Schools shouldn't teach cursive writing

[IShotTheDeputyItWasMe]

When I grew up, we'd learn to write using print ie not joined up. Then a few years later we'd have to re-learn in cursive. I remember finding relearning quite difficult eg the way "s" is written is very different. What was the point in teaching print and then expecting everyone to use cursive?

A lot of primary schools now teach cursive from the off.

But why teach it at all? Not many adults write pure cursive and sometimes cursive, particularly messy or very elaborate cursive can be really hard to read. It looks nice sometimes but what's the point in using it when print is much easier to read and most adults use it or a variation of print anyway.

I deal with old documents that are always written in cursive and they are a nightmare to read.

Personally, I mainly use print but do join some letters. But my writing is odd anyway because I also did calligraphy and have incorporated some of that too. My capital "h" is ridiculous!

This ! It’s been eye opening to me on this thread and now I can totally see why A lot of children struggle in schools.

In often see a lot of comments on threads about what’s going wrong at school focusing on the fact that there are too many “ Sen “ children in mainstream classes which is mainly aimed at those with autism and adhd However even children with other needs - , dyslexia - dyspraxia or physical impairments for example CP who are being let down because there is no movement in the mainstream curriculum. They are not in need of SEN schools and are fully able to meet curriculum reach expected levels.

when daughter who is academically able ( no genius like 3/4 of mumsnet ) had her educational psychology assessment and ABC movement test done due the her physical disabilities requiring an ehcp for secondary school I did look and read the results of the “ assessments “ where she scored on centile etc and I did think to myself how many current children who are not on the spectrum or Sen in anyway will all also have elements of these that are diff levels because children all have diff ways of learning and how many would in fact like daughter have “ spikey “ profile ( even those who are “ geniuses and gifted and talented ) but the difference is their way of learning and processing fits the way we educate.

Yes, but they may not be able to understand her writing as it's not great in cursive. The teacher has said she knows my dd well and can read her writing but the examiner may struggle to understand what she is writing meaning she may not reach age related.

I don’t write any of my students off due to
their handwriting ability - please don’t think that! What I do have to do though is provide evidence for why a child is EXP or GDS - if there is an additional need affecting a child’s handwriting that is of course taken into consideration. However, if I say a child who has not additional needs is EXP and am moderated but cannot provide evidence for their handwriting being legible when joined, their assessment will be knocked back to WTS by the moderators.

Cursive did my dyslexic, hypermobile (add in dyspraxic for one) children no favours. It was just another layer of fluff-stuff to think about (on top of lists of features like fronted adverbials) and inhibit the flow of writing at the cost of content. There's a limit to what their working memory and executive function will handle

Children should be able to write in a way that is comfortable and efficient To Them.
DS1's occupational therapist felt the same way, but that was a waste of a couple of sentences of typing in her report.
Likewise the recommendations to get them writing in pen ASAP.
I was astounded when we finally had our first post-Covid parents evening to find that DS1's y6 teacher was happily ignoring professional recommendations and was going to send him off to secondary school never having written in pen. I have no idea what she was waiting for because he was never going to have beautiful writing to get a stupid, ablist "pen licence"

And it turns out that both DCs find pens much better. With the range of pens avaliable, it's much easier to find one that is comfortable to grip, has a smooth flow and doesn't waste energy on applying excess pressure to make marks.

Children learn best and are most productive when they're comfortable. Teachers can assess the learning best when the children can express it clearly and legibly.

They can but it's very time consuming compared to cursive.

Once a child reaches essay type questions for GCSE, they'd likely struggle to get as much down in block writing compared to cursive.

Educators don't try to set kids up to fail. There is always kick back when parents don't like methods or their kids struggle with things but generally schools push things like this to help kids achieve their best in the long run.

Anything else would be shooting themselves in the foot. Schools are judged incredibly harshly on results, rightly or wrongly.

My handwriting is dreadful after being made to right cursive. Everyone I know who prints has lovely writing.

Go ahead and question but you will be the one looking silly. If one hasn't learnt to write in cursive from the start or has problems with handwriting (mine is unreadable in cursive) then surely you'd prefer printed letters. With computers one rarely has to write by hand anyway but your assumption about handwriting being connected to intelligence is presumptuous and inaccurate.

So I’m not disagreeing with that but to say “ a child who can not write in C can not achieve the standard level of curriculum by end of key stage 2 “ is bonkers

I teach cursive from Reception, it’s easy to grasp and saves a lot of re teaching later on.

Nope, it’s the responsibility of parents to teach basic life skills.

You can’t understand mortgages and credit cards without understanding maths, how compounding interest works etc.

Much faster to write in curvasive!

My son was strongly encouraged at school to write with his right hand. He is in fact left handed and 22 years old. His handwriting is appalling and caused him lots of problems

I was really shocked when my kids starting to learn cursive in Year 2. I didn't start learning till year 4 and when we did we had a LOT of lessons just purely practising the different letter formations so everyone got quite good at it. We all had to buy a fountain pen. We did far more writing than kids seem to do today in primaries.

What makes you think they don't?

As far as I’m aware, I developed it as an adult. I wouldn’t have had DC if I’d known I had it.

The inability to write in cursive, is mentioned in my DC’s IEP (special needs) as being “inline with the diagnosis of Autism”

Surely the problem here is the failure to make allowances for children with additional needs, not teaching cursive per se?

For children who don’t have SEN then cursive is quicker and more efficient and there is no reason why a child without SEN shouldn’t be able to write it legibly.

Of course if a child does have SEN then they should be supported to find what works for them. This is true of everything that is taught at primary school.

I’m going with the assumption that this is tongue in cheek?

I’ve been teaching for 20+ years and hand-writing is definitely on the decline. There’s always been one or two children with illegible writing but now, I’d say it’s 50% of every class that are unable to write.

I also teach a vocational subject to my older classes and all of it is online and using laptops. Most pupils don’t know how to type neither, let alone touch type. Many use 1 finger on one hand while their other hand props up their head. I cannot tell you how many times I have to say “sit up straight, use both hands to type”.

I really want to visit my primary school cluster to see how much time is spent teaching these fundamental skills.

It is possible to teach joined handwriting without it being cursive. Joined handwriting is a requirement at the end of ks2. It also increases reading speed and can aid spelling since letter strings are memorised as a whole by writing them continuously.
I am in an ongoing battle with other members of staff at my school who want to teach cursive because it looks prettier; however some letters don't actually look like the letter they are meant to be representing so for children who are dyslexic or have problems with spelling it's a nightmare.

DS started school at 6 (Germany) and was taught to print. In his 2nd year (age 7), they were taught cursive. The whole German education system has a huge focus on fine motor skills in the early years. They did a lot of art, sewing, cutting, bead work and even weaving in Kindergarten (3-6). I think the focus on writing- and there is a lot- is a continuation of that.

There are also studies that show that movement helps solidify learning. One that I remember is that movement activates 5x more of the brain than being still.

As a dyspraxic with a high IQ, this is not a system that would have worked for me. I needed to be able to talk rather than write in the early years at school.

It's so much faster, but it's harder to read.

I'm of the generation where we were taught to print in infant school and started to learn cursive at junior school.

If I'm making notes for myself I will write in cursive. My husband says my cursive is illegible and it's true that it bears some resemblance to a doctor's prescription in the days before they were computer printed - so if I'm writing something down for him, I will print it.

The point I'm making is that if you have been taught both, you can use whichever is more appropriate - it's not as though having learned cursive you can never go back to printing.

I read many of my children's work better when they've used cursive.

As it helps writing to flow, it improves speed and therefore lightness of touch. That's only my opinion though.

Pure cursive I find fiddly and will naturally join about 80% of my words - I also write 's' differently to the official way - but I think that's cool for children to work out for themselves when they're older.

Not saying that at all. Handwriting isn't included in end of KS2 SATs. Really it's more about having the kids ready for secondary, where they will have to write considerably more, and faster.

A child's handwriting isn't a indicator of their ability, BUT when teaching I have seen top set kids lose considerable marks due to illegible writing in exams and also have had kids upset that they didn't manage to get everything down they wanted to within the exam time. These kids often had elaborate or blocky handwriting that just took too long to get down on paper.

Nothing in education comes easily to all kids but generally cursive is meant to help.

My daughter is likely to be able to use a laptop for her exams (very dyslexic) but I do worry about her losing marks in exams where she has to write.

She attends extra classes for her dyslexia but rather than spending the time on handwriting, they spend it on comprehension and reading. She has absolutely no issues with either of those. She's always been top set in English and it's why her dyslexia was only diagnosed at 13 after we had to really, really push for a screening to enable us to get a proper assessment.

Her spelling issues were somewhat hidden by them making her write in cursive. Nobody could see that amongst her scrawl she was spelling the same word 4 different ways or consistently writing her "a"s and "L"s backwards. It wasn't until she was allowed to write in print again that it became obvious.

However, now the teachers are obsessed with what pens they use. Like many people, her writing is very much improved with gel pens (I guess because they are smoother) or pens with very fine nibs (because it makes the letters clearer) but she has to write in biro.

Has anyone mentioned a possible dyspraxia screening? Maybe something to think about if her writing is really affected by a change of pen.

Have you checked if she can have a scribe for the written exam? It's really rather common, or it used to be when I was teaching.