Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September
Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September.
I personally write almost exclusively in cursive. Printing always felt so much more unnatural to me given that it requires lifting your pencil far too often. All of your time is spent lifting and resetting your pencil.
Having said that, I know my feelings on this are outside the norm. And I know for many it is seen as having a steep learning curve.
I agree with your overall point but not the metaphor. Printing is more like using hand tools than cursive is, given it is slower and less mechanically efficient.
It's great that you had good experiences but I think if you dig through a few threads on the topic, you will see a LOT of people reporting very bad memories and even trauma around how cursive is taught. Not everyone can learn cursive and even if we had the resources to identify the large number of students who will never be able to write cursive, it is still alienating and degrading to de-stream them. And in the end, there is no significant benefit to merit the tens or hundreds of hours spent drilling letter forms. That extremely valuable time could have been spent doing something useful.
I just don't see the point? I had to learn cursive in elementary and haven't used it at all since then. There has to be more valuable things these kids could be learning.
The point is the culture war. Populism. "Reverting to a better yesterday." Fascism, writ tiny.
It's clever, no one can really object to it like they can to removing things from the curriculum. But it serves the same purpose as whipping up anger over sex ed or CRT, just low key.
It can be useful to learn for the purpose of knowing how to read it. There's still a large population of cursive writers about. I doubt cursive usage will grow anymore, even teaching it, as everything is computer based these days.