According to the Asheville Citizen Times in North Carolina, teachers are struggling to find time to teach cursive writing:
Every day students in Shannon Fields’ fourth-grade class get a 15-minute cursive lesson.“Loop high, pull down, swing over, anchor off,” Fields instructs his students at Dickson Elementary as they draw the cursive letter “H” on their lined and dotted paper. “Do that three times, and then you can practice on your own.”
Fields realizes how important it is for his students to learn cursive, but, like other teachers, he has a hard time fitting it in to the busy school day. Many teachers are getting creative when it comes to teaching the handwriting style.
It’s an interesting article, and brings up a very good point that many students view writing in cursive as a rite of passage. I definitely agree with that; learning to write in cursive was a huge accomplishment back in third grade.
Yet, I’m still not convinced that teaching cursive really is all that necessary, at least it isn’t if teachers in the upper grades don’t require it. Now, if it was required in the upper grades (and I think a good case could be made for requiring it), then teaching cursive would be absolutely necessary. But since the upper grade teachers actually prefer you to write in manuscript, I just don’t see the purpose behind it. Especially since we need to be teaching math & reading skills to the children. My children are required to learn how to type instead, but only on their own time.
