Cursive writing: Why did we learn that again?
Posted June 22nd, 2009. Categorized under Miscellaneous. 9 Comments
When I think back to third grade, one of the most prominent memories of the schoolwork we did was our large “Handwriting” books that we were required to write in to learn cursive. Each day, we would learn a different letter, practicing it a zillion times on its own and in sentences until we could master its use. Our teacher would check our books occasionally to make sure that we were still writing it just fine.
Cursive handwriting books
I went to a private school through sixth grade, and cursive was definitely forced on us there. Once we learned how to write in cursive, we were expected to always use cursive in any writing we turned in. Teachers wouldn’t accept our work if it wasn’t in cursive. They claimed that only cursive was used in the “real world”, and that printing was inferior and for little kids.
In seventh grade, I finally began to attend public school, where it was perfectly fine to print. Out of habit, I used cursive for the first couple of weeks until I decided to give printing a try again. I quickly found out why most people never bother with cursive.
My print was far faster and far more legible than my cursive ever was. Occasionally, I would write something in cursive and come back unable to read it, but once I started printing, I had no troubles at all. And, finally, I could keep up in taking notes with what the teacher said.
Seven years later, and I still haven’t used cursive for anything except my signature. And now I’m wondering, why was cursive so important for us to learn? My friends who attended public school had cursive shoved on them at first, and they too find no use for it.
Loading ...What do you think? Do you use cursive writing?
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1. Ste from free TomTom
June 22nd, 2009 1:38 pm
I never use cursive, it looks messy when I even try to use it. But just like you it was forced on me at school, and just like you when we had handwriting lessons they convinced us that that was all that was used in the real world. In reality I don’t know many people who do. Thanks for reminding me of this!