Why do we still teach cursive to kids?!

[HighwayDragon]

Why oh why are children taught cursive handwriting? Especially from a young age where their handwriting is poor anyway, it's a massive waste of time and effort! My dd will be heading into year1 in September wibu to say that I don't think it's necessary at all, and completely archaic?

Add - I'm a TA in her school, most staff think it's ridiculous but we've got to teach them.

But it does have value, Mistletoe. It's not just about the look of it, learning to write proper flowing joined up letters means you write much faster and fluidly in the future. There is a huge advantage to this.

ThumbWitches Yes! Interesting to hear about your reading experiences too, a similar thing happened to me with the truly rubbish Roger blooming Redhat and co books...

Mistlewoe - I had read about the John Holt comparison too - it was a very informal test though.

I have found this though - a study of differing handwriting styles for speed an legibility. Apparently there is not much to call between print and cursive in either measure. Presumably an individual will be quicker producing whichever they are most accustomed to.

The study actually found that a "hybrid" manuscript hand (joining some letters, but not others) is faster and most legible.

Personally, I don't like cursive much. I think introducing it right from the word go confuses some children, because the letters with the hooks and loops are so different from the printed letters in books. My personal preference is to introduce a "pre cursive print" which looks like printed letters with just a hook at the end of letters like a, d, h etc. It is then really easy to start introducing ways to join these letters when recognition of the basic letter shape is secure. I do also think that some letters (such as s and x) look terrible when joined to a following letter and should be mostly left as free spirits. I guess I don't really see the big deal about "relearning writing" whenall you are doing is not removing the pen from the paper after forming one letter and starting the next - if you are used to doing the hooks, then it makes sense.

We want to go for speed and legibility, we also want to encourage children to achieve early success with writing. so we need to make that as easy as possible.