the right letter, and feel when you hit the wrong letter. There's immediate tactile feedback either way, it's just different. "Did that feel like the motion I remember is correct for writing that letter" is replaced by "did that feel like my finger was in the right place for that letter when I felt that keypress". Without some good studies proving that there is a difference in cognitive effects between different kinds of tactile feedback, I think it's BS promoted by old-school teachers who refuse to deal with typed assignments.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#55
We should condense the alphabet and get rid of nuisance letters as well as standardize phonemes so that letter combinations must sound the same.

Also - words may only have a single, pre-defined meaning.

While we're at it, everyone go to Esperanto.

Also - this must be enforced globally.

We should have a single, global educational standard for language and math.

While we are at it, we should merge Math and Esperanto into 'Mathsperanto'.

Think of the efficiency and productivity!

Think of the GDP gains!

Forward!

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#56

Personally I (30 years old now) went to Catholic school (K-12) and learned cursive somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade and was forced to write in cursive until I graduated 8th grade. Most of the time as a kid I hated it and wished I could write in block letters and once I hit freshman year of high school I never looked back. Fast forward through four years of high school and three gap years when as a freshman in colleg…

I write in block letters since the senior year of highschool. I need it to be able to understand my own writting. I didn't like it then, but now with my sons I see the use of it. It teaches them attention to detail, observation, patience, fine hand dexterity, spatial references. Even if they don't ever use it again I find is an extremely useful and powerful tool for a 5 year old.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#59
I did learn cursive writing in school, might still be able to do it, but I'd very much prefer my kids to learn a wider array of skills including calligraphy and of course modern typography. They need to see (not master) the wider picture that ranges from art to crystal-clear communcation. Cursive handwriting is just a limited piece of this and killing curiosity through the miserable learning experience.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#60

I think my elementary school years (early/mid 2000s) were some of the last years that cursive was taught in NYC. It looks like they're bringing it back this year[1]. I hated it at the time and switched to block lettering as soon as I was allowed, but I've noticed that my style has become increasingly (and organically) cursive ever since I began college and really needed to take notes quickly. Cursive may still be slo…

The study I remember suggested that cursive increases comprehension and retention because it's slower. The theory was that because it's slower, you paraphrase, summarize, and elide more, which engages comprehension and interpretation subsystems, rather than only exercising the speech-to-text subsystem of your brain. It might also/alternatively be that the longer time necessary to write the information longhand keeps…

There seem to be a lot of theories about why there is an effect, but is there any data to demonstrate that there is one?
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