Schools shouldn't teach cursive writing

Thanks. I would never get mine either.

I was appalled at the state of children's writing when I moved to England. As if cursive wasn't bad enough, they used Pens.

No primary school I've taught in Scotland used pens.

Me too

DH was amazed that I did a touch typing course at secondary school - this was an all girls academic school as well, so it wasn't as if it was assuming we'd all go into the typing pool or something.

It has hands down been one of the most useful things I ever did there!

I'm rolling my eyes at you.

Pen license is a license a child gets when they can move from using pencil to pen 🤣 my daughter has never got hers.’

What's a pen licence"

Someone I follow on Instagram was delighted that her daughter had been awarded this but I'd no idea what it was.

My handwriting is a mix of cursive and non-cursive - I definitely don't link all the letters - and I managed 3 essay based A Levels and an essay based degree and MA with no issues with writing speed.

DS's handwriting is an absolute disaster area and I wish he'd never been 'taught' cursive. It's causing real issues at secondary for him.

My biggest shock really is how early we write kids off. It’s a sad sad place for them really.

As a child we learned to print and then were taught cursive in Year 4. I think this is about right as many year 2/3s aren’t solid enough with printing.

I do think cursive is an essential skill that should be taught - and children should be taught to do it legibly when they are the right age. It is faster and more efficient and multiple studies show that the physical act of writing is important for brain development in reading and learning. We are more likely to remember something we have physically written than something we have read or typed or heard. And more likely to be able to write fluently with cursive.

I would question the intellect of anyone who judges someone based on their handwriting. Mine is cursive but messy, my husband’s is printed and very neat, he’s smarter than I am. My daughter is a straight A student, she found cursive incredibly difficult to do, so she writes however works for her. My mum has what people would consider the loveliest cursive writing, she left school with one O Grade in domestic science. The smartest kid in our class wrote only in printed capitals. How you are able to write has absolutely nothing to do with how smart you are. What matters is the content of the writing.

Thank goodness we’ve moved away from such ridiculous notions and most work is typed nowadays so those who could not master the art of silly, flouncy handwriting are not immediately judged.

I’m in a couple of minds about this. On the one hand, it’s probably awful trying to read year 2/3 work written in cursive. On the other, when I meet an educated adult who still prints, I wonder what happened (obviously I don’t ask).

From memory, we were taught some joined up handwriting in school (primary in the 80s) but it was largely left up to us if we used it. I was considered a bit of an oddity because I joined up.

Are we after speed? Typing is waaay faster. Or we could teach them all shorthand and tell the examiners to work it out.

I think want every child to leave lower KS2 using a neat, clearly-legible, consistently-sized writing that is correctly formed using an efficient and comfortable pencil grip.

My children write faster in print. Most kid’s work I mark in cursive is barely legible.

DS has struggled with cursive since he started learning it in primary. He’s now in Y8 and his last set of assessment exams were far lower than they should’ve been purely because his teachers couldn’t read his writing. His English teacher has told him to just stop trying to write in cursive and, immediately, his grades improved massively.

Turns out, he wasn’t stupid, the teachers just couldn’t read his entirely correct answers.

As an English teacher, I fucking hate cursive. Trying to mark 32 essays in cursive is a brain drain. Neither of my children earned their “pen licence” and I didn’t care. I knew their secondary teachers would appreciate tidy print.

It might be faster for some children. But it doesn't matter how fast a child can write, if you can't actually read what they've written.

Cursive is a lot faster

🤣 this always makes me laugh
along side if your child can not grasp phonics then they will never learn to read.

my DD can not write well due to CP, she could not grasp phonics because of the sounds required were impossible for her due to speech impediment also due to the likely brain injury.

she is now in her last year of primary

all the way up until year 4 her English skills were really behind because she was not getting a chance to learn how to structure sentences, how to use language in writing etc because they were so focused on her using a dam pen and handwriting that she was never able to complete any work 🤣
same as phonics - year 4 she was 3 -4 years behind in reading.
Finally I managed to convince the school to drop her doing phonics and we took up sight reading at home and at school. She got funded a laptop and started learning how to touch type and used it especially in English.
she is now in year 6 and free reader, comprehension scores in practice SAT papers are very high. She is age appropriate in maths although probably excelling at the reasoning side.
She will never be a perfect physical writer.
I think this is our problem Is will tell ourselves and our kids this nonsense when actually there is other ways.

I didn't learn cursive writing as a child in the 60s/70s and my writing is neat. I started teaching in England and had to learn cursive in order to teach it. What a dog's dinner!

I can't see any advantage to it (although we were told it helps spelling, slower learners etc). Any children of a similar age who don't do cursive have much neater writing in my experience.

Cursive was a nightmare at primary school and my reports reflect it. I was ultimately diagnosed with ADHD as an adult but we were allowed to write in our own way from the end of primary and my speed increased tenfold!

I agree. DS really struggled with cursive from the off in year 2 which dented his confidence because his words were barely legible and some of the boys would laugh at his handwriting. He was more focused on joining the letters up then whether you could read it. The teachers would then stress us out for his poor handwriting.

The focus should be on being able to write legibly and spell properly before cursive.