mommyish.com - by Shawna Cohen - Cursive writing is totally old-school. Literally. The state of Indiana has changed its academic standards and guess what? The 2011-12 curriculum does not include cursive writing (students are instead expected to become efficient in keyboard use). What’s amazing isn’t that cursive is becoming obsolete but rather that people actually care. “But how will kids develop fine-motor skills?” ask those in favor of the ancient craft. “What if someone has to read the Constitution?” I’m no psychic, but I’m pretty sure that someone out there will have developed a computer program that ‘translates’ cursive writing into type by the time the cursive generation dies off.

And, pardon my ignorance, but hasn’t cursive writing been kind of irrelevant for, oh, I don’t know, at least a decade or so anyway? Don’t get me wrong: as a child of the 70s and 80s, I learned both cursive and printing. But to this day, I’ve only ever printed (when not typing, that is, which is 99 percent of the time). And I’m hard-pressed to find a single person in my age range who uses cursive. In fact, I recently searched through my old high-school yearbooks, camp letters, journal entries – you know, all that awesome nostalgic stuff – and I cannot find a single instance of cursive. (“I could give a shit about cursive or writing at all! Who needs it?” a friend just emailed me when I asked for her opinion on the matter.)

My mother, on the other hand, is all about cursive (I’ve got decades’ worth of birthday cards to prove it). As is my mother-in-law and my great aunt Eva. But they are a different generation and, well, they didn’t have the option of typing out their student essays or texting their friends for Friday-night plans.

Link to Story: http://mommyish.com/stuff/cursive-writing-removed-from-school-curriculum-its-about-time/ 

Related Links:

ednewsparent.org: http://www.ednewsparent.org/teaching-learning/2997-ask-an-expert-why-dont-teachers-focus-on-teaching-cursive 

parentdish.com: http://www.parentdish.com/2011/01/21/cursive-handwriting/ 

My mom and her mom are fuming over this! Come to think of it, so am I!: