Do your kids learn cursive writing in their public school?
My daughter attends a private montessori school and she started learning cursive writing at 5 (she's 6 now). She's going to attend public school in the fall and I found out that they do not teach cursive writing at all.
The answer isn't as clean cut as one would think. So much depends on individual teachers, expectations from the middle school, and how badly the school is impacted by the No Child Left Behind Laws.
I'll try to give you the big picture. Montessori children learn to write in cursive because Montessorian's believe that cursive handwriting is more developmentally correct, natural and easier for children to learn. Our belief lies in the fact that if you look at a child's writing BEFORE they are really writing, you will notice that it resembles cursive, lots of rounded forms, many stuck together. We also look at all the fine motor movements it takes to write in print, how many times you need to pick the pencil up and put it back in a specific place. When you take all of this into consideration you start to realize just how many fine motor skills it takes to write in print. This is why Montessorians believe it is better to teach children to first write in cursive, it is in fact part of our curriculum.
Public schools on the other hand teach children to write in print at first. They feel that it is confusing for a child who is just starting to read, to write letters that are so completely different then what they are learning to read. Public school proponents feel that it is better to teach children to write letters similar to the ones they are learning to read and then teach them to switch over to cursive once they know all the letters and can read relatively, (hopefully), well. This usually was considered around 3rd grade.
Then came No Child Left Behind and the tying of funding to test scores. NCLB created an absolute focus on standardized testing, specifically language and math. Pretty much anything that isn't on the test has been removed from the schools because it is now considered a "waste of valuable education time". Cursive is one of the things that has been removed, (along with science, history, social studies and geography in the lower grades). Sadly, when you have to make sure that every single child passes a test or the whole school is labeled as failing and loses thousands, if not millions of dollars, cursive handwriting doesn't take a priority. I have heard people rationalize this by calling cursive a "lost art". They will tell you that very few things are handwritten nowadays anyhow and so teaching cursive is a waste. "Why spend time teaching cursive to children who will type everything?" they ask.
Now as I say this, a lot still does depend on the school Although a Montessori Teacher, my program is in a public school that also has traditional classes. The 4th grade traditional teachers at my present school expect all work to be written in cursive, but the 4th grade teachers at the last school I was in, in the same district, don't. Go figure. One set of teachers says it is a waste of time, the other set says they will need it for middle school and if you mention what the other set of teachers say, the ones you talk to get defensive.
Crazy, isn't it?
-----update-------------------------------------
This video just showed up on my Yahoo homepage:
Is Cursive Dying Off http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/v/12124183
I:Scintilla - Cursive Eve
