Many of the signatures of people that did not learn how to write in cursive consists of a capitalized letter and a squiggle line for the first name and a second capitalized letter and a squiggle line for the last. You cannot determine the name or spellings from the signature alone.

I was taught cursive, but not the beautiful Palmer method script that some of you mentioned. Consequently, my cursive writing is not very attractive so I print everything.

Handwriting matters — but does cursive matter? The research is surprising. For instance, it has been documented that legible cursive writing averages no faster than printed handwriting of equal or greater legibility. (Sources for all research are listed below.)

More recently, it has also been documented that cursive does NOT objectively improve the reading, spelling, or language of students who have dyslexia/dysgraphia.

This is what I'd expect from my own experience, by the way. As a handwriting teacher and remediator, I see numerous children, teens, and adults — dyslexic and otherwise — for whom cursive poses even more difficulties than print-writing. (Contrary to myth, reversals in cursive are common — a frequent cursive reversal in my caseload, among dyslexics and others, is “J/f.”)

— According to comparative studies of handwriting speed and legibility in different forms of writing, the fastest, clearest handwriters avoid cursive — although they are not absolute print-writers either. The highest speed and highest legibility in handwriting are attained by those who join only some letters, not all: joining only the most easily joined letter-combinations, leaving the rest unjoined, and using print-like shapes for letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree.

Reading cursive still matters — but reading cursive is much easier and quicker to master than writing the same way too. Reading cursive, simply reading it, can be taught in just 30 to 60 minutes — even to five- or six-year-olds (including those with dyslexia) once they read ordinary print. (There's even an iPad app teaching kids and others to read cursive, whether or not they write it or ever will write it. The app — “Read Cursive” — is a free download. Those who are rightly concerned with the vanishing skill of cursive reading may wish to visit appstore.com/readcursive for more information.)

We don’t require our children to learn to make their own pencils (or build their own printing presses) before we teach them how to read and write. Why require them to write cursive before we teach them how to read it? Why not simply teach children to read cursive — along with teaching other vital skills, such as a form of handwriting that is actually typical of effective handwriters?

Just as each and every child deserves to be able to read all kinds of everyday handwriting (including cursive), each and every one of our children — dyslexic or not — deserves to learn the most effective and powerful strategies for high-speed high-legibility handwriting performance.

Teaching material for practical handwriting abounds — especially in the UK and Europe, where such handwriting is taught at least as often as the accident-prone cursive which is venerated by too many North American educators. Some examples, in several cases with student work also shown: http://www.BFHhandwriting.com, http://www.handwritingsuccess.com, http://www.briem.net, http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com, http://www.italic-handwriting.org, http://www.studioarts.net/calligraphy/italic/curriculum.html )

Even in the USA and Canada, educated adults increasingly quit cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers across North America were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37% wrote in cursive; another 8% printed. The majority — 55% — wrote with some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive.

(If you would like to take part in another, ongoing poll of handwriting forms — not hosted by a publisher, and not restricted to teachers — visit http://www.poll.fm/4zac4 for the One-Question Handwriting Survey, created by this author. As with the Zaner-Bloser teacher survey, so far the results show very few purely cursive handwriters — and even fewer purely printed writers. Most handwriting in the real world — 75% of the response totals, so far — consists of print-like letters with occasional joins.)

When even most handwriting teachers do not themselves use cursive, why glorify it?

Believe it or not, some of the adults who themselves write in an occasionally joined but otherwise print-like handwriting tell me that they are teachers who still insist that their students must write in cursive, and/or who still teach their students that all adults habitually and normally write in cursive and always will. (Given the facts on our handwriting today, this is a little like teaching kids that our current president is Richard Nixon.)

What, I wonder, are the educational and psychological effects of teaching, or trying to teach, something that the students can probably see for themselves is no longer a fact?

Cursive's cheerleaders (with whom I’ve had some stormy debates) sometimes allege that cursive has benefits which justify absolutely anything said or done to promote that form of handwriting. The cheerleaders for cursive repeatedly state (sometimes in sworn testimony before school boards and state legislatures) that cursive cures dyslexia or prevents it, that it makes you pleasant and graceful and intelligent, that it adds brain cells, that it instills proper etiquette and patriotism, or that it confers numerous other blessings which are no more prevalent among cursive users than among the rest of the human race. Some claim research support — citing studies that invariably prove to have been misquoted or otherwise misrepresented by the claimant.

So far, whenever a devotee of cursive claims the support of research, one or more of the following things has become evident as soon as others examined the claimed support:

/1/ either the claim provides no source,

or

/2/ if a source is cited, and anyone checks it out, the source turns out to have been misquoted or incorrectly paraphrased by the person citing it

or

/3/ the claimant correctly quotes/cites a source which itself indulges in either /1/ or /2/.

Cursive devotees' eagerness to misrepresent research has substantial consequences, as the misrepresentations are commonly made — under oath — in testimony before school districts, state legislatures, and other bodies voting on educational measures. The proposals for cursive are, without exception so far, introduced by legislators or other spokespersons whose misrepresentations (in their own testimony) are later revealed — although investigative reporting of the questionable testimony does not always prevent the bill from passing into law, even when the discoveries include signs of undue influence on the legislators promoting the cursive bill? (Documentation on request: I am willing to be interviewed by anyone who is interested in bringing this serious issue inescapably before the public’s eyes and ears.)

By now, you’re probably wondering: “What about cursive and signatures? Will we still have legally valid signatures if we stop signing our names in cursive?” Brace yourself: in state and federal law, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind. (Hard to believe? Ask any attorney!)

Questioned document examiners (these are specialists in the identification of signatures, the verification of documents, etc.) inform me that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest. Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls: the rest, if they follow the rules of cursive at all, are fairly complicated: these make a forger's life easy.

All handwriting, not just cursive, is individual — just as all handwriting involves fine motor skills. That is why any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from the print-writing on unsigned work) which of 25 or 30 students produced it.

Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.

SOURCES:

Handwriting research on speed and legibility:

/1/ Arthur Dale Jackson. “A Comparison of Speed and Legibility of Manuscript and Cursive Handwriting of Intermediate Grade Pupils.”

Ed. D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1970: on-line at http://www.eric.ed.gov/?id=ED056015

/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May - June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf

/3/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”

JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September - October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf

Zaner-Bloser handwriting survey: Results on-line at http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H2937N_post_event_stats.pdf

Ongoing handwriting poll: http://poll.fm/4zac4

The research most often misrepresented by devotees of cursive (“Neural Correlates of Handwriting" by Dr. Karin Harman-James at Indiana University):

https://www.hw21summit.com/research-harman-james

Background on our handwriting, past and present:

3 videos, by a colleague, show why cursive is NOT a sacrament:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CURSIVE —

http://youtu.be/3kmJc3BCu5g

TIPS TO FIX HANDWRITING —

http://youtu.be/s_F7FqCe6To

HANDWRITING AND MOTOR MEMORY

(shows how to develop fine motor skills WITHOUT cursive) —

http://youtu.be/Od7PGzEHbu0

Yours for better letters,

Kate Gladstone

DIRECTOR, the World Handwriting Contest

CEO, Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works

http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com

handwritingrepair@gmail.com

Seniorgal, I'm another Palmer Method graduate. What a gift that system was! To this day, I still get compliments. Needless to say, though, I can't print well.

We older folk sometimes take for granted that the world as we knew it is the world as it is meant to be.

When would the schools have time to teach cursive in this day and age? Kids in our urban school system are learning to communicate in other ways.

My middle school neighbors have already learned to type, had Spanish, German, & Arabic since third grade, and take instrumental music through for three years. This year the schools began a rudimentary computer programming class. All of these are forms of communication, none of which I had in elementary and middle school---even if I did learn cursive.

I see that the kids can read cursive; they just have to be exposed to it often enough. That is not so special a skill, really.

My own son, nearly 30 years old, did not learn cursive. That has not held him back. He still writes messages and makes notes by hand sometimes. He still can make out a paper check (though there is not much call for that, what with online payments), sign contracts, sign the back of his credit card, send his mom birthday cards, and sign on all the appropriate dotted lines. His print signature is as unique to him as would be his cursive signature. If writing in cursive were something he found useful, advantageous, or even socially valuable, I'm sure he would teach himself.

Using cursive is not a mark of one's industriousness, capability, precision, creativity, place, power, or identity in this world.

Its sad but true, penmanship is lost. I was shocked last year while visiting a friend of ours. I wrote out an instruction in cursive and her child, a freshman in high school, was baffled. He could not begin to decipher the note, let along be able to read it aloud smoothly.

Today, I ran into a difficulty regarding penmanship. I needed to get a copy of a traffic accident report that happened 8 days ago. A couple of days ago when I called and gave the report number from the form made out by the officer on the night of the accident, it could not be found in their computer system. Today, I personally went to the police station and the clerk proceeded to query the system and no such report was found; And then she noticed there was something wrong with the serial number. Using other facts, she was able to find the report and corrected the number I had. Apparently, the officer mis-copied the report number at the scene of the accident.

Another factoid having to do with cursive/printing.... My daughter (44), a school psychologist, has to prepare so many reports she has difficulty writing cursive anymore. The same thing happened to my husband (40-years with the same company) with all the handwritten documents he does at work - both of them only use printing anymore, other than their signature. Hubby goes through a full ink pen each week, and I doubt he can write a whole letter using cursive.

I do a lot of handwriting. My script, which once was textbook classic, is now a combination of printing and cursive. I did calligraphy years ago, and spent hours practicing, but that's now a lost art.

Several years ago I received correspondence from a woman in her 90's, former school teacher in Saskatchewan, who had perfect Copperplate cursive handwriting. Her letters were a work of art, and of coarse, a piece of history we won't ever see again, much like our cursive writing.

I remember holding my son on my lap in front of my electric typewriter when he was 5-years old (in 1982) and teaching him the keyboard and how to type from an old typing manual textbook. I knew if he didn't learn correct fingering, he would make up his own method. Kinda' like a priest we had who typed using 2 fingers (pointer and middle fingers) on each hand.

Sounds like some people are confused...it really isn't important if someone uses cursive, it is important to be taught cursive so that you can READ IT, there are a lot of hand written documents that you will not know how to read. I think the idea of not teaching cursive is ridiculous! Most historical documents are written in cursive! What if someone sends you a letter and it's written in cursive? How stupid would you look going to a friend and asking them "can you read this to me"...GAH! It's something I learned in elementary school, how difficult can it be for crying out loud!?

My sixteen year old son's schools taught cursive. He writes in cursive. Don't know why other schools aren't teaching, but it's not totally gone.

extra curricular, often aka "babysitting" things and teach them cursive and the other lost art, how to tell time!

What the heck are you talking about? My son's schedule (and it's typical of all the students at his school) is Algebra II, Principles of Engineering, Latin III, Wind Ensemble, Chemistry, English and World History. After school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and all day Saturday is marching band which is physically and mentally demanding. On Wednesdays he is in fencing club. When does he get to rest, much less have "babysitting things" happen? Oh, and at lunch, he is working on an engineering design for which he is planning to get a patent. His teacher agrees so much, he lets him use the school's computers for this project. Tell time? He's known since kindergarten. And how to tie his own shoes, and by first grade he could calculate a tip, make change, etc.... boy, our schools must be really different than the rest of the US/Canada (since that's where most of the board seems to be from)

How many of you are in CURRENT schools? At which schools do you see this happening? You seem to live in some sort of fearful place that I totally don't understand.

If schools added more time into the day, I'd prefer the kids get more PE or recess so they get more physical activity. I would take away some of the computer activities. The kids can't do homework unless they have access to some sort of electronic device. It makes it hard to take away the device when the kid needs to get more fresh air or just step away from the computer.

My kids no longer have textbooks. The schools have done away with with them. The kids get handouts or make notes and keep them in notebooks and study from those.

In the olden days, having a cursive writing skill was important because all records, all correspondence, anything at all put down on paper was done with handwriting. Once typewriters came into widespread use (which was maybe on the early end of the mid-20th century) having trained handwriting skills became less essential.

Today, it's unimportant. Few things are handwritten anymore, other than short informal messages and notes to oneself. As far as reading it, as with those who need to read old or archival documents, it can be learned. There's no need to waste everyone's time to develop a skill few will use. There are enough essential topics that aren't adequately covered in schools, let them spend the time on the more important subjects.

Here in Maine, cursive is still taught, starting in the 2nd grade, as well as learning to tell time.

Agree with everything Cynic wrote.

So many have been brainwashed into believing that technology is the answer to everything. This and that is no longer necessary because we have computers. The same was said about math skills when pocket calculators were the "new" thing. Thus we have a generation who can't count back change.

What people forget was that most of the technology we have today is relatively new. It was designed and brought to us by people who were products of the three 'Rs. Many never got degrees and barely finished high school. They had the basics and carried on. They read and took copious notes.

DS was self taught in his computer skills. How? Because he could READ. He had a gift for math but the schools didn't teach him. He learned by reading books. He didn't have access to a computer at school until he entered a magnet program in high school. It was a bust. He already knew more about computers than the teachers who were supposed to be teaching him. He spent his spare time in high school with a group of engineers and the like building Gladiator Rodney, one of the earliest autonomous fighting robots. He was still too young for a drivers license. I had to drive him to Palo Alto and back.

The earliest members of the Homebrew Computer Club were products of the 3 R's in elementary school. They learned how to read,write and do math. Their electrical engineering and programming skills were built on those basics. The best hackers, phreakers and crackers? All products of the 3 R's back in elementary school.

Kids don't need more technology in schools, they need to lead to reading , writing and arithmetic. Those 3 skills can take them anywhere. All the technology in the world won't do a thing if they don't understand the basics.

And they still do "lead to reading , writing and arithmetic".

I really have never understood what the phrase "three Rs" means. Does it mean reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic? How is that good grammar? KIDDING!

It's not meant to be good grammar, Rob. It's aural alliteration, and also comes from a time and a dialect that is different from ours.

Wow, if children these days are so stupid they can't learn to tell time, write in cursive, or count back change...lord help us! These are things that I knew as a child and do not recall any huge amount of time spent learning this! I would be embarrassed to admit to not knowing these very simple, elementary skills! People are acting like some ungodly amount of time has to be spent to teach a kid to write in cursive....I'm thinking a small amount of time per day for a couple weeks should be god's plenty time! I also have to laugh because people think they are "high tech" because they can use an Iphone...they are so simple even a baby can use these! SMH!

Matthias_Lang wrote (and I will stick my reply comments in):

"We older folk sometimes take for granted that the world as we knew it is the world as it is meant to be."

I qualify as one of the "older folk" since I am 66. I am constantly saying to folks that "just because something has always been done that way doesn't mean it's the best way or the right way to do it." Having said that, however, I think that eliminating cursive is wrong, wrong, wrong. As I and others have said, there are many historical documents written in cursive that will become illegible to those who live in the good old USA.

"When would the schools have time to teach cursive in this day and age? Kids in our urban school system are learning to communicate in other ways.

My middle school neighbors have already learned to type, had Spanish, German, & Arabic since third grade, and take instrumental music through for three years. This year the schools began a rudimentary computer programming class. All of these are forms of communication, none of which I had in elementary and middle school---even if I did learn cursive."

Back in the last century when I was in school, school started at 8:00 a.m. and we got out at 3:30 p.m. That gave us time for 7 classes that lasted 50 minutes each, and a lunch break that lasted 40 minutes.

Does a child really need to learn three languages in school? When I was a kid (a very long time ago), we could take a foreign language as an elective. Of course, the choices were limited to French, Latin, German, and Spanish. Music (instrument as well as voice) was also an elective.

"I see that the kids can read cursive; they just have to be exposed to it often enough. That is not so special a skill, really.

"My own son, nearly 30 years old, did not learn cursive. That has not held him back. He still writes messages and makes notes by hand sometimes. He still can make out a paper check (though there is not much call for that, what with online payments), sign contracts, sign the back of his credit card, send his mom birthday cards, and sign on all the appropriate dotted lines. His print signature is as unique to him as would be his cursive signature. If writing in cursive were something he found useful, advantageous, or even socially valuable, I'm sure he would teach himself."

All of my nieces and nephews learned cursive in school. Two of my nieces, ages 38 and 34, and one of my nephews, age 29, use cursive every day for anything that it handwritten or signed. The others still use cursive, but I'm not certain how much they hand write anything.

This may shock you, but not everyone uses online bill payments. Not everyone has a computer, and not everyone with a computer has Internet access.

I'm not an expert in handwriting analysis, but I would venture to guess that forging a printed name is a lot easier than forging a cursive signature. And if you look at architectural drawings, you would be hard pressed to tell which of hundreds of architects did them -- they are all taught to hand write a specific font for the documents.

"Using cursive is not a mark of one's industriousness, capability, precision, creativity, place, power, or identity in this world."

I never said it was.

My grand daughter took her first selfie before she was a year old. A really good one. That does not make her a photographer. She loves to dance and sing. That does not make her a great dancer nor a singer.

Basics and fundamentals may be "out of style" but they will always be extremely important to those who want to truly excel and be the best they can be.

A lot of people are willing to accept mediocrity because that is what they grew up with.

Hence the raves about In and Out Burgers, Five Guys (ick) and all the "new" burger joints. The ones who think them so wonderful grew up on McDonalds not the really good old fashioned burgers that drive-ins and diners used to serve that were the "norm" back in the day.

It is happening in sports too. Just throw the kids out there and let them learn by doing. No fundamentals being taught. No goals to meet. Everyone gets a trophy. I have seen my own sport of artistic skating be destroyed by this mindset. At one time the fundamentals of good skating were school figures. Edging,balance,posture, muscle control. But then they decided they were a waste, boring and unnecessary. So now we have skaters who don't know edging, cheat all their jumps etc., travel their spins and judges who no longer hold them to the standards because "everybody" does it. It literally destroyed artistic roller skating.

Even the now fashionable tutu used to be something one earned the right to wear through hours of hard practice at the barre. Now they are tot fashion. No reason for a little girl to aspire to dance well. Here's your tutu honey. Now you are a princess. Gag. You want to be a dancer? Choose your version. Hip hop? Start jumping around, no need to spend time learning how to dance. No one will know the difference between ballet trained and otherwise. The lines are again blurred through mediocrity.

I hear a lot about how "kids are different" today. I call BS. The kids are the same. They just have a wider world to explore. Parents are buying fewer wooden blocks "because my kids won't play with that stuff" and more electronics. Instead of color, shape and sensory texture babies are being entertained by noise and flashing lights. Legos have become model kits unlike the open ended toys they once were and continue to be in Europe. In Europe Lego parts are much more intricate. American Legos are designed for American parents who don't want to step in and help their kids. They are easier and allow the child early success. More dumbing down IMHO. Can't have anything too basic like bricks that require one to use their imagination and build on math and spatial ability.

Restaurants are considered to be successful if they are loud and have several TV sets going on at once. Forget quiet ambiance and well prepared food. It has to be fun. I read a Yelp review on a local diner the other day. Many comments by the younger patrons were scornful of the fact that they didn't even play music, have a TV or supply their kids with crayons before they asked for them. They said the food was good but they wouldn't be back because it was a place "for old people" LOL.

Yeah I sound like an old fuddy duddy to some but I have the experience of having both the fundamentals and the new age stuff. Because I have the basics and understand the importance of fundamentals my ability to learn is infinite as long as my mind still works.

It doesn't matter if one will use cursive later on. What matters is it develops motor skills and learning to write down things promotes memory and learning.
It's something you have to focus on in real time.

I was schooled in cursive writing using the Palmer Method exercises. This was a common font used in rural grade schools in wide belt along the Ohio river. People of my age group who went to school in southern Illinois. southern Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky tend to have similar cursive handwriting. When I use care, my penmanship today is yet acceptable. maybe not as good as it once was. What I have observed in my family is that I can see age related changes over the years. My mother's handwriting changed very slowly and remained legible up to her demise at age 96. Both my father's and sister's writing began to deteriorate as arthritis and nerve damage increased. My sister had nice writing until her health began to fail, and then muscle twitch started to show in her writing. Sadly, writing is a slow chore for her now. My oldest son has fine motor difficulty and he struggles with writing to the point that he avoids it whenever possible. Unfortunately, this attitude deprived him of needed practice when young.

The characters forms in cursive writing are designed to flow smoothly from one character to the next. This 'flow' gives speed and grace to writing. Only a few character combinations are awkward. And why is there a dot over the I and j? My guess is its there to eliminate confusion among certain character combinations using i, j, u, and v. For example, write in cursive the words, just, jive, and juice and omit the dots. You really need those dots to differentiate between ui and w or ji and y. Without dots, the word, just, might be read as yist.

Printing is ok but slow compared to cursive. During the early part of my career, printing was a main component of my job for earning money to go to college. I worked as an intern engineer for a government office and made drawings and sketches, the final copy was done in india ink. The characters on drawings had to be precise and adhere to strict character form. This was done to minimize mis-reads of critical data. Back then in the so called "good old days", there were no digital computers and a few analog computers were used to solve complex problems requiring differential equations. Most engineers could not touch type; that's what secretaries did and engineers' output depended on their hand writing. The keyboard the engineers were familiar with was on a Marchant Calculator. And oh, they were proficient with slide rules. It is very different today. However, call me old school; I enjoy seeing nice cursive writing.

Lindsey- many say that the US is severely behind other industrialized nations where ALL children are bilingual so yes, in this day and age of globalization, I would say it is extremely important to take foreign languages in order to be competitive in the business world.

DD was taught cursive in third grade (maybe 2006?). Her 5th grade teacher was dissatisfied with the penmanship in her class, so she taught them again, and required spelling tests and English assignments to be done in cursive. I was so glad.

But, Texas_Gem, it is necessary for a child to take THREE foreign languages classes? Bilingual means "two languages." Which, in the USA, would mean English and one foreign language.

I get what you are saying Lindsey and thanks, I do know the definition of bilingual. You wrote about how when you were in school foreign language was an elective, I was simply saying that taking foreign languages is important. How many and which ones you take is the difficult part and I'm sure dependent on where you live and what kind of career you might choose to pursue.

It's inane to say three Rs and only ones is. Why perpetuate stupidity?

It's just an expression, Rob. Do you want to correct the Doors' song? Whom Do You Love?

Re cursive, it was actually developed as a way to make bird feathers hand cut to write with, and soft brushes, work better. Starting and stopping makes blots and smears. Cursive is also easier, and more legible, with a wax tablet and stylus. Modern ball point pens don't often make blots. Should kids learn the basics of cursive? Sure! But I do agree that penmanship such as one would have needed to be any kind of clerk a hundred years ago is just not necessary anymore.

Texas-Gem -- what I had posted about languages was more in reply to what Matthias_Lang wrote: "had Spanish, German, & Arabic since third grade..." ...as if it is more important for kids to learn to speak three languages in addition to English. Why not drop one of the languages (the kid would still be multi-lingual) and learn cursive?

Who Do You Love = Bo Diddley. First non-African American version was by Quicksilver as far as I remember. One of my favorite groups from high school years.

Some think learning foreign languages can be dangerous - learning about other people in other countries can lead kids to understand that the winners of the World Series and Super Bowl, playing sports mostly not played outside the US, can hardly be considered as "World Champions". And worse things too.

Me, I'm all for it (foreign language study). It tends to melt the "we're special little snowflakes" outlook that too many Americans have when considering our place in the world.

Personally I'd rather my child learn three languages rather than two and cursive writing if the choice had to be made. If I thought the cursive was important I'd teach it at home.

I would expect that anyone who wanted to read old handwritten documents would learn to read cursive as a matter of course; if they're not going to be reading old documents they don't really need to know, do they?

Well, okay, Snidely. That's before my time. I'm not sure what race has to do with it however. I wouldn't correct the grammar either way.

Years ago I was researching curricula in the Dutch Antilles and was interested to learn that all the high school students had four hours of language class. I'm sure that was Dutch, English and French. The fourth maybe German? They had math and history and all but less emphasis on hard science than we do. I always got language interference if I studied more than one foreign language at a time. It's not pretty when French and Welsh are fighting for supremacy in your head (interestingly enough, I know more French, but can only say "don't get drunk" in Welsh, not French).

I think when you school them up as polyglots from early ages, the way Mattias_lang's neighbor kids are, it's probably a lot easier. Different brain structures are used for native and acquired languages, so the third and fourth probably have a lot of developmental worth. Especially with that assortment, which is one Romance language (know one, know them all), one case language (syntactically inflected words), and one non-Indo-European language with a different alphabet and throat consonants. I don't know if they learned cursive in elementary school or not, but Arabic is the ultimate cursive script, so if they've learned that they'll have gotten whatever cognitive benefits it has to offer.

Technology is great when there's power but what happens when the power is taken away?

My only fear with technology dependency is.... NO power, no go. Mother nature can take that power away anytime she wants to. There are people that literally don't know what to do when power is out for a long period of time.

Not long ago, we had a hurricane passing through that took power away anywhere from 1 day to several weeks in our city. It was 3 days in my neighborhood. My neighbors were in a bit of panic. They came to check on me and was surprised on how well I was living. I had all the basics without needing power (eg.: camping stove, LED lights & candles, corded phone (worked with landline), etc.). I had to remind one neighbor that she could use her BBQ griller with charcoal to cook. I had an extra corded phone and gave it to another neighbor for communication. During the hurricane and several days after, all cellular phone services were turned off from the public and reserved for Homeland Security to use between 7am to 9pm. The only thing that worked with the cellular phone during those hours with the public was texting. A corded phone, the basic, was a blessing for us; it was our way to communicate with others that had the same set up. Anyone else that depended on digital communication had to wait after 9pm to use it. My sister was one. I remembered how worried she was because she couldn't contact anyone in the family to see how we were doing. She was upset at her son for setting up everything-digital in her home.

I too don't like to see cursive writing be taken away from school. It is a way of individual expression IMO.

When my niece was in elementary, she mentioned that her teacher had stopped teaching cursive. She expressed to me that she wanted to continue learning it and was wondering if that would be wrong. I was surprised and encouraged her to continue practicing. After her wedding, she chose to hand write, in cursive, all the thank you notes. She has beautiful and very artistic handwriting.

Yes, i fully understand it's merely an expression... spoken by educators. It's not spoken any more and it has become passe. It stands to reason, others too, found it to be inane. Hooray!

Parents should just teach their children cursive at home if their schools do not teach it. It's not that hard! A quick google search will bring up worksheets that you can print out. Just DO IT

Ntt_hou, agreed about the tech dependence. It's a lot easier to be independent if one has a house and at least a little bit of land. Often, especially in larger blocks, apartment dwellers are at the mercy of the building's preparedness, once you get past the obvious candles and ice thing. I've never understood people who aren't poor who don't have both a cellphone and a landline. One or the other is sure to go out in a disaster, usually the cells (especially if the government takes them over). Instead of getting the newest iPhone every year, one could do quite well with the old and use the difference to pay for a baseline landline service. You can get the actual telephone (a proper old style one that works without an A/C plug) for $10. In the U.S., even if you don't have service, you should still have a dialtone service and access to the operator and emergency numbers.

And in an emergency, one hopes that the notes one leaves around assuring the neighbors and responders that everyone is okay, etc., are legible to them all. :)

I was taught Palmer method cursive but it got completely distorted when I learned Gregg Shorthand (there's a lost skill, lol) My handwriting is illegible so I must print these days. As long as readable I don't mind whether cursive or print

The discussion seems to have run its course so a quick diversion for p-logs question:

"I'm not sure what race has to do with it however"

The roots of rock and roll came mostly from various forms of traditional African American music - gospel, blues, R+B, etc. Bo Diddley was one of dozens who laid the foundations. Rock and roll started in the 50s when white musicians (mostly in the South, like Elvis, but also some country western types) started performing and adapting what had been historically black music styles.

"Cynic" writes: "Things have been made too easy. In my day we had to learn NINE planets!"

Since your day, "Cynic," Pluto has been discovered to be one of the members of a second asteroid belt (beginning past the orbit of Neptune, and with over 14,000 members discovered therein so far: most of them about Pluto's size, or larger — though smaller, in turn, than the even more numerous discovered members of the better-known asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, known in your day and mine ).

Continuing to regard Pluto as a planet, then, would entail regarding (and teaching) all the other asteroids, too, as planets.

Since such a revision of grade-school astronomy ought to gratify "Cynic's" wish to avoid making it "too easy," Iwish "Cynic" the best of luck in teaching several thousand planets to the rising generation — and presume that he or she will gladly seek out the nearest elementary school and volunteer forthwith for the task. Please let me know when this has been achieved.

"Iwish" should of course have been "I wish"!

Well, yes, SW. One knows all of that. It's history. I've heard of Bo Diddley. I just couldn't figure out what it had to do with what we were talking about.

Does anyone here know someone who is fairly fluent in a foreign language from High School courses alone? I took a year of High School French, my niece took 2 years of Spanish and neither of us can claim to be even slightly able to speak or understand those languages. High School language courses might spark an interest in further study of a language if one is so inclined. Just an observation from life experience and observation.

@ Mare_wbpa. I took 3 courses/years of French & 2 of Spanish in High School and like you, I wasn't able to carry on a conversation (still don't). It does take continuous practice in order to do so. I pick up a word here and there with my Spanish. My French is better because I had a chance to practice more with my cousins who lives in France & Canada. I can understand about 20% of it.

My 3rd foreign language is English. Well, you can tell that I do well in English. That's because I've been forced to learn & practice everyday for the past 40 yrs..

I also spent 5 years of my childhood in Italy and spoke its language like a true Italian so, I was told. During my years in Italy, I completely forgot my native language as I had no one to speak with. It was like out of sight, out of mind.

Later when I went back to my country, I picked up my native language quite quickly. I remembered, within 6 months I spoke my language fluent enough to carry on daily conversation. However, within a year or so, LOL, I forgot Italian. Now, I don't speak nor understand Italian at all except for: uno, due, tre, buongiorno, and arrivederci. I was told that I would pick it up again if I go back but being in my mid-50's, I'm not sure how well will I do with it.

IMO, there is a benefit in learning a foreign language at a young age. In my experience, what helped me to learn and pronounce English well was the fact that I had learned foreign languages at a very young age. My tongue and ears were mold to pick up a foreign language more at ease.

Also, we do learn some cultures in those foreign language classes, it helped us somewhat to understand and be more open toward other cultures. That's certainly a plus in training us with our social lives as we grow older.

Back to cursive writing. Once learned, it is an easier and quicker way of hand writing because of its flow when we write (comparing with printing). I also believe that when a note, card or letter that is written in hand writing, it expressed a more personal message. My mom always encouraged us to do just that. To this day, we always add a personal wish or message in hand writing (cursive) when we send cards to one another. It seemed to carry on more meaning. Cursive hand writing is a way of communication. There are experts that reads our handwritings and from it can tell how our personality is. Using technology for communication, to me, it seemed... a bit robotic.

mare- exactly why those kids Matthias was talking about having Spanish, German and Arabic since 3rd grade is so important.

A one off class in high school isn't going to teach anyone a thing.

I had to take two years of a language when I was in high school I took three years of Spanish. Still don't speak much Spanish although I can understand a bit living where I do. Spanish in high school was more about written Spanish. I could conjugate verbs in Spanish today with a little brushing -up but conversational Spanish was not really part of the curriculum. The rules that were enforced when I went to high school were that if you came from a language speaking home you had to get a strong B or better to pass the course.

When DD entered high school she decided to take French. She found herself one of only two kids in the class that were not from a French speaking culture. The teacher was also from Vietnam. Of course these kids who had the language at home excelled and left DD and the other non speaker way behind. She toughed it out for the semester. The other dropped the class immediately. It was a waste of time for DD.

When DS entered high school I asked and was assured that the Spanish class he would be enroled in was for non speakers only. Once again in his school most of the class was Hispanic. On back to school night the teacher actually gave his presentation in Spanish first since the room was filled with parents who didn't speak English at all. Non speaking students class, my ass. DS dropped the class. So much for high school language.

English is my second language. My brother, myself and my cousins are first generation. I have almost entirely forgotten the first but I could pick it up. Not being spoken to in English at home really hurt my older brother. He struggled through out his school years. To this day he struggles socially and is somewhat of a hermit. Since we were not familiar with the idioms etc. that American kids used it made it difficult for us both. Especially socially. I remember to this day a seatmate getting angry at me for not "scooting over" I had no idea what "scoot over" meant. Those things count when you are 5 and leave a lasting impression. I spoke English as a child but having two languages made it hard. It was my English pronunciation that suffered and to this day I am a far better writer than a speaker. It wasn't until I helped the lady next door learn to drive that I learned why. Russian puts the accent on completely different syllables within than English does. So I tend to put the accent on the wrong place. and that often "invents" an entirely new word simply through that process. I grew up hearing duck and dog pronounced as "dug" in my family. I heard "dese" and "dose". This despite the fact that my mother was fully schooled in America. But back then the people sent their kids to Catholic schools to be taught but they mingled with their own culture. They spoke English in the classroom but avoided it out of class.

BTW my mother had beautiful penmanship her entire life. When I was a child I did also, got top grades in penmanship, but mine has now been reduced to a scrawl. I decided it was more "cool" to print my notes in high school.

Now my Uncle insisted his kids be raised as Americans first. Thier English is excellent. My cousin took up the Russian language in college and now reads, writes and speaks fluently in Russian. The same thing happened to my Godmother's grands. Thier Russian father insisted on English first. One of them became interested in Russian culture as an adult and also now speaks, reads and writes fluently. So much for childhood immersion. In fact my brother and I had such a rough time of it that we rebelled against our culture for may years. it was too painful to be seen as so different.

I was pretty proficient in Spanish when I finished high school, but I'd had six years of Spanish classes. I can't claim I was fluent when I got to college, but I was able to take courses in Spanish literature that were taught mainly in Spanish and which involved writing papers in Spanish. That was 40 years ago, so I'm not proficient now. When we went to Guatemala, with the occasional help of a dictionary I was able to communicate in taxis, restaurants, and stores, and that was 20 years after my last college course. The basic language to get around is mostly present tense, common words, and numbers, and the grammar doesn't have to be perfect. You can get that much in a couple of years in high school. But you are right, Mare. You can't really learn a language in a couple of years of high school classes. It's also more difficult to learn a second language if you start after age 11 or 12. Apparently you really lose a lot of the plasticity in the language part of your brain. Not that it can't be done, just that it's harder. I think most people who can claim fluency actually were immersed in the language. And you lose it quickly if you don't use it.

The pedagogy on languages is vastly improved since most of us were in school. Teaching the old fashioned way of learning grammar first is basically like teaching the rules of baseball without teaching how to throw a ball. Knowing the rules is important at some point, but you have to start with learning how to play the game.

I had two good years of high school language and two more odd years. I learned the language pretty well, and still understand quite a bit. I could use a stronger vocabulary and a lot of practice. If I'd stayed at the school with my second year teacher, and had my third and fourth year with her, I'd have been pretty fluent by the end. As it was, I could read and write pretty well but had to do a college Summer session where it was spoken to feel quick and comfortable with long conversations.

One year of foreign language study is pretty useless, even when it's immersion. You need time to solidify itself in your head. That's why two years is usually considered the minimum. Even then, it's just barely getting there.

The opposite of cursive, when my father was learning German in school, they were taught to write Gothic.

I have come onto my Grandfather's WWI diary. It is written in a rather cramped cursive, not really Palmer Method, If I didn't know cursive, I'd never be able to read this -- even so, since the writing is tiny and crimped, it is still hard going.

When you think of being able to read historical documents -- don't think just of those dried out accounts from people with no connection to you. Think of what you may discover from your very own ancestors.

Mare - I took three years of high school Spanish, and when the family went to Spain between Junior and Senior, (2 years at this point) I had to serve as translator. There was nothing conversational about it. I was able to persevere for directions, but at the local restaurant outside of Cadiz, the manager had to resort to jumping up and down with his hands making ears above his head to tell us what that night's special was. (Oh, we didn't know this was supposed to signify ears, either... We ordered it anyway -- rabbit -- it was excellent.) And then at the place we were staying that week, I had to inform the maintenance folk that the toilet wasn't working. (But I told them, in Spanish, that the toilet was "unemployed"...) They finally figured it out, and I finally was corrected.

I'm sure I wouldn't have been more conversational after the third year!

I agree with plllog. If more emphasis was placed on conversational language in a 1st year than how to conjugate verbs etc, in following years there might be more of us who are able to converse in a foreign language. Isn't that the way we learn our native tongue as babies?

We use different parts of our brains, and different processes, for learning a foreign language than babies do for learning their native language(s), but the thing is, we learn grammar to adjust our home dialect to the academic standard. That means that when we're writing a paper, we stop to think, "If it's the object of a preposition it is in the object case, and "for" is a preposition, therefore the correct word to use is "him." When we're speaking, we say the sentence or partial sentence, or whatever the utterance is, and, perhaps, if there's time, consider whether or not it sounds right. We don't stop and put together a sentence from conscious rules. The language as we know it just tells us what sounds right.

A phrase from a beginning high school Spanish book is Se cayó en la escalera -- He/she fell on the staircase. From that, with your bad high school Spanish, if your dad tripped while you were visiting a Spanish speaking country, you could say, "Mi padre! Se cayó!" If you had to go through all the conjugations of the verb caer and then had to figure out that it took a reflexive pronoun, and then had to sort through the two kinds of pronoun particles looking for the right one, you'd never get it out. You'd just grab someone's arm and yell, "M'aidez", because all you could think of is that you heard that "Mayday" means help me in French, and that's international, right?

What you need to learn a foreign language after puberty is to hear the language (not a teacher droning on about the grammar in English, but someone fluent, hopefully a native speaker, speaking it), to understand most of what is being said (or else it's noise, not communication), and you have to emotionally want to be like the speakers of the language. If you don't identify with them and want to be like them, you'll never pick up more than the bare necessities to communicate. The best adult language learners I've dealt with have been refugees. People who have nowhere to return to and are just thrilled to be in their new country, admire the people and want to be one of them. Not all refugees are like that, but all of the nearly perfect language learners I've known have been.

A lot of personal feelings of identity are wrapped up in language. Accents are in many cases more about preserving that identity than inability to change (though the latter also exists--some people really do have "bad ears" for accents). Your native accent in your native language can get stronger when you want to feel kinship with your origins, and can fade away if you move and feel weird speaking like where you came from. If you want to improve your accent in a language you're learning, fake it. Put on the biggest cartoon exaggeration of your target accent that you can. Do it in English. Do it in your target language. Use the gestures and phrasing of the target language. Be a buffoon and go for it. It's the desire not to be a buffoon that often holds people back. Even if your caricature of the language isn't actually right, it'll get you over the hump and make it easier, if you keep at it, to get it right, than if you just stick to your own way of saying things. That's another reason why conversation based language learning works so much better--trying to say what you hear is a heck of a lot easier than trying to say what it says on the page.