At dinner with classmates, while passing around one pen for eight people, we were comparing signatures. It was mentioned that someone didn’t learn cursive in school when they were younger (I’m sure that person, who knows who they are, has very nice hand writing despite not learning cursive ). I distinctly remember learning how to form cursive letters using the solid line- dotted line-solid line paper. This led me to do some reading about where cursive is or isn’t still being taught.
The Common Core State Standards, which are a set of goals and expectations for each grade level starting from kindergarten and lasting through twelfth grade, only require legible handwriting to be taught in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the standards emphasize students learning keyboarding. Legible handwriting may or may not include learning cursive. In the country, 45 out of the 50 states adopted the standards in 2010. After that, seven of those states decided on a cursive comeback and still teach cursive through higher grades.
Writing in cursive is just the tip of a bigger issue in today’s almost completely digital age. Handwriting in general is slowly, but definitely loosing importance. Children today are being taught how to properly type on a keyboard in third or fourth grade. The majority of their handwriting comes in forms of short answers on quizzes or a small response to a question on a homework assignment. Technology, which has its many benefits, is preventing students from learning and practicing a very important life skill. Some argue that because the Common Core Standards put a big emphasis on composition in writing, students are still getting enough opportunities to practice their handwriting skills. If grade school is similar to how I remember it, which I’m sure it is, students are using computers for the majority of their work. In my classes, teachers required assignments to be typed because of the poor quality in student’s handwriting, making it hard for teachers to read. Lets say it together…ironic.
Since the adoption of the Common Core Standards and the argument about whether or not cursive should still be taught in schools, plenty of research has been done to show the important of why handwriting is still a very important part of our educational development. Studies have shown a strong correlation between reading skills and the ability to write properly in younger children. For adults, writing by hand allows the brain to retain more information than they would if they had been typing. In one study, students in a classroom setting where instructed to take notes, half on laptops and half by writing them down. When being asked about the information that had been presented to them, the students who had taken notes by hand had a much stronger understanding of the information that had been presented to them and where far more successful at applying the information later on.
Walk into BDW, or any college class, on any given day and the majority of students will be taking notes on laptops. I, for one, greatly dislike laptop note taking. Even though typing should allow for a greater speed, I find it slows me down. I also feel too constrained on a computer and can’t quickly dart around the page as I do when I write by hand. I take pride in my stack of notebooks, each representing one semester in college. I have already filled one notebook my first semester at BDW and plan on filling at least two more.
And without notebooks, we would have no notebook doodles, which it turns out also add some importance to our brain activity. Stay tuned!
