Cursive! Foiled Again! 0
When I was a young ‘un, in the days of men of iron and computers of wood, schools taught “printing,” then “writing.”
When my kids came home (in the brass age, when computers were made of brass) and told me they were learning “cursive,” I wondered, “What is this thing called ‘cursive’?”
Turned out it was “writing.” (That was about the same time that “typing” became “keyboarding”; it was also coincident with an overall decline of typing skills. Fancifying the name of something seems often coincident with two things: A proliferation of consultants who take money to tell you how to do it better and the overall decline of whatever it is that has gotten a fancified name.)
Now, the fancified name for “writing” is taking its toll:
“Cursive really is on its way out,” said Jill Kennett, who teaches third grade at Brownstown Elementary School in the Conestoga Valley School District. “However, it’s not there yet.”
Kennett, who is in her 23d year of teaching, said she taught second graders in the Manheim Central School District in 1989. Teachers then blocked out time for teaching cursive, and students had cursive workbooks.
Now, she said, “the emphasis is completely different. It has completely lost its importance.”
