Do you know how to write in cursive? If you do, where did you learn this skill? How often do you use it?
Do you think all children should learn cursive? Or is it an unnecessary skill today?
In “Cursive Makes a Comeback in New Jersey Schools,” Sarah Maslin Nir writes about a new requirement for the state’s elementary students:
With a swooping P, a curling H, a slanted I and a looped L, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey — on his last full day in office on Monday — signed into law a bill requiring that all third, fourth and fifth graders in the state learn cursive.
Though script is little used these days beyond checkbooks and autographs, New Jersey joins roughly two dozen other states that have inscribed similar rules in recent years, bucking a drop-off in cursive instruction that began in 2010, when the federal government removed it from the Common Core Standards for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Proponents of cursive cite studies that link handwriting to better information retention and writing speed, and say — as Mr. Murphy did in a statement released as he signed the bill — that knowing script can help people read the original U.S. Constitution.
Learning cursive will provide New Jersey students with “the skills they need to read our nation’s founding documents,” as well as write checks and improve cognition, Mr. Murphy said on Monday, a day before relinquishing his office to the state’s new Democratic governor, Mikie Sherrill.
The bill has its opponents, though. The article continues:
On Tuesday, Gabrielle and Kurt McCann, of Lebanon, N.J., were waiting to break the news to their 9-year-old son, Atlas McCann, when he got home from school. “I think it is important that kids are able to use that refined motor skill,” Ms. McCann said in an interview shortly after a meeting where she said she had taken all her notes in longhand.
But Atlas, she said, was thinking, “What’s the point of having to sit here and torture myself?”
“Hopefully in the long run, he will see it has value,” Ms. McCann said.
Some experts share Atlas’s viewpoint. “Oh, God,” Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California, said when he learned of the New Jersey law. Mr. Polikoff acknowledged the studies showing the benefits of handwriting, but he pointed out that most were not specific to script.
He attributed the renewed affection for the style’s curlicues and squiggles to “boomerish nostalgia,” and said he was struck by cursive’s bipartisan appeal, with states as different politically as Arkansas and California requiring its instruction. Conservatives, the professor said, promote its utility for reading old documents; liberals like it for its beauty as an art form.
“It is a very strange phenomenon, but the fact that you have states left, right and center adopting mandates that children learn cursive is not something I could have predicted,” Mr. Polikoff added. “Who hand-writes hardly anything?”
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
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What do you think about New Jersey’s new requirement for elementary school students? Do you think all children should learn cursive in school? Why or why not?
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Did you learn cursive when you were younger? If so, do you think it was helpful? If you never learned cursive, do you wish you had?
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What are the benefits of learning cursive, in your opinion? What are the drawbacks?
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What theories do you have for why there is a renewed interest in teaching cursive right now?
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How often do you write by hand? How important do you think handwriting — whether in script or not — is these days? Why?
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Do you think that a hundred years from now, students will still be writing in cursive? Will they be writing by hand at all? Explain.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
Natalie Proulx is an editor at The Learning Network, a Times free teaching resource.
The post Should Children Learn Cursive in School? appeared first on New York Times.
