On schools stop teaching cursive...

Not until I listened to the Diane Rehm Show on WGBH earlier today did I realize that some schools are planning to stop teaching kids cursive. I must admit, I was flabbergasted when I heard of it.

Many so-called arguments were put forth to support that notion, some of which come straight from fantasyland. It's said that kids need to learn typing more than writing cursive, in order to compete in this digital age. It's said that kids can print and don't need cursive. It's said that kids' learning cursive is a waste of time, during budget crunch time, schools can ill-afford to spend resources on. It's said that with increasing use of electronic media in schools and work environment, kids need to adapt. It's said that some kids simply find it too hard to learn cursive, and they should be left to pick whatever way to write or type. It's even said that in this day and age, when electronic signature is widely accepted, kids won't even need to sign their name anymore. And so on, and so forth.

Thank goodness counter-arguments are abound. It's argued that kids have plenty of opportunities to learn typing (texting, anyone?). It's argued that kids would at least need to sign their name physically with a pen. And while digital media is all around us, it must be recognized that there are many more students who do not have ready access to computers or electronic devices, and who would need to still resort to pens and papers. But the more important and valid point was raised by one of the audience callers to the show, which is that, learning cursive is one important way for kids (at around the age of grade 3-4) to master the fine mortar skills while they are formulating thoughts in their heads. In fact, the last argument was recognized even by the cursive-abolishing proponents that kids have been having increasing difficulty in both thinking and writing/typing at the same time.

The topic of learning cursive hits home to me at this particular juncture, since my kids have showed so much interests in it, and even more pride too in mastering cursive so that they can sign their name!

To be sure, their teachers haven't actually spent that much time in teaching them cursive anyways. Cursive, as an art of writing, is such an integral part of civilization that it would be such a shame and incredible disservice to kids by not teaching them cursive at all. I resent the argument of cursive being too hard for kids. So much of what kids are taught seem to be based on convenience, catering to the kids' liking. If something is deemed too hard for the kids, they should be spared of it. In fact, isn't that the very same argument that alot of parents shy away from pushing their kids to master math and science?

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Incidentally, yesterday I read another article, about a high school teacher getting suspended (but was later reluctantly reinstated) for dissing her own students for being "lazy" and "frightfully dim". I have no doubts that there are students to that caliber. More surprisingly is how some readers' comments from supposedly parents saying that they would pull their kids out from the class, should this teacher be teaching. Sure, parents should be the best champion (our princes and princesses) for their own kids, but have we, collectively as parents, got to a point where we cannot accept potentially truthful comments about our kids?

As another fair-minded reader noted in the forum, kids these days have become so used to entitlement, that everyone has to have a trophy for just being present in a soccer or baseball game. Parents have to understand that, at some point (most likely when kids start middle school), kids are going to get used to the increasingly competitive world. If kids do not master the basic skills and discipline and attitude before they reach grade 5, they would have had serious problems catching up. If parents continue to foster that an entitlement mentality in kids, that they deserve to have good grades just by being there or putting in a less-than-average essay, even if schools and teachers cave in and give them all straight A's, these kids are going to have more problems when (and if) they get to college, or when they start working in the adult world.