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THE IMPORTANCE OF CURSIVE WRITING
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From what I've seen, kids are proud when they can write cursive. It makes them feel grown up. Plus, our handwriting grows up with us and becomes unique, like ourselves.
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Delving further, we human beings are wired in such a way that there is constant communication between our hands and our brains. When we write in cursive, important things happen.
WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS
Brain/handwriting research projects have been carried out in recent years by experts in the field. The following are results from studies done at Indiana University, Princeton, the University of California, and the University of Washington:
Handwriting, cursive writing in particular, increases activity in the areas of the brain involved with reading, writing, thinking, language, and working memory. Long-term benefits of the stimulation to these areas include learning more thoroughly, retaining information longer, and grasping new ideas more quickly.
In addition, handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing, typing or keyboarding. Studies of elementary school children found that they wrote more words, wrote faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand than while using a keyboard. Students who took notes by hand in class generally outperformed students who typed their notes into a computer - typing is a simpler motor skill that requires shallower processing.
When we write in cursive, we ask our brains to be smarter. We ask our brains to recognize individualized strokes of the pen in relation to other strokes and to other people's strokes, to remember size, slant, and details of each letter and word that we form, and to categorize all of these things and connect them to trains of thought. In this way, it is not valid to suggest that, for instance, art classes can replace what is lost by not learning cursive writing.
HANDWRITING - PRINTING OR CURSIVE?
Before the first half of the twentieth century, American school children learned nothing but cursive, starting in kindergarten, and this is how writing is still taught in many other countries. Some people advocate that American schools return to this practice because cursive writing is actually easier to use than block printing.
Cursive should not be left behind. It's faster and easier, enables students to develop their own style, but most important of all, it produces the most beneficial brain activity in the long and the short term when compared to printing and typing. In fact, allowing schools to drop cursive, if they wish, may in the end create inequality among schools, i.e. if some schools teach cursive but others deny students access to a writing skill that contributes to laying the groundwork for academic achievement.
HANDWRITING AND TYPING – BOTH ARE NEEDED
People need keyboard typing in order to interact with most machines in the world but we need cursive writing to keep the reading/learning/memory processes in our brains invigorated.
The technology of My Cursive Handwriting Helper app provides a way to practice cursive writing at school, at home, or anywhere, including making use of a virtual keyboard, and enabling cursive to continue its part in developing, coordinating, and maintaining the vibrancy of our minds!
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THE ONGOING HISTORY OF CURSIVE WRITING
There is no need to get rid of cursive writing now. We only need to adapt its teaching to modern times which means using technology in the learning process.
Over the centuries, the cursive situation has changed many times. For instance, in the US, since the time in which Europeans first gained a foothold in North America and up to the present, cursive writing styles have gone from English to anti-English (including slick new steel pens and copy books with lines) to Pestalozzi (new letter formations) to Carstairs (changes in the writer's body position) to Spencerian (style that became the basis for modern cursive) to early 1900's "scientific" studies for industrial-type speed and efficiency in writing, to Palmer (simplified Spencerian) to D’Nealian (simplified Palmer) and the simple Zaner-Bloser style of this app... all adapted to the writing needs of the time and all enabling greater usefulness.
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- Terry Carnes Wilhelm
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SOURCES:
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The Pen May Be Mightier Than The Keyboard - Virginia Berninger
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History of the Teaching of Handwriting in America - Mary L. Dougherty
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