Recent articles (see here and here) have documented the slow death of a traditional subject in the elementary school curriculum. Since the 1970s, teaching penmanship, usually in the second or third grades, declined. With 45 states adopting Common Core Standards in which using technology trumps cursive writing has hammered the last nail into the penmanship tradition. Well, not quite.
Efforts to prevent the extinction of an endangered school subject in North Carolina, Indiana and a few other states have led to legislative mandates that penmanship be taught in elementary school. That delaying action, however, will not alter the eventual disappearance of handwriting from the curriculum.
Arguments for dropping cursive handwriting include irrelevance–block printing is now acceptable in replacing cursive, typing is far more efficient than handwriting, standardized tests do not require handwriting–and its difficulty for many students to learn who will not use it much for the rest of their lives. Oops! Almost forgot that people do not have to sign documents since there are now electronic cursive signatures. Finally, teaching handwriting takes up valuable time in the second and third grades that could be better spent on acquiring Common Core content and skills and preparing for high-stakes standardized tests.
What is cursive writing? CONTINUE READING: Whatever Happened To Cursive Writing? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice