Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for December 31, 2008 TO "CURSE" OR NOT TO "CURSE"...

Hmmm...

The article below reminded me of a song by Paul Simon...Art Garfunkel's old partner, not the Illinois politician.

(Methinks we've had enough of Illinois politicians for a while...the good, the bad, the ugly! Actually, there is another song by Paul Simon that would be more applicable for the current political genre..."Still Crazy After All These Years".)

Anyway...

The song was "Kodachrome". The opening stanza went like this...

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Well, according to the article below, evidently the "new generation" may not be able to make such bold assertions...

Some schools refuse to write off cursive

By Melissa Nix

About five years ago, San Juan High School teacher Shirley Bowers realized that half her students had no idea what she was writing on the board.

"I had a student remark that he couldn't read my notes," Bowers said.

His fellow classmates fessed up, too. Bowers' notes were hard to read. They were in cursive.

Over the past decade, teachers and secondary students across the country have reported a trend that their parents and grandparents could scarcely imagine:

The millennial generation is increasingly cursive illiterate.

The digital age has pushed to the periphery a penmanship skill used for generations. The world of personal computers, e-mail and texting has rendered the handwritten note an anomaly, something that many of today's students get only from grandparents. Some parents complain that their middle schoolers can't sign their names.

Cursive – the long, flowing style of penmanship in which the letters are connected – is taught to youngsters letter-by-letter in daily drills. Teachers in Elk Grove, Folsom-Cordova, Sacramento City, San Juan and Twin Rivers unified school districts report teaching it.

However, cursive instruction is not state-mandated, nor is cursive fluency tested as a California standard. So emphasis on penmanship varies from district to district and school to school.

Many students can't read it, and many more can't write it, either.

Despite its marginalization, cursive is still a state educational standard in California. Kids should be able to legibly write in cursive or joined italic lettering by the third and fourth grades, the state says.

"I love teaching cursive, so it's hard to let it go, but with the priorities of No Child Left Behind, it's almost being forced out," said Elizabeth Wihtol, who teaches third grade at Twin Rivers Unified's Pioneer Elementary School.

A few days ago, Wihtol wrote a lower case cursive "r" on an overhead projector and showed her class how to make the letter.

The room was quiet. The children lowered their heads as they practiced. One boy, a lefty, stuck his tongue out in concentration.

"It's fantastic how the words connect – it's so different in cursive," said Alyssa Dallman.

"Once you know how to write cursive, you know how to read it," said Hunter Jurkovich. He could now decode the "secret" cursive notes his older sister writes.

But while cursive fluency often makes elementary kids feel like grown-ups, this rite of passage often loses its currency once kids hit middle school, teachers say.

Middle and high school teachers receive word- processed assignments uploaded to Web sites. Pupils mastering complex content may be more of a priority than perfectly formed cursive script. Fluency dries up.

"Unless you use it, you lose it," said Susie Schaffer, a retired third-grade and English Language Arts lead teacher at Folsom Cordova Unified.

She thinks cursive needs to be emphasized beyond one or two years of elementary school. "People are beginning to realize that children are graduating with atrocious or illegible handwriting," she said.

Mark Bradley, an English and U.S. history teacher at Rio Tierra Junior High, said it takes his students longer to read something in cursive than when each letter is written separately – also known as block or print. And he added that they groan when asked to write in cursive.

"It's a bit like going for a root canal for them," Bradley said.

On a recent impromptu writing exercise, in which time was an element, of 65 students, only one wrote in cursive. The rest of the essays were in block, he said.

He then posed a question to his students: "If I paid you by the word to write something in a hurry, would you use cursive?"

Of those same 65 students, only two said they would.

Bradley also said he's noticed that his fellow teachers – those about 10 years younger – tend to write in block letters.

"It's been a slow change over time, but accelerated by word processing and texting," Bradley said.

Some cursive proponents say the problem is exacerbated by teacher credentialing programs that no longer train potential teachers on cursive instruction.

What will happen when the next generation of teachers arrives, some of whom can no longer read nor write cursive?

Frances van Tassell, associate professor in the University of North Texas department of teacher education and administration, said she fears future teachers will no longer be able to teach cursive because they will not have mastered it. As a sort of remedy, she emphasizes cursive mastery and instruction in her program.

Van Tassell's emphasis is rare, according to a recent study by Vanderbilt University professor Steve Graham, noted in a November 2007 Newsweek article. He found that only 12 percent of the elementary teachers he surveyed had taken a cursive instruction course.

So, is cursive fluency a 20th century cultural hang-up or a necessary skill? That's up for debate.

"Who, when several generations have chosen the keyboard over cursive, will be able to read handwritten love letters or historical documents?" asked Dennis Williams, the national product manager for Zaner-Bloser, an education publisher that produces a popular cursive instruction curriculum.

Patrick O'Neill, assistant principal for academics at St. Francis High School in Sacramento, said cursive is a necessary skill.

"If (our students) can't read or write cursive, there will be parts of the world they will not be able to access," O'Neill said. "They have to be able to access all the forms of communication available today."

According to the College Board, when the SAT added a handwritten essay to its 2006 exam, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. But those who did earned slightly higher scores.

Other studies show that learning cursive helps children's brain synapses to develop because it requires fluid movement, eye-hand coordination and fine motor skill development," said van Tassell. "It's like certain kinds of music."

Bradley said that his students who prefer print may lose out on "time efficiency" compared to their counterparts who choose cursive, but he doesn't think cursive fluency is necessary anymore.

"In everyday life, most (students) don't come across cursive," he said. "Even those who have a wide skill set tend not to have that one as part of their repertoire."

Mira Loma High School senior Molli Carlson said she rarely encounters cursive except when her grandmother sends her a card.

Classmate Haylie Casey agrees. "I see it on Christmas cards or birthday cards," she said.

And how do they reply?

In print.

Hey, you had to be there...