I am old, I learnt to write like what Illicit put up though I have gotten slacker with it since then. I love cursive, running, whatever you call it, I also like the very, very old writing, shame there's not more of it.

Returning to the OP  "It seems that we are regressing with the education of our children"

 

I think with all the extra things children have to learn, some things have to be let go but I don't think that is necessarily regressing. The fact that the best person to ask if you have a computer problem is a teenager underlines that. (and my children laugh when they see me typing away with 2 fingers.) 

 

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@illicit69 wrote:

Whilst agree that Mathematics (without the use of the dreaded calculator) is the most important of all the subjects at School. However, if you’re not taught cursive writing (it used to be called “copy book” writing when I was a child and I loved it,are our children of today going to simply print their signature because they’ve never been taught basic ‘running writing’ – how easy that would be to forge? Call me old fashioned, but to my mind true cursive writing (penmanship) is a thing of beauty, it’s an art and something that should never be allowed to die. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Very pretty, and that is what I was taught in the early 90's. However, that is not what cursive looks like now, and I can say that a form of cursive is taught in WA schools. My boys are learning, but they will never use it, their printing is hard enough to read.

I agree, time is better spent on mental maths and such than pretty writing.

I'm 34 & was educated in an Australian Public School....

What absolutely confounds me is that we were taught Cursive in "Prep" & grade 1, in fact we HAD to be proficient in Cursive Writing before we were issued with our "Pen License" (here comes the contradiction)..

When we got to grade 3 or 4, we were not allowed to use Cursive Writing at all, we had to go back to Printing.

I'm the proud owner of numerous very old, hand written manuscripts, letters & diaries....all of which are written in beautifully flourishing script (AKA Cursive) so even though we were essentially banned from using cursive at school, I can still read & write using the sadly diminishing skill of Writing In Cursive.

Just my two cents

Just wondering, what does cursive writing look like now?

 

 

This site has an example of 2010 Queensland cursive.  Bit boring really.

 

http://inquirybites.typepad.com/thecriticalclassroom/2010/02/qcursive-queenslands-official-font.html

 

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@bright.ton42 wrote:

Just wondering, what does cursive writing look like now?

 

 

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There are no loops, the r and s are different and practically the entire upper case alphabet is different. I am talking WA only, I do not know what is taught in other states.

Lovely little Grand-daughter (aged 10) attends the Aspley State School in Brisbane, and that’s exactly the type of cursive writing she’s being forced to learn. The teacher, in her infinite wisdom, failed her first test because Grandie insisted on looping her g’s and y’s , which is the way both DD and I taught her when she was only just 4 years old, and I must admit her ‘running writing’ is extremely good, very close to the old style ‘copy book’ writing. However when my DD confronted the teacher regarding the ‘fail’, teacher stated that Grandie MUST COMPLY – my daughter’s response was “you can't fit a square peg into a round hole”, to say she was livid is an understatement.

 

Obviously the Queensland Education Department don’t want anyone to 'dare to be different'. She’s top student in her class at Maths & Science, but failed English just because of her 'loopy doops' on the g’s and y’s; never mind the fact that she can spell Ornithorhynchus and is more comfortable speaking to older students and adults than her peers and yes, she's an only child and only Grandie, but not by choice DD can't have anymore children and our Son passed away at age 20 of a congenital heart condition, so no more Grandies for us, she's very, very precious.

You must be very proud of your lovely little Grandie and so you should be.  I thinnk it's woeful she should be failed 

because of her style of writing.  Surely hand writing will become obsolete in the not so far distant future anyway.  

 

Handwriting matters — but does cursive matter? The fastest, clearest handwriters join only some letters: making the easiest joins, skipping others, using print-like forms of letters whose cursive and printed forms disagree. (Sources below.)

Reading cursive matters, but even children can be taught to read writing that they are not taught to produce. Reading cursive can be taught in just 30 to 60 minutes — even to five- or six-year-olds, once they read ordinary print. (In fact, now there's even an iPad/iHone app to teach how: named "Read Cursive," of course.) So why not simply teach children to read cursive. — along with teaching other vital skills, including some handwriting style that's actually typical of effective handwriters?

Adults increasingly abandon cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority, 55 percent, wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When most handwriting teachers shun cursive, why mandate it?

Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.


SOURCES:

Handwriting research on speed and legibility:

/1/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May - June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf

/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September - October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf


Zaner-Bloser handwriting survey: Results on-line at http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H2937N_post_event_stats.pdf
Background on our handwriting, past and present:
3 videos, by a colleague, show why cursive is NOT a sacrament:


A BRIEF HISTORY OF CURSIVE —
http://youtu.be/3kmJc3BCu5g

TIPS TO FIX HANDWRITING —
http://youtu.be/s_F7FqCe6To

HANDWRITING AND MOTOR MEMORY
(shows how to develop fine motor skills WITHOUT cursive) —
http://youtu.be/Od7PGzEHbu0


[AUTHOR BIO: Kate Gladstone is the founder of Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works and the director of the World Handwriting Contest]