> Many children no longer learn to write cursive in school. [...] People may recognize the signature, but they weren’t necessarily reading it.
Does this sound alarming to anyone besides me?
Does this sound alarming to anyone besides me?
Haven't written cursive since (signatures aren't cursive, they're more of a logo than anything) maybe fourth grade. I type all day. I can read cursive but I swear cursive has so much variation in legibility that it's a nightmare sometimes.
Typing as a skill has replaced cursive and, while I think knowing to read cursive is good, I don't find it important.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202...
"For young adults, we found that when writing by hand using a digital pen on a touchscreen, brain areas in the parietal and central regions showed event-related synchronized activity in the theta range. Existing literature suggests that such oscillatory neuronal activity in these particular brain areas is important for memory and for the encoding of new information and, therefore, provides the brain with optimal conditions for learning. When drawing, we found similar activation patterns in the parietal areas, in addition to event-related desynchronization in the alpha/beta range, suggesting both similarities but also slight differences in activation patterns when drawing and writing by hand. When typewriting on a keyboard, we found event-related desynchronized activity in the theta range and, to a lesser extent, in the alpha range in parietal and central brain regions. However, as this activity was desynchronized and differed from when writing by hand and drawing, its relation to learning remains unclear."
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0181...
Any benefit found will still be there if people use print letters; or scribble fast shorthand.
A similar level of fluency emerges with handwriting over time. One stops forming individual letters, and whole sequences become one extended flow of the pen. Entire words. It detaches the executive function and short term memory and attention of the mind, from the flow of individual letters and how words are spelled and put together. That becomes an automatic process. We might want to encourage that fluency in more than one mode.
It’s not as if more is better. Sometimes more is just more to learn and not have time for other things.
In elementary school I learned cursive and was told it was very important because when I got to college all professors would require submissions to be in neat, legible cursive writing.
When I got to high school any submission not printed in Times New Roman, 12pt, Double Spaced would be graded as zero.
When I got to college it was the same but submitted to an online portal instead of printed.
Even this Swedish text, with such perfect penmanship [2], is a bit challenging in spots. (I don't speak either language.)
Going back to Johnson & Johnson, that "ohn" sequence in the cursive "Johnson" could easily be confused with sequences like "iunr" or "lins" or "fins".
The only way you can learn to read that is probably by learning to write it. It relies on knowing that e.g. there's a sharp flick of the pen, and a very light line drawn, between the tail end of the "h" and the start of the "n". That's how we know it's the end of an "h" and the beginning of an "n", and not the middle of an "u" which would be drawn with a slightly darker, more curved line. Along with context hints, from the language and content.
[1] https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/unnamed-1.png
Does this not include handwriting as well?
Ballpoint pens removed many of the advantages of cursive, since you didn't need to worry about how the ink got from the pen to the page.
Today, typing has already largely replace handwriting.
History matches on. Some of the traditions and methods of the past really aren't as long lived as you think.
I had no problem reading 18th century scripts while doing amateur genealogy research. And I'm not specialist - almost dyslectic.
It's no different from not knowing how to use a slide rule.
At some point, I noticed that I rarely wrote down something, and when I did, it became instantly unsearchable and therefore as good as lost. For a while, I scanned my written notes, but as soon as swipe keyboards on smartphones became a thing, I just switched over to 100% digital notes.
So, yes, it is hard to imagine a use for cursive anymore. Good riddance.
Cursive serves very little purpose today. I'm not surprised to see it steadily disappearing.
I think plenty of people can read cursive without spending 2-4 years writing it.
In 1st grade we spent about 30 minutes practicing typing positions on a photocopied PCJunior keyboard. I still use those positions.
Even my signature is losing any aesthetic it ever had, because I only ever do it on a shitty stylus screen where it makes no difference.