Cursive writing--an essential!

A friend of mine told me that she had had lunch with a friend of hers--an archivist. The archivist mentioned how disappointed she was with her new intern. "What are your concerns?" my friend asked. "She can't read," the archivist stated. "She's a junior in college. How it it possible that she can't read?" my friend questioned. "It's not that she can't read at all," the archivist explained, "but she can't read cursive writing, a critical skill when working with historical documents."

This story makes me wonder if the reading and writing of cursive writing will one day be like knowing a foreign language!

In 2010, Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) aimed to standardize math and language arts requirements across the United States. Apparently, the instruction of cursive writing had been declining for years, and it seems that the CCSSI's omitting any mention of cursive writing in their curriculum pretty much rang the death knell for the teaching of it in our nation-wide elementary schools.

Yes, "correct" cursive writing is something that is difficult to test for!

As far as educational philosophy is concerned, I am an essentialist. I believe that certain things are essential to a "proper" education. Having been a high school English teacher, there are certain authors and literary works that I think are essential--but that's a post for another day!--there are certain speaking and writing skills that I believe are essential to a quality education--another post for another day.

I've also come to believe that cursive writing is essential for a complete education.  An article that outlines more detailed scientific information about the value of learning script or cursive writing can be found in a recent Psychology Today magazine, entitled "What Learning Cursive Does for the Brain."

Before retirement, I had begun to notice that some of my students printed everything. Now I wonder if they simply didn't know how to write cursively. Perhaps their elementary school teacher had skipped that particular skill, just as my daughter's elementary teacher omitted teaching her students the capital cities of the states!

Just because much of our "speaking" and writing is done with a keyboard doesn't mean that we won't need to use our fingers and hands to write on occasion. But there's something even more important to cursive writing than this need.

The same friend who told the above story about the archivist considers learning cursive writing to be a "rite of passage" into adulthood, like using an ink pen. She further tells me that practicing her penmanship led to her love of writing, "As I moved my fountain pen across the lined paper, my writing became my voice. I wanted to read more to gain the knowledge to write more. My vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and sentence structure all improved [with cursive writing]."

In hearing about this movement toward not teaching cursive writing, I thought about personality development and how my cursive writing has changed/matured over the years with my personality. It's fun to look back and see how you used to write in grade school, high school, college, early adulthood, etc. Cursive writing generally show your personality development.

Remember when you used to get a card or letter through snail mail, you could tell from the handwriting on the envelop who had sent it. As a teacher, if a name on a paper was missing, I could usually tell by their handwriting whose paper it was. Handwritten notes are usually more appreciated than emailed ones.

How I cherish today some handwritten recipes from my mother! When I tenderly touch her faded writing, it is as if I am touching her.

Also remember how handwriting analyzers are able to tell us about some of our personality traits from our handwriting. Someone's handwriting is their "signature. A part of them that is unique," my friend states. So if a person doesn't learn cursive writing, might that somehow change her/his personality development? His/her uniqueness? If we all write alike--from a computer keyboard--won't we be more like little automatons who do not have our own individual thoughts? (perhaps more Big Brother mind control--re-read the George Orwell novel 1984)

I, for one,  believe that we would. That's why I think that the teaching. learning, and practice (though I'm sure that it takes time and patience) of cursive writing is paramount to a quality education and to a person's personality development and uniqueness.

Let's bring back this essential skill--cursive writing!

An interesting sidenote: Since I was raised in the 50s, I guess that I learned cursive writing in third or fourth grade. When I began seventh grade in a new school, DuPont Junior High School, the English teacher there--a really old gray-headed lady (probably she was in her late 40s!)--told us students that most of our handwriting had become adulterated. She told us that in addition to the usual seventh grade English lessons she was going to teach us cursive writing from scratch! And so we all began again to learn our letters and to practice and practice. By then I had begun to write back handed like my mother--though neither of us was left handed--and it wasn't pretty. So I was taught once again to slant by letters to the right. At the time with my budding teenness, I resented having to learn cursive writing again, but of course, like many good lessons in life, it turned out to be a great value for me.

Schools are not mere machines

Yesterday, as I was listening to NPR, there was "leader/expert" in the field of education saying that our education system is over 100 years old and that it is like the model-T. His point seemed to be that either we can tinker with it to get it running again, or we can replace it with the latest model. Whatever model that may be?

I don't believe that this was a appropriate metaphor to describe the education system. Because a school is made up of humans, it is a whole lot more complex than an automobile has ever been, and a classroom is certainly not a mere machine. Thus this metaphor makes improving education sound too simple. Which I think that a lot of non-thinking politicians have fallen for.

A somewhat typical mind-set of a technological/industrial society, this man's metaphor implies that if it doesn't work, we can just fix it. Of course, I myself like to say, "If it ain't broke [broken], don't fix it." I also like to quote, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!" Which replacing the model T completely with a new model of automobile would do, as would somehow creating a completely new model for schools would do. It would throw the good out with the bad. And our 100-year-old education system has had a lot of good in it, a lot of good worth saving!

In the last decade, it appears that "fixing" education means more and more testing of students. More and more taking away job security (tenure) and freedom to teach and to be creative from teachers. Testing of students has also been connected to teachers keeping their jobs or perhaps getting "merit" pay in some school districts. Testing students forces teachers to "teach" to the tests, to some generic tests that the state or federal government (Common Core) has come up with, not a test that the teachers themselves have created.

Who decides which questions to put on a multiple choice test? Can such a test really come up with 50 or so questions that reflect what each student knows and what each teacher has taught? Before I retired in 2010, I remember teaching to these tests with my English II (sophomore) students because I was being judged as a teacher by something called value-added (some mathematical equation that hardly anyone could explain to us). Some years my value-added score was good, some years not so good though I could not tell what I had done differently. Perhaps I had different students.

The tests themselves had faults. First, some of the questions on the test were particularly specific and often insignificant, "Where would you put the comma in the following series?" when indeed the comma was optional, and secondly, other questions were opinions as far as the answer went, "What is the most important sentence in this paragraph?" Important how? Important to whom?

So I was forced to take up valuable class time making sure that my students would "play the game" of testing, rather than get on with teaching material that I considered valuable; material that could not be measured by any test, such as how to treat your fellow man, how to value yourself, how and why to speak correctly, how to write a coherent composition, etc., etc., etc.

A state or federal test cannot measure the value of a student nor of his teacher, for we are not machines. It cannot truly measure on any given day what a student has learned nor what a teacher has taught. For we are complex human beings.

We are complex human beings with multi-dimensions. We are mental and emotional. We are solitary and social. We are spiritual and physical. We come from different genetics and different environments. Thus we cannot be judged by the exact same criteria. We cannot be programmed like a computer to perform on tests. We cannot be programmed like a computer to teach a certain way or to teach only certain material. For we are humans. Not model Ts nor Cadillacs.

There may be many ways to improve public education, but generic state or federal testing is not one of them. At least not the way testing is presently being done in Cheatham County or in Tennessee. Even though most states opted onto the Common Core curriculum and testing as soon as our federal government offered it, and Tennessee later than some, many states are now seeing that it is not the answer or even an answer and are opting out. Many parents are also opting out, too, by not allowing their children to take such tests.

Some parents have been concerned about the impact of such high stakes testing on their children and on their children's teachers and on on their schools. According to Time magazine (April 21, 2014) test protesters hope that the parental opt-out movement "crushes the system, says Janet Wilson, an activist from upstate New York. "This is our way of civil disobedience."

So if only a few Cheatham County parents were courageous enough to start a movement to opt their children out of Tennessee's state exams, then that would be a step in the right direction to take back our schools and put them back in the hands of the educators-- the teachers and local school administrators who are educated/trained to effectively run a classroom or a school. Teachers and local principals who have a love of learning and a passion for our youth, not who are trying to make some political statement nor trying to reach some "pie-in-sky" educational goal.

So I dare Cheatham County parents to be civilly disobedient (as Thoreau encouraged us to do when the government was wrong). I encourage parents to take back their schools by opting their children out of state or federal testing--out of Common Core exams. The teachers and principals hands are tied on this matter. Only you can do it. Then, and only then, can we talk about improving education in Cheatham County.

This picture seems to be a private school situation because of the small number of students, and yes, because of the "uniforms." One of the ways to improve education is to lower the teacher-to-student ratio. As any parent who pays for private education knows, fewer students per teacher means a better quality education.  When I have visited private school classrooms, the ratio was usually one teacher per 10 or fewer students!