Cursive!

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I really have no opinion on the Common Core standards- other than I think it’s a lot of heat about nothing. But, we should be sure we understand the facts.

Standards- these are the goals for a system or series of behaviors. When we are dealing with schools, it’s the achievement level for each student that is being set. That is vastly different from curriculum. The curriculum is the schedule of teaching concepts, the actual teaching materials, and the day-to-day activities that occur in a classroom.

Given that, why is it that handwriting is no longer taught in schools? For starters, the Common Core standards only call for teaching legible writing in the kindergarten and first grade. Which really means that we are only going to teach our children how to print- perhaps even just block letters, at that.

Which is a real problem. As I have written often in the past (here’s but one example), fMRI data demonstrate that cognitive learning is enhanced when one uses handwriting (cursive). It improves our hand-eye coordination skills. But, more importantly when one is discussing educational standards and curriculum, we know that children learn to read more quickly, generate more ideas, and retain information better when they learn to write by hand.

This is called neural circuit activation, and it is different than if one employs a computer or typewriter. The better learning, augmented idea generation, and information retention is a result of mental simulation and stimulation. This is part of the 2012 study by Dr. Karin James (this time in concert with Dr. Laura Englehardt), an update to the one found in my link above.

Dr. James studied 5 year old kids who had not yet mastered the art of reading. They were requested to type, print, and/or trace letters and shapes. Then, while subject to fMRI examination, they were shown images of these same objects. The neural circuit (present in three areas of the brain- the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the posterior parietal cortex) was activated only when the kids had handwritten the items- not if they typed or traced them. And, she called this the reading circuit, because this enhancement, this neural circuit is a means to facilitate the ability of children to read.

Why? Because our brains need to recognize the various forms of a letter, no matter how it is written. Consider the picture below. And, then consider what happens when we write the letter, how messy that can be.

Letter variants

I’ve already discussed (in my first link above) Dr. Berninger’s findings that printing, cursive, and typing all engage different parts of our brains and exude different brain patterns. And, that children (grades 2 through 5) who handwrote expressed more ideas, produced more words than via a keyboard, and possessed great neural pathways (and working memory). These are not facts to be dismissed lightly.

Couple that with our new-found knowledge about those with impaired reading ability (alexia), this means handwriting needs to be a vital component of our curricula. (Oh, you don’t know about this? Many alexic individuals who cannot process print can still read cursive; others can read the printed forms of the word but can’t process cursive writing.)

So, while most of us (especially me) can type out our thoughts in rapid fashion- much faster than we can via handwriting, it seems that this still diminishes our ability to process new information. (Anecdotally, I do recall the facts that I handwrite more readily than those that I type.)   Drs. P. Mueller (Princeton) and D. Oppenheimer (UCLA) found (Psychological Science) that those students who take their notes longhand learn better than those that employ a keyboard. It seems that writing the notes lets us process the contents of the message and reframe it better than using a keyboard.

Let’s not get rid of those fountain pens just yet.

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2 thoughts on “Cursive!”

  1. This is great, Roy. A really valuable reminder of how important the written word is! By the way, I tried to copy a few lines of this post, so I could share it on Facebook, and your website wouldn’t let me! I’ll try another way, but it would be really nice to be able to lift just a few sentences to introduce it. Great post, and my homeschooling friends will be interested in it!
    Amy recently posted..Are those chicks ugly?

    1. Yes, Amy, I have had my posts stolen over the years. I work (slave?) really hard to make them as informative and entertaining as possible. So, I preclude the cutting and pasting of my words. In your case, that’s a problem- but for many other folks, it’s the only protection I have.

      Oh, and your kids resort to block printing because they feel it looks neater. Perhaps, it really is…

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