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We practised our cursive handwriting every year up through high school, and although my dear late mother would shudder at what my handwriting now looks like (I've reverted to printing, as many people who write extensively by hand do), I've always appreciated the value of cursive practice.
(Here's hoping this is less contentious than Ilia Malinin's skating costume!)
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If boomers and Gen X are puzzled that many youngsters are not required to endure the same painstaking labor of mastering cursive that they were, they might be even more surprised — perhaps, even delighted — to hear that some are learning the craft entirely for fun.
“I see why we’re not teaching cursive to a degree. All of our literature now is in print. The computers, typing, texting — it’s print, it’s not cursive,” Kenerson said. “So a lot of people probably felt like we don’t need that anymore. That’s outdated. But science wise and mentally, we do.”
In the early 2000s, as technology picked up, cursive was declared all but dead. By 2006, only 15 percent of SAT essays were written in cursive. The Common Core standards released in 2010 did not include cursive as a required curriculum, leading to states around the country to drop the requirement.
But in the years since, there has been a steady effort to preserve the art by historians and educators like Kenerson. Clubs, camps and optional classes like hers have popped up around the country. In recent years, states from California to Pennsylvania have passed legislation to mandate the teaching of cursive in school and further cement handwriting skills.
The resurgence comes as a rise in screens and artificial intelligence motivates conversations about the role of technology in education. Research suggests handwriting is a key tool for learning and memory. It activates brain activity like motor, sensory and cognitive processing better than typing does.
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You should be able to read the whole delightful report at this gift link:
Meet the middle-schoolers keeping cursive alive, one swoop at a time
wapo.st
Script is finding new life in after-school clubs where students can learn to loop and swoosh their handwriting.3 hours ago
What do you think of the idea of teaching cursive before print? After I read in Drawing with Children that kids below a certain age can't draw a straight line due to developmental stage, I realized that when I was young, cursive may have been harder to read, but it was easier to write.
In Latin America, we learn to write in cursive first. That’s what I wrote in until fifth grade. Honestly, it is easier when they are young. Books in Spanish tend to have cursive as well.
After teaching my kiddo cursive for homeschool, I started learning Spencerian script myself and have really enjoyed it. I now prefer to write in cursive than print!
I'm of the age that my elementary school sent our handwriting off to be evaluated professionally twice a year, noting where we were at the beginning and end of each grade, starting in 4th. We first learned formation in 3rd grade, then continued with handwriting for two more years. I like writing in cursive and think it's a useful skill.
I do my handwriting in mostly cursive with a couple letters in print. I just prefer it. I know I started teach my children when younger to write in cursive, but they transitioned to public school and it isn’t taught there. I cringe when they have to sign things and they write their name in print.
I almost always write in cursive except for when I need to do quick glances at stuff when coaching or teaching, I can read print faster than cursive. That being said, the district out here does offer cursive. It's seen as a fun thing more than required and it keeps the pressure off and kids want to learn it.
Nice to know I'm not the only one who reverted to printing for most things. Cursive is much prettier, but it takes too long and when I'm in a hurry my printing is more legible than my cursive (even I can't read it half the time).
Cursive basically automatically corrected my kids’ dysgraphia, I’m a huge fan.
NJ just required cursive to be taught in public schools
Regarding the neatness of handwriting, have you seen the research about babies who crawled more? Apparently that correlates with having better handwriting later in life!
My oldest fell through the cracks. My younger two will learn cursive.
I can usually tell how old our customers are by their cursive. Because it seems each decade practiced a certain “font” until everyone had the same handwriting.
In Italy it's still taught, my son has had to learn it.
I taught my middle and high school students cursive. Every one of them fought it, but almost every one of them has thanked me *repeatedly* for making them do it.
I work in a library. Along with one of my co-workers, we're offering a cursive class for adults in April. I'm hoping that people will see it as a fun and relaxing exercise.
On a less consequential issue...can we all agree that Ilia Malinin's short program outfit is hideous?
6 days ago
Not hideous. I was getting Hiccup vibes from HTTYD.
I am a seamstress and I love the costuming!
What? I loved his outfit! Never heard of the video game and didn’t know that’s what he was referencing. I just thought his outfit looked cool. 😅 But I do like fantasy fashion.
Apparently there is no such thing as "all agree." Sorry, Susan.
Finally something I disagree with you on 😄 I kind of love it.
My daughter said it looks inspired by How To Train Your Dragon.
I didn't watch this, but I kept doing double-takes with the time-traveling dancer towards the end of the Opening Ceremony - her outfit looked fine at the end when she was with all the other dancers of her era, but before that, she looked like her bum was completely uncovered lol 🫣
Reminded me of the Puck costume in a stage performance of A Midsummer Nights Dream I saw. 🤷♀️ Now that's I've seen it based on the video game his music is from, I guess it makes sense - but only if you pick up on it!
This young man is incredibly dedicated to his craft, please be respectful and save negativity towards him for the privacy of your home. It’s insulting.
Perfect for Justin Michael Moore
Mother of a figure skater here and I loved the whole thing. He’s amazing and his costume was 🔥
OK, well you have to remember what story he is telling. He is skating to the music from the Prince of Persia video game. He looks like one of the characters in the game.
Feels a little Narnia-esque
LOL my mom said the same thing.
Depends..I haven’t seen his performance..what was his music selection?
I thought it was a fun break from the predictable formalwear the rest of them wear!
It’s giving Ewok. I don’t hate it.
When you skate like him, you can wear anything you want and still look fabulous!!
The Slovenian downhill skier outfits look like Buzz Lightyear costumes.
Mr. Tumnus on ice??
Definitely not hideous. You need to know the music and the story he is telling in his skate.
We thought it looked kind of Puckish.
I’m in my complimentary, let’s support each other season. So all I have to to say is I’m so proud of this young man who has sacrificed, worked incredibly hard, dedicated himself to his sport, and killed it on the ice. And he’s the son of proud immigrant parents. Go, Ilia🇺🇸❄️🇺🇸
I have to disagree here. I loved it. You don’t name yourself the Quad God and then do something basic.
What's it supposed to be? I'm kind of getting bug splat on a windshield
In case anyone out there is still wondering why no sane person should ever, EVER post a meme, image, or joke depicting women and men of color as simians, here's some very clear historical research for you.
I hope it's useful. But you shouldn't have to know this background in order to avoid such a cruel, dehumanizing act.
"The Conversation" is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent news organization that hosts the peer-reviewed works of scholars. Please read the whole piece, which I've excerpted liberally below.
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In the history of European cultures, the comparison of humans to apes and monkeys was disparaging from its very beginning.
When Plato – by quoting Heraclitus – declared apes ugly in relation to humans and men apish in relation to gods, this was cold comfort for the apes. It transcendentally disconnected them from their human co-primates. The Fathers of the Church went one step further: Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Isidore of Seville compared pagans to monkeys.
In the Middle Ages, Christian discourse recognised simians as devilish figures and representatives of lustful and sinful behaviour.
In the history of European cultures, the comparison of humans to apes and monkeys was disparaging from its very beginning.
When Plato – by quoting Heraclitus – declared apes ugly in relation to humans and men apish in relation to gods, this was cold comfort for the apes. It transcendentally disconnected them from their human co-primates. The Fathers of the Church went one step further: Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Isidore of Seville compared pagans to monkeys.
In the Middle Ages, Christian discourse recognised simians as devilish figures and representatives of lustful and sinful behaviour...
In the following centuries, simianisation would enter into different sciences and humanities. Anthropology, archaeology, biology, ethnology, geology, medicine, philosophy, and, not least, theology were some of the fields.
Literature, arts and everyday entertainment also seized on the issue. It popularised its repellent combination of sexist and racist representations. The climax was the hugely successful classic of Hollywood’s horror factory, King Kong.
At the time of King Kong’s production the public in the US was riveted by a rape trial. The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers accused of having raped two young white women. In 1935 a picture story by the Japanese artist Lin Shi Khan and the lithographer Toni Perez was published. ‘Scottsboro Alabama’ carried a foreword by Michael Gold, editor of the communist journal New Masses.
One of the 56 images showed the group of the accused young men beside a newspaper with the headline “Guilty Rape”. The rest of the picture was filled with a monstrous black simian figure baring its teeth and dragging off a helpless white girl.
The artists fully understood the interplay of racist ideology, reactionary reporting and southern injustice. They recognised that the white public had been thoroughly conditioned by the dehumanising violence of animal comparisons and simianised representations, as in the reel racism of King Kong.
Animalisation and even bacterialisation are widespread elements of racist dehumanisation. They are closely related to the labelling of others with the language of contamination and disease. Images that put men on a level with rats carrying epidemic plagues were part of the ideological escort of anti-Jewish and anti-Chinese racism.
Africa is labelled as a contagious continent incubating pestilences of all sorts in hot muggy jungles, spread by reckless and sexually unrestrained people. AIDS in particular is said to have its origin in the careless dealings of Africans with simians, which they eat or whose blood they use as an aphrodisiac.
This is just the latest chapter in a long and ugly line of stereotypes directed against different people like the Irish or Japanese, and Africans and African Americans in particular. To throw bananas in front of black sportspeople is a common racist provocation even today...
Long before post-Darwinian “scientific racism” begins to develop, then, one can find blacks being depicted as closer to apes on the Great Chain of Being...Darwin’s revolutionary 1859 work, On the Origin of Species, did not discredit scientific racism but only its polygenetic variants. Social Darwinism, triumphantly monogenetic, would become the new racial orthodoxy. Global white domination was being taken as proof of the evolutionary superiority of the white race.
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Comparing black people to monkeys has a long, dark simian history
theconversation.com
Animalisation remains a malicious and effective form of dehumanisation. Simianisation is a version of this strategy, which historically manifested a lethal combination of sexism and racism.1 week ago
BREAKING: Trump says he 'didn't make a mistake' with his racist video post. Q: "A number of Republicans are calling on you to apologize for that post. Is that something you're going to do?" Trump: "No, I didn't make a mistake. I mean, I look at a lot of— thousands of things and I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine … I guess it was a take off on the Lion King. And certainly it was a very strong post in terms of voter fraud."
Thanks, Susan.
As an African American, please take this conversation with you to your dining room tables, church prayer groups, kids soccer car pools and homeschool meet ups. In these small, ordinary places with ordinary people having small common conversations, hearts and minds can be challenged and changed. Please take a stand in your real, everyday lives. Thank you 🙏🏾
Thank You Susie🥲❤️
Again, I am reminded of Maya Angelou’s wisdom: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That’s why it’s important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.” May God give us eyes to see and ears to hear 🙏
This shouldn't be a point that needs explanation or discussion, but here we are in the horrific, apocalyptic unveiling of evil hearts that is the present day. God forgive us, God help us. Thank you for communicating truth clearly, Susan Wise Bauer.
Again and again and again we have to articulate reasons to exercise basic respect for each other. It’s exhausting. And thank you.
So thankful for your voice amidst all of the crazy and cruelty. We need more Christian writers and educators like you-
This has felt so heavy today. What have we come to? I know there is a long history of this form of racism but that doesn’t make it any easier to be a parent in the age of Trump. Thank you again for speaking out.
I feel like I have missed the thing that sparked this conversation. And am simply aghasted as to why this is needing to be explicitly stated - didn't we all already know this?
Thank you for continuing to educate. At this point, it's willful ignorance if people don't understand why certain things are offensive and dehumanizing.
Thank you for sharing. This is far too important to sweep under the rug.
Thank you for this. Every day brings some new horror.
So grateful for your steady voice through such horrid events. Again and again, thank you. 🙏♥️
Thank you for using your platform to thoroughly deny racism. 💛
Thank you!
Once again, thank you.
Watching BBc as they say first it was that we are all expressing "fake outrage" then a few hours later that it was posted erroneously by a staffer. I doubt it. No apology.
Thank you for sharing this.
Once again, thank you for speaking up. I am beyond horrified.
Millions will love it as they did when Michelle was depicted as a monkey. They’ve been given permission to become what they feel is the majority. We’ve known who he is and now know there are millions just like him. As someone that’s been to Africa many times and lived in Yemen the racism towards each other directly comes from making those that have a more Ape like facial structure. The north of Brasil was the same. It turned my stomach and most got a lecture from me that I didn’t want to hear that talk. Thanks for speaking up.
Thank you for speaking up for what is right and true and for speaking out about the absolutely disgusting behavior of our president and government "leaders."
Scientific racism is on the rise again, in part thanks to the popularity of DNA testing promising to tell you where you are from/ ancestry and a desperate need to belong and the popularity of bad/irresponsible social science around intelligence and criminality and it's use by people with a racist agenda. Combined with things like the racist imagery that gets a pass because "its not that serious" or "it was a king of the jungle reference" or "he's just joking" is why we are still struggling with the basics in so many circles. It's time to be honest, speak TRUTH no matter what it costs and encourage people to do the INTELLECTUAL and EMOTIONAL work of growing up. Thank you Susan for doing the work and calling others to it as well.
Thank you for your gracious yet measured response.
Thank you for this.
