I don't think we're quite ready to give up cursive. I sign a lot of documents that require a hand-written signature in addition to your printed name.

I like cursive. Reading this article reminds me of time I spent experimenting with different looks, trying to write backwards, etc. (You know, when I was supposed to be paying attention in class.)

I worked in a cemetery office one summer, where there were old ledgers listing causes of death. The most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen. There really is an art to it, and I will be sad to see it go, but it's probably inevitable.

Then years from now, some young person will find an old schoolbook about it and decide it's really cool, and it will make a comeback.

I concluded some time ago that the fear, expressed in the 90s and early 00s -- that the "electronic media" would suffer greatly from lack of editorial oversight -- has come true in roaring fashion. The problem is that it seems more often than not to be publications not originally electronic, or else anything Far Left, that suffers most from this affliction.

I could not stand learning cursive writing in elementary school. I excelled in all other subjects, but my teachers would literally scream at me for my "chicken scratch" handwriting. They actually gave me a D in handwriting and then my parents (who were both teachers) would scream at me. Now, I could always read my own handwriting. The weird thing is that the students who normally got low grades had the most beautiful handwriting.

'Handwriting Without Tears' sounds like the We are the World of elementary school education. How do they take themselves that seriously?

"I think it's important to have nice handwriting, but the importance of having to learn two kinds of handwriting seems unnecessary given the vast method of communication is on a keyboard," Polikoff said. "One reason [to teach it] might be to be able to read historical documents and old journals that are written in cursive."

Another might be that, at least for me, I tend to be able to work out the correct spelling of a word much more easily when writing than typing.

Now, my handwriting is awful. And, I was cursed with a name that, should you write it, you must do so in exactly the fashion dictated by 3rd grade teachers if you wish it to look like anything other than Shammmmmmmm (or Shamwwwwwww, depending on your right/left paper tilt).

I still think it is important to teach. There are still things you get to fill out longhand (small business part-time jobs, in particular).

But, perhaps most importantly, what about things like thank-you notes? They should be written out if at all possible, and not printed by hand or computer, especially if you are thanking Grandma. :)

That said, I print nearly everything and find myself embarrassed by my scrawl when I write longhand, but I do it anyway.

One last thought, for most people, script/cursive/longhand is faster than printing. Sure, you can type notes for lots of things in school, but there are lots of subjects with diagrams, etc, that don't lend themselves to typing (like when the teacher/prof diagrams molecular structures, the Krebs' Cycle, or cellular structure. I think it's much easier to pen-and-paper those classes, and speed is often of the essence.

My two cents.

...that the "electronic media" would suffer greatly from lack of editorial oversight -- has come true in roaring fashion.

One would assume that a print organization would have in place eagle-eyed editors for all its public-facing portals, but I'm seeing more and more errors on news sites that should be caught by even a mole-eyed editor.

I think we've spent too long teaching our children to use spell-check and not enough teaching them to spell.

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Writing things out longhand teaches planning ahead. No to move things around on a legal pad. Learning it can teach your to organize your work before you commit to putting it to paper.

It also teaches you to spell because you can't type something "close enough" and have spell-check catch it.

That said, computers are here to stay. Touch-typing is now a more widely applicable skill than writing longhand, although smart phones and tablet computers require look typing and are turning us into a nation of hunters and peckers.

Slightly OT: I watched a guy on the subway last night one-finger typing on his iPad - fastest one-fingered typist I'd ever seen - and he looked like he was in his 60s.

Still, I'm a fountain pen (any nice pen really) and paper junkie, so I still write things out on cards and notepads (although I'm now trying to use Evernote more often - if only for the organizational capabilities).

"No to move things around on a legal pad."

Should have read No CTRL-X CTRL-V to move things around on a legal pad.

Damned brackets.

Word from friend with sister teaching in a Georgia public elementary school:

Their spelling tests are multiple choice.
And there are still failures.

They spelled lurn wrong. Don't they it's larn?

I was born left-handed, and they switched me in elementary school. My right hand never really got with the program. In school, I hated all things language and literature because inevitably it involved having to write something, and after twenty minutes or so of handwriting my hand was so cramped up that it looked like a gargoyle's claw. Yes, we had typewriters then, and I had gotten pretty good at touch-typing, but the process of having to back-space and fix each error with correction tape was horribly disruptive. All in all, it wasn't a lot faster than handwriting, although the results looked better.

I remember the first time I had a chance to write a paper on a computer, in college. It was at a place where I was working at the time; they had a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer and a daisy wheel printer (you don't want to know) that could produce nice-looking output when it was in the mood. I stayed after work to work on the paper. I started thinking and typing. Thinking and typing. Going back to revise this earlier section because I thought of a better way to put it. Thinking and typing some more.

Eventually I had a finished draft. I looked to see what time it was, fully expecting it to be late. Only an hour had passed! To me, it was a miracle. For the first time in my life, the barrier between my brain and the paper was gone. I could think of something and it would almost magically appear, without me having to give any conscious thought to the mechanics of making the marks appear on the paper.

I printed a draft, leisurely read over it, marked it up, went back and made a bunch of changes, and printed a second draft. This was a luxury I'd never had. Ultimately I revised it three times before I carefully fed the paper to the daisy wheel printer to produce the final copy. It looked great, and I had expended a total of two hours. No late nights scribbling or slaving over a cranky typewriter. What a relevation.

I'll never go back to handwriting being my primary form of written communications. I use a computer whenever possible.

the thing is writing... is communication. If nobody can read your writing, you'se talking to the wind.

Being a lefty, I learned early on to print, and became quick at it. I took drafting courses pre- computer everything. When, like a zen-master, the prof. would look at your lettering to make sure the strokes went in the correct direction. And then I learned how to do that fast, too.

Cursive takes long, I smear it, and ultimately it is less easy to read than print.

You are trying to communicate, right? I mean, sure, some things sound better said in French... but if you don't speak french, you are SOL. So what good is writing fancy, if people have to try and figure out you're saying?

Just like other written languages have become obsolete, cursive script already has too. Why waste instruction time on that? Especially with a mastery rate so low. [meaning adults whose handwriting you can actually read]

I can't actually remember the last time I've had to write more than three paragraphs by hand. Even then, it's not cursive. If people think hand written thank you and condolence notes are tacky because it's written in print - well, tough shit.

I wonder what the age break down is on the topic.

Being a lefty...I smear it.... ~ SwissArmyD

Do you overwrite?

I'm a lefty and I don't smear the ink (very often).

Growing up, my father insisted I tilt the page to the right to write (opposite the right-handed population). My elementary school teachers insisted all students tilt their pages to the left and would "correct" me when I tilted mine the other way.

Apparently, these teachers were unaware of the actual reason writers tilt pages and simply insisted all pages be tilted the same direction ("must enforce lock-step uniformity").

When I got home and tried to do my homework like I did my school work, I was re-corrected by my father. It got very frustrating for me.

Finally, in the sixth grade, the English teacher (a retired nun) insisted that students tilt their pages to the left - except lefties - who were to tilt their pages to the right. Finally, the lessons I was getting at school matched the ones I got at school.

By the time I got to high school, the teachers didn't care how students managed to get ink onto the page, only that they cared enough to write something other than death threats or suicide notes (driven to do so, most likely, by elementary teachers who fractured their tiny psyches in early writing lessons).

It is not necessarily learning cursive that will increase student achievement, it is learning "anything" that requires repetition, attention to detail, concentration and fine motor hand-eye coordination.

Most teachers are so busy entertaining kids, and the kids have such short attention spans anyway, due to the constant barrage of activities designed to entertain, and not educate, that few of them learn what real mental focus is.

Cursive requires focus and practice, math requires focus, practice and memorization, and of course learning to paint draw, or play a musical instrument well requires lots of focus, practice, hand eye coordination, memorization and muscle memory.

We would all be better off if schools understood that while learning may be an important
objective, learning "how to learn", and acquiring a set of basic skills and core knowledge such as reading, writing, math, and fine and gross motor coordination would be a better use of student's time than lectures on saving the whales.

Cursive may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it trains areas of the brain, and your fine motor coordination better than pushing buttons on a video game, (or keys on a keyboard)

My son's handwriting has always sucked, but he is a very fine musician, so I am quite satisfied with his fine motor skills.

My fifth grade teacher made us look up words in the dictionary, and write down their complete meanings. To this day, I thank God, my parents did not have a copy of the OED. :-)
I hated it at the time. It took me thirty years to appreciate what I had learned from it.

I suspect a cursive program, if implemented in a public school, would just be one more area where the teacher would short change the boys, who don't develop fine motor skills as quickly as girls do.

I am also left handed, although I was told by a psychologist once that I was not a true lefty, and that neither side of my brain was really dominant.

A true lefty will mirror a righty when they write. Someone who has divided dominance will generally come in over the top (as I do when I write).

I once counted left handedness in my law school class. There were 90 of us. Ten guys out of 60 were left handed writers, while 15 out of the 30 women were.

I'm a lefty as well.

I was taught cursive in elementary school. I totally sucked at it. No matter how much I practiced, I never really got better at it.

But even my printing sucks. I reviewed a Clive Cussler book in sixth grade, and got a B because I didn't write it in cursive. I had tried but it was virtually illegible to even me.

My notes in junior and senior high ended up being my own shorthand. I still can figure them out 30+ years later, but it might not be readable to anyone else.

The computer age made me happy. My notes are now less than 10 words.

About the only thing a person really needs to learn cursive for now is a signature. And you can download cursive fonts to teach someone.