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Home : 2002 : October : 13

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By Carolyn

Trine,

I feel that once the children learn to form the letters in third grade, they need to write in cursive at every opportunity, even if it's not all of the time. It's like if you teach the kids how to multiply in third
grade, then don't use it anymore, how many kids will remember how to multiply when they are asked to use it in fifth grade? Yet this is what our teachers are doing. It's like some of the teachers are saying to themselves: "Okay, I did my duty. I taught them cursive. Now I can just get on with printing, since the kids hate cursive anyway." (Some of the teachers just plain hate the

battle to get kids to use cursive, so they decide that it's not a battle they will fight.)

I am amazed how poorly my students wrote in cursive when I first got them. I know for sure that our fourth grade teacher doesn't have the kids write in cursive. I don't know why. I have never asked her. It's a shame that kids in the fifth grade have to resort to using cursive alphabet charts when writing in cursive should be second nature to them.

One of the problems is that handwriting has taken a back seat to everything else. With so much emphasis upon students excelling on a state test which doesn't test handwriting, I don't have to think too hard about why handwriting isn't even taught in some classes.