Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/81027
LETTERS AND COMMENTS Here's what you think! Your letters are welcome! There is a 250-word limit. Signed letters with the writer's name, address and daytime telephone number will be considered for publication. All letters will be edited. Write to editor@cta.org. IF I COULD SIGN MY NAME I WOULD I found the articles on cursive writing in the summer issue very interesting. As a newly retired elementary school teacher, I understand the need for efficiency in education and the pressures on teachers to teach overwhelming curriculums, and also that technology is the "future" in many ways. However, I agree that penmanship is an art form. When I reread the beautiful love letters written to my mother by my father during World War II, a part of their appeal is not only what he said, but how he physically wrote them in his beautiful cursive script. I have a file of old fam- ily recipes written on index cards as a wedding gift, and each card is a "picture" of that person that brings back memories of them (along with their delicious cooking suggestions). I loved learning to type in school, and I enjoy using the computer and e-mail, and trying to learn about the new technological opportuni- ties that are available today. However, eliminat- ing cursive writing in schools is like eliminating art in schools. It is indeed confining students to a narrower educational experience and view of the world. If I could sign my name for you, I would! — Nancy L. Brucker CTA/NEA-Retired WOOING REQUIRES CURSIVE I'm savvy in the computer culture. Writing a document for business or scientific pur- poses in cursive makes no sense at all — the idea is to communicate accurately and clearly, and not try to impress someone with your penmanship. Consider: Would you write a poem for your girlfriend (or boyfriend) on the computer with Times New Roman, or would you write it with a pen? The ladies I've wooed would much prefer the latter. One might also argue that learning to read music is now obsolete because there's so much digital music out there at the touch of a button. That would be a horrible mistake. Music, poetry, graphic arts, calligraphy — these are a few of the things that keep us human. A few graduates can make a living in the arts, but we can all appreciate the arts, and fine art is what makes life worth living. — William A. Barrett CFA, San Jose State University A CURSIVE SONNET Cursive is a sign of civilization; Printing takes us back to primitive times. If we want mass-product education, Make our students' hands mere digital mimes. When man's ten fingers curled around a pen, He found a way from flickering brain To permanent food for future men To feed their minds and ponder once again. The loops and swirls once made by Roman, Greek And Arab live on to dignify their thought. If we too in our century seek To transcend time, we all of us ought To train our fingers in the cursive mode Before they start to stab computer code — Michael Duffett San Joaquin Delta College Teachers Association STUDENTS BEG FOR CURSIVE I am a high school special education teacher who teaches students with severe emotional and behavioral disorders and on many oc- casions I have written on the Smart Board in my classroom, in cursive, only to hear several students call out, "I can't read cursive!" I ask, "What are you going to do when you need to sign documents, your driver's license, checks, applications? Are you going to print your name? Do you have any idea that when they ask for a signature, it means in cursive?" Not teaching cursive is shortchanging stu- dents. My students begged me to teach them cursive. So I spend 15 minutes a day teaching them what they should have been taught in fourth grade. Most don't even know how to properly hold a pencil, so they all write with the little pencil grips of beginners. It is funny to see them bring up their papers and proudly show me their carefully crafted alphabet. My high school students have asked me why they weren't taught this in elementary school. I have no answer for them. – Katherine Nell McNeil Lakeside Union Teachers Association QUESTIONED CURSIVE AND BLENDED PHONICS I, too, wrestled with the rationale of teaching my fourth-graders cursive. It was useful for signature writing, and students need to be able to read cursive, not so much to read primary source documents, but because there are still teachers my students might meet in middle school and high school who would write white- board notes or personal notes to their students in cursive. Neither of these two purposes seemed urgent enough to dedicate a great amount of instructional time to mastering the skill. Three years ago I began using Donald Potter's "Blend Phonics" in voluntary "lunch bunch" groups for those students who lacked adequate phonics/phonemic development. I used cursive blend phonics for students who had atrocious spelling, had difficulty sounding out words, and who struggled with letter and number reversals. Doing phonics instruction in cursive is successful at training left-to-right tracking skills needed for reading English be- cause of the connectedness of the letters and the directionality of the words. Consider this: Students make many hand- writing errors in cursive, but it's almost impos- sible for them to reverse (flip) the letters. My own experience seems to support the value of learning phonics in cursive. I am pleased enough with the progress my lunch bunch students have made that I continue to give up many hours of my own lunch time to offer this when the need arises. — Lorna Johnston Mother Lode Teachers Association (Placerville) CORRELATE TYPING AND WRITING Over the past 20 years of university teach- ing, I have seen a clear correlation between students' abilities to write quickly and legibly and their ability to earn good grades on typed as well as handwritten assignments. Students who write slowly or illegibly cannot take good notes in class. They thus have thin- ner resources to draw upon for exams, papers and discussion. Some cursive skeptics will say that they can take notes faster on a keyboard, but alas, this is not a good substitute, because brain research has shown typists do not pro- cess or retain what they hear as thoroughly as those who take written notes. The only conceivable debate here is how to best teach students to write legibly, fluidly, quickly and painlessly. — Sarah S. Elkind CFA, San Diego State University CURSIVE AND OUR CULTURE Handwriting that leads to cursive writing is the basis for learning important aspects of design and spatial learning. So much of our culture is based on line, shape and spatial relationships; elements of art that are a big part of communi- cation, a basic part of human culture. Both educators made some valid points in their arguments, but so much is learned by doing, that is the process of writing. Graphic designers who created the fonts (in this article) understand the art elements needed to create letter forms. These same elements are used to create logos and other designs that one can September 2012 www.cta.org 7