Cursive handwriting
 

The loss of this particular skill really saddens, and irritates, me. How many of your grandkid or kids can read and / or write cursive? If you handwrite birthday notes or any letters to them, are they able to read them?

I know the kids are spending their studies on skills important for their future world & not my past world. All the on-line bill paying & use of debit cards has eliminated the need for checks. Maybe it's because I hand write pages of journals, or maybe the little bit of genealogy research I've done, or maybe because I have no kids but I only recently became aware this is a lost skill. To me it's faster to write notes than to print, but I don't have a fancy phone for texting.

I was at the gym a few months ago & overheard 2 retired teachers telling stories & it was about not being able to read her name when she wrote it on the chalkboard. Then the news reports they always do on the incoming crop of college freshman & what they grew up with or without that we old people take for granted.

I just tell myself it is a secret code between us boomers now!

I was shocked when I found out the kids aren't learning to "write" anymore. As with checks needing signatures so do morgage notes, car info, and a lot of other legal and important documents. They may do away with writing checks but I do NO bill paying by credit/debit card or over the internet or phone. When they find out that no matter what your ID can be stolen from these venues and the trouble to straighten it our can take months or even YEARS THEN what will they do?

My grandchildren are learning cursive, in 2nd grade. That's a year earlier than my kids learned it. In fact, they learned a different style of printing, that had curves on some of the letters, that helps them learn cursive.

I found out through my SIL that they don't teach the children how to hand write in school anymore I asked how they're supposed to learn and she said they would need to teach them. So how do the schools expect them to sign a pay check, sign a legal document you can't print you name. They don't teach them the time's table or long division anymore either everything is done with a calculator. I've had cashier's stand there and give me a blank look if I say oh here I have a penny,they can't figure out how much change to give me back.

as a 2ndgrade teacher, I would start teaching the kids how to do basic letters in cursive because I couldn't stand to see the way they were trying to write them. It didn't take much to get them on the right track, then I could do some writing on the board and they would know what it looked like and could learn how to read it all at the same time.... worked well for me, but more and more nowdays, they are doing away with actually "teaching" things and are more and more letting them figure it out for themselves. I found that "teaching" or showing them how and explaining why taught them more and fed their self esteem much more than letting them figure it out for themselves.

Michael Jackson only printed. but that was most likely due to his working all the time and not getting much schooling.
i had wondered about cursive writing going away. sad to see.

I teach 5th grade, and yes, cursive writing is no longer a curriculum standard. There's simply no time or reason to teach the art of cursive writing when we are clearly headed for a paperless world. Children today are expected to master more skills and content at a much earlier age than we were and there's major pressure on them, and on teachers, to succeed. My students must pass state mandated tests and cursive writing is not tested so it is not taught.

Just a thought, my daughter is a nurse and she tells me they print most of the time as it is easier to read and harder to
mistake one letter for another.

I substitute teach while going to college to become a teacher. I was substituting 8th graders and they kept calling me Mrs. Cammom. I corrected them a number of times and they commented that is how you spelled it on the board. I am still in my twenties and could not believe that these children could not read cursive writing. On another note, I am going to college to be a math teacher and no student of mine will be allowed to use a calculator to tell me what 3 x 9 is etc. When I was in school we had to learn our times tables by heart and were tested very frequently. Here's hoping that I will make a difference!

With our elementary schools getting updated computers and now IPADs I can see how this is going by the wayside.
We too noticed that our drs and the nurses are printing instead of 'scribbling'. If you want a prescription, it is sent via computer to the pharmacy. You don't see a hand-written script anymore.
I will admit many things I do not use cursive anymore, as my handwriting has changed in the past 10 yrs or so. Dr. said it was probably part of the fibromyalgia. I mainly capitalize all letters when hand-writing as it is easier to read. My brother learned this in the service as it was easier to read, faster for him, and the capital letters were easier to distinguish what they were, vs. small letters sometimes a few end up looking like other letters.