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The NY Times asks does handwriting matter? The Common Core standards stop teaching handwriting after the first grade, preferring a proficiency in typing after that.
However, studies are showing that children learn faster, are able to retain more information, and generate new ideas when they first learn to write by hand. The process of thinking about how to form a letter and putting it on the page stimulates more areas of the brain. This come from the inherent messiness in free-form writing, which can be a valuable learning tool.
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Truth will out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Wednesday June 04 2014, @02:59PM
I used to agree with your sentiment. The problem, I think, is that people learn them as two separate languages instead of realizing that cursive is the logical endpoint if you start with plain hand writing, and try to be as fast as possible without raising the pen from the page.
I disliked cursive because I thought I knew handwriting better, and was faster at it. Then all through college, I took notes using plain handwriting. Guess what? By the end, I was a lot faster - and what I was writing had morphed about 70% of the way toward cursive. Completely organic change, I didn't realize it until I really looked at what I was putting on the page. I'd independently re-invented cursive, sans a few of the weirder capital letters.
So I do think it's a useful thing, but it's a continuum instead of two separate languages. Teaching it as two separate things is a really crappy way to go about it. Also when teachers grade on how 'pretty' cursive letters are, that doesn't help. Cursive can be flowing and pretty, sure, but it's designed to be fast. That method of teaching makes it slow, which means students (completely rationally) won't see the point and won't use it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:02PM
Cursive is what separates men from women, TTYs and other dumb devices.