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Is this the end of cursive writing?
Ohanian Comment: When my job teaching Grade 7-8 rotten readers was eliminated, I fought the administration and the union for the right to teach Grade 3. Although I'd taught reading for 15 years, I obeyed the bureaucratic demands of the state department of education licensing thugs by signing up for intensive summer reading courses at a nearby university.
The assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum, a longtime foe, was determined to block me from anything I wanted and also determined to block my being assigned to the building of a renegade principal with whom I'd worked years before. For some reason, the union took a legalistic stance, insisting I should take a high school job and thereby preserve my vested interests (pointing out that I was the secondary teacher with the most seniority in the district). Despite my declared disinterest in 'vested interests,' the union insisted on fighting my move to third grade.
won't go into all the complications of my tenure status. Let's just say it would have made a lawyer salivate. I insisted on my right to walk away from seniority.
Just a few days before school started, the superintendent phoned me, asking, "Susan, what do you want?"
I replied, "I want to teach third grade." Should I be embarrassed to admit that I then burst into tears?
He said, "It seems to me that someone with your years of service to the district should get what she wants. Report to School 16 for that Grade 3 position."
I wished I'd cried months before. The superintendent was, after all, a jock, part of the good old boys network.
THEN, newly appointed third grade teacher, my soul froze when I learned that cursive was in the curriculum.
Ohmygod.
The teacher's manual for cursive brought me to a state of abject terror and near paralysis. I was sure that the word's root is curse.
I've written about how I tried to follow that teacher's manual for a day or two and then, in the midst of student tears and my own near panic, I put it away and abandoned Cursive. Only to have it reappear some months later at the students' instigation. And by following their lead, with no manual whatsoever, I was able to help my third graders end the year with penmanship as good as that of kids who got there by a more "standard" route. I can testify that when it comes at the right moment and without pressure, the cursive skill is actually quite easily acquired by most students.
By Caitlin Carpenter
Second-grade teacher Diane Arciero waves her hand --draped in a homemade, white bunny puppet --from side to side in time to "If You're Happy and You Know It" playing on her classroom's CD player. As the song reaches its familiar refrain, the 24 students in her class at Boston's Hugh R. O'Donnell Elementary School join in singing with her and the bunny: "Where do you start your letter? At the top!" they shout, pointing index fingers in the air in unison.
It's hardly the handwriting instruction most American adults grew up with, but cursive traditionalists are happy to see any type of instruction. Their revered written art is an endangered species given the rise of computers, the growing proportion of class time spent preparing for standardized tests, and the increasing perception that cursive writing is a difficult and pointless exercise. Yet new evidence suggests there are benefits to mastering this skill -- including higher SAT scores-- that don't appear until long after traditional instruction ends in fifth grade. It's a controversial claim. . . .
NOTE: The Christian Science Monitor does not permit posting of full articles. For the rest of this piece, go to the hot link below.
— Caitlin Carpenter
Christian Science Monitor
2007-11-14
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1114/p13s01-legn.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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