Cursive is making a comeback. Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September.
Cursive is making a comeback. Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September.
Anyone know what research the minister is referencing? The academic later quoted said there wasn’t much research. I also wonder what was the basis for dropping cursive… The article appears to be just a bunch of cheering with little substance or context.
Personally I just dislike cursive and always have. Other people’s cursive writing is a pain in the he ass to read much of the time. The speed benefit is crushed by legibility issues. Doing a lot of genealogy research for example really underscores this, when most documents were hand written in cursive. .Yeah, great I can read cursive, but it is so often tedious and painful to decipher. There is a reason many forms came to say “print clearly”. Just my opinion and experience.
Not a super big deal either way, but so far I’m glad my kids didn’t have to bother with cursive. Artist, musician and computer programmer. Bilingual. Cursive-free!
Also, in this day and age where we write 95%+ using a keyboard, I find that advocating a speed benefit when writing by hand is pretty pointless.
My daughter had learning disability, and having to learn to write 2 different alphabet (cursive and not) would have been. A pain… One was enough
It’s Lecce. Don’t expect anything resembling reality outta that guy.
As for cursive itself the only positives I’ve seen mentioned in research and in anecdotal conversations is that physically writing information down helps with memory retention as opposed to typing it out on a keyboard. Although I’d imagine the same could be said about simply printing it out by hand.
It’ll be interesting to see what style they introduce in this new curriculum. Looking at examples online my style fits mostly with the Zaner-Bloser method.
There have been a number of studies (one, two, three) that show that writing notes by hand is better for memory retention than typing. Some of the studies have used only handwriting vs typing, some are writing on paper vs typing, and some try to use a tablet or smartphone as the digital alternative (sometimes with a stylus).
When I’m hand printing, it’s much slower than hand writing. My normal scrawl is an awful hybrid of the two that only I can read, but it’s what I used through university. I don’t think I could have kept up with lectures if I was printing, and the research is seemingly in favour of paper instead of digital. Handwriting helped me if only because it gave me a method of writing quickly.
That said, if Leece was actually referring to this research, he’d be able to defend his position pretty easily. Given all the handwaviness, it’s probably just another way to cut funding from schools and he just make up a reason that happened to match some studies.