Practice Makes Perfect
The teaching of cursive writing in schools in USA is mostly abandoned. Yet, cursive writing is very useful. Once mastered, cursive writing offers a rapid means to put words on paper quicker than the alternative manuscript writing (also called printing). Cursive writing becomes distinctive over time as the skill to write in cursive increases and a person’s individual handwriting flourishes with strokes that take on a personalized form.
“Once mastered” is the key phrase. Practice is required to develop a quick, fluid, easy, and distinctive cursive handwriting. Many cursive handwritings are beautiful! The energy and discipline of practicing cursive writing as an elementary school student is worth the investment of time and effort. Mastering cursive handwriting is a lifetime skill that gives steady rewards nearly daily. Cursive writing eases mundane tasks, reflects your time investment, and offers sublime signals of accomplishment every time you write something by hand.
What’s Old is New Again!
Is learning cursive writing new again? I wrote those first two paragraphs a few years ago!
Guess what? Cursive writing returns. A phenomenon is afoot in higher education. Much of test-taking is computer based, especially since the recent pandemic. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computer usage are ready enough that students can use AI to answer their test questions during their exam period. Of course, academic dishonest operates on many levels when a student chooses to let AI complete any part of testing. Plus, the injustice to the students who cheat that way is the students do not master the intended material nor do they gain the associated abilities to assimilate and reason with that information they should have learned. Sadly, even the useful ability to query AI intelligently is robbed of students who simply copy and paste test questions created by the professor to query the AI large language model (LLM). Do such students even understand that copying rote answers from AI into their exam responses might be grammatically correct but can contain confabulated (made-up) errors to which AI is innately vulnerable? By cheating, each cheating student is cheated. Moreover, grading when AI test taking is not discovered generates a falsely negative estimation of the level of academic achievements of the students who did not cheat. Cheating cheats one’s self and one’s classmates.
This pandemic response shifted even elementary school students from learning using paper, pencils, crayons, and materials worked with hands. The shift to computers and tablets for their schoolwork came with must loss of interpersonal learning and reasoning. Teachers post assignments, readings are linked, and grades and deadlines are found exclusively in the digital world, now. Yes, we adults know youngsters who are more digitally adept, but to what cost? Is being tied to a screen in solitary confinement for more hours of a day than one sleeps a gain? Studies and data are showing this shift is a bigger loss than anyone bothered to anticipate. American youth can fix computer tech issues quickly and can navigate nimbly social media, but do their young brains have the knowledge to navigate the complex interpersonal dynamics social media imposes? Have young and developing brains accomplished the maturity that the active physical processing of life affords? What is lost by the reduction, even abandonment, of playing outside, building projects, and facing others in challenges of life and games? Working computer programs, working smart phone apps, and prompting artificial intelligence offerings ease the making of tables, diagrams, artwork, even 3-D printed items for parts, hobbies, games, and whatever else one can imagine. But, didn’t most of the adults who brought us cell phones, computers, and AI assistance actually build those capabilities from a youth of hand-on play and touch-movement learning as well as from reading physical books? Unfortunately, studies of learning using AI compared to using old-fashioned research, reading, and writing reveal information retention and understanding is diminished with use of AI. (for example, MIT YourBrainOnChatGPT)
Why is cursive writing emerging again?
As tech-savvy students use AI to make unbelievably high scores with perfect grammar on their computer tests and homework assignments, teachers are realizing something is wrong. This is increasingly true as teachers engage in academic discussions with their students only to realize the students’ comprehension and thinking memory are frustratingly inferior. To counter what I call this “unlearning trend” is a steady academic shift from computer to in-person oral and hand-written test taking without computer use or internet access. The banning of computers, tablets, and smart phones or smart watches in the testing room emerges as the logical solution along with recording of monitoring of computer use and in-room test taking. Paper and pen, even using the old blue book note paper test booklets, avoids AI cheating.
Mastery of manual skill comes with practice.
Manuscript writing is slow enough even when one is adept, but as youth have matured in this tech world, even printing is an immature skill because of a restricted need to use one’s hands to write. What to do?
Start today acquiring cursive writing skills. Savvy parents can schedule an hour each day of screen time silence for their children to practice cursive writing skills.
We are at a bit of attention reversal. When I was in school, mastering manuscript and cursive writing was foundational. Keyboard use was limited to secretarial writing. What foresight my mother had to insist I take a year long typing class in high school! I did not like that class. For a full hour each class period, we students sat at desks with typewriters (not computer keyboards). We students obeyed boring vinyl records playing acoustic drum beats to recorded scripts: a a a, space, d d d, space, a a a, space, n n n, space, a n d, space, a n d, space, etc. Each beat was responded to with the strike of the declared typewriter key. Over the months of boring practice, my hands learned to fly across the typewriter keys to fill paper pages with words. Soon after I graduated from high school, computers infiltrated our lives! Was I thankful and grateful that I could type and computer keyboards followed typewriter placement! I had to thank my mother and tell my mother that she was right! Who knew that when my education demanded fluid cursive handwriting skill attainment, that typing would become equally if not more important? Well, just saying . . .
Cursive handwriting is back!
Prepare with practice and drills writing on paper, over and over and over. Practice similar to my hitting keystrokes on the typewriter. Our students can experience Joy learning cursive writing: when the letter formation becomes automatic, then adding one’s own style to the art of handwriting is very satisfying!
Maybe, old-fashioned discipline will follow. Misbehavior can require the student to write by hand a page or two full of cursive writing of such delightful statements as these: “I will not break my classmate’s pencil” and “I will not talk back to Mrs. Smith!” That was discipline that frustrated our intent ever to repeat the infraction and refined our cursive writing prowess.
Perhaps, the pursuit of legible and attractive cursive handwriting is good for the soul.