The end of cursive?

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 07:27:00 -0400

There has already been a lot of dicussion in the blogisphere about an article in the Washington Post citing the demise in cursive writing among students.

The computer keyboard helped kill shorthand, and now it’s threatening to finish off longhand.

When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.

And the reason for this?

Until the 1970s, penmanship was a separate daily lesson through sixth grade, said Dennis Williams, national product manager for Zaner-Bloser Handwriting, the most widely used penmanship curriculum. At its peak in the 1940s and ‘50s, most teachers insisted on as much as two hours a week, but a 2003 Vanderbilt University survey of primary-grade teachers found that most now spend 10 minutes a day or less on the subject. To adapt to this new reality, the Zaner-Bloser method has been changed to a 15-minute daily plan.

When I went to school, we were taught to write in meticulous cursive. Today I write in a combination of cursive, printing and chicken scratch, which sometimes I can barely read.

It is a good article on what may become a lost art. Read the entire article here.

The Famundo Blog: The end of cursive?

The end of cursive?