Cursive writing instruction has been quietly disappearing from our public schools for years.
The B.C. Ministry of Education, English Language Arts Core Competencies (2016), acknowledges the historical importance of cursive writing, offers the opinion it’s no longer necessary and concludes: “The focus should be on legibility in handwriting and the ability to communicate clearly, rather than on a particular style of handwriting.”
More than once this last week, I reached out to both School District No. 42 and the Maple Ridge Teachers’ Association, asking if cursive writing is still taught locally?
The response: crickets.
Through university, into the workplace and early adult life, I utilized my cursive writing skill daily to take notes, write letters, lists and more. Then computers entered my life. It wasn’t long before keyboarding supplanted much of my longhand writing.
Among my age group, I was an early adopter. I type quickly and embraced technology, word processing and email. I built my first website in 1996, hand-coding HTML in a text-based browser. This required regular visits to the public library to view the results on its newer computer. I share this to forestall any conclusion my concern about cursive writing instruction stems from a failure to adjust to modern technology.
In fact, over the post-technology years, my use of handwriting decreased significantly. I wrote non-fiction on my computer, learned to text and use voice recognition software, and communicated through email and social media.
In 2010, I began writing fiction. I continued to write on my computer, but expressed dissatisfaction with my first drafts to a writing instructor. She suggested hand-writing them, as it taps into a different part of the creative brain. Skeptical – but willing to try – the change infused my first drafts with a depth they previously lacked.
Maple Ridge writer Ronda Payne concurs.
“The movement of my hand when writing cursive allows for far greater access to creativity than printing or typing. The flow of the pen on paper gives my brain less involvement in the words themselves and more involvement in the source.”
Unfortunately, my hand cramped easily from long-disuse and it took time to work up to handwriting more than a few lines.
Recently, I conducted an unscientific experiment. Grabbing a nearby novel and a pad of paper, I wrote out the first page in cursive, then hand-printed it, and finally opened a Word document and typed it in.
The result: cursive, five minutes, 52 seconds; printing, six minutes, 50 seconds; typing, four minutes, 24 seconds.
For time efficiency, typing wins, but what happens when we don’t have access to some sort of word processor, or choose not to type on a device because of increasing privacy concerns? Hand-printing is the only option for many in the younger generations.
When researching on-line, I almost always take notes by hand. My brain processes the material more thoroughly, recognizes patterns and makes connections that don’t occur when I type notes.
Cursive writing is more fluid than printing.
Maria Montessori believed young children need to write down their thoughts before they learn to decode the words of others. For this, she stressed early cursive instruction.
Campaign for Cursive has produced a white paper on the topic which cites research and acknowledges other points of view.
Does the education system really understand the consequences of what they’ve done or was the decision more administrative than educational?
“Many of our historical records are handwritten even going back only a generation,” said local historian Andrea Lister, editor of British Columbia History magazine.
“Future generations may find key historical documents beautiful, but unreadable without a transcription. Much is lost in a transcription, emphasis, corrections, underlines, the subtleties in the handwriting that indicate the emotions of the writer. They won’t see the angry pen strokes that come from anger or the beautiful, rushed handwriting that comes from happiness. It is a move that relegates handwriting to a specialty like reading hieroglyphics. It separates generations from their own history – they cannot read letters or recipes from their grandparents.”
The trend away from cursive writing shows signs of reversing. South of the border, upwards of 11 states, including California, have added cursive instruction back to the federally-mandated Common Core State Standards. It was eliminated in 2009. Many other states are considering the move.
Some argue that because – like me a few years ago – they use their cursive writing skills minimally, it’s fine to take it out of the curriculum. I strongly disagree. What a child decides to do with a skill once they leave school is up to them. Large numbers of adults, for example, never read another novel once they leave high school. Does it follow we should stop teaching literature?
It’s past time to fully restore cursive writing instruction in British Columbia.
Katherine Wagner is a member of the Citizens’ Task Force on
Transparency, a former school trustee and member of Golden Ears Writers.