Should we learn cursive handwriting in school?

Key Takeaways

[Music] hi welcome back to the my the science kids show should kids learn cursive or not in this episode my dad and I will discuss this a little bit and you'll get to hear both the student and the teacher or parent perspective so this will be a very fun episode for both parents and kids to learn and have a bit more perspective on this interesting cursive topic so the topic today is should kids learn to write in cursive um this is uh a pretty interesting topic because I learned cursive um I think my cursive is like pretty good pretty okayish and we spent like a good amount of time I mean mostly during covid but like we spent a good amount of time teaching me Co teaching teaching me cursive and like perfecting it making sure it had all the right slant and all the letters were like spaced well yeah okay yeah we spent like a good amount of time on that well outside of school like you and me did that yeah no school none of the schools I went to ever taught CI but I learned it outside of school mhm and also I guess like a subo of this topic should schools teach cursive okay well you're the parent you're the one who like does the TIY stuff so go ahead well I clearly I think there is value in learning to write incursive um but you know what percentage of kids at uh I think the statistics I saw is uh kids around 18 20 years old now you know what percentage of them know cursive I'm going to guess like 50% like half of them H that's an interesting guess uh no it's about 10% at first I was thinking like 30 but then maybe that's like too low cuz I'm sure like schools talk like also they're 18 so like one by the time you like dial it back to when they were learning like I'm sure schools talk only 10% that's crazy I I don't I think we can look that look up the statistics on that but even adults yeah even like a a very large percentage of uh let's say 30 40 year olds don't know how to do how to write cursive if you go beyond if you go 60 years and above then um people write cursive the age of people who actually write letters yeah people WR letter letter writing people know how to write cursive I mean like yeah I've also written like outside but like 40y olds don't really know how to write Cur anyway um so why do you think kids should learn to write cursive particularly because like the argument against it would be we're in the age of computers now and no one's going to be using cursive in like for example writing letters or stuff no one does that anymore so shouldn't we shouldn't we like stop teaching kids cursive and instead teach them typing or something yeah so um anything you learn comes at a cost of not learning something else if you think about it that way then what use is cursive or what is the utility of cursive compared to something else okay if you think about it in those terms well if you were to think about in those terms and then nobody would uh learn like painting what is the like what percentage of people will paint very few so only the people that would paint should learn painting well if that's the case then uh or um swimming what person like how many how often do you get to go swimming like not often then uh why should we teach but a lot of people go to swim classes and spend time and effort going to swi class learn swimming is like a different argument because there is like some aspect of survival in s swimming right in the rare as the airlines say in the rare event of a water landing uhh um I mean you do have a life jacket but it'd be nice to know how to swim yeah but how often thinking about it how often has a swimming need from an emergency perspective happened or how often does that happen in some like that is not the reason to learn the S yeah I guess you're right right it's by Same by the same token you should learn to fly because like a flying disaster is going to be as often as a swimming disaster okay okay so that's not the reason to learn swim but you learn to swim because it's fun to do it's a fun activity and then opens all sorts of other opportunities for you if you know how to swim then you can go kayaking and be have more fun kayaking because you're not worried about the swimming part or you can there are Sports in water or anyway like all sorts of things right um so just looking at it from this like purely a utilitarian perspective uh is not the correct way that's one the other one is there is Art wow there motorcycles motorcycles are crazy there's art also in in cursive it's not it's it it doesn't just have the utility we have a book called like the art of curs or like the art of just have the utility of of you know translating from information to paper and then reading it back out there's art involved in it and that art over many years if you look at like uh cursive videos on YouTube You'll see tons of other cursive like there is a whole bunch of sub so there's an art in it do people really do cursive like if you think of like writing as an art cursive wouldn't come to mind but calligraphy like would in that sense should we learn calligraphy cuz it's an art like what's the difference between cursive and calligraphy if you're learning cursive might as well the the goal might be may need to be c yeah I I could see that um but anyway most so the argument I've heard from teachers is that since the founding documents of America or a lot of other countries are written in cursive because if they're old documents then not having access to cursive locks you out of being able to read the direct documents the way they were written which I think very the best argument it's not the best AR if you're going to argue for cursive there are mil like not there are many other ways that cursive will be helpful yeah like as opposed to something else so um I actually have a short story about cursive yeah when I was in first grade I had not learned cursive at in the school that I was in at the time um second graders would learn cursive I sadly left after first grade so I didn't get that but second graders would learn cursive so there was this one time I'm not really sure but uh some second graders needed were doing some writing mhm and I needed to be able to read it but they wrote it in cursive so I couldn't because not only had I not learn to write cursive I couldn't learn to I didn't learn to read cursive because sure when you think about it some cursive letters are like intuitive like if you're writing and your letter start connect it looks like cursive like a or D or like y or something but F or Z or other letters of the cursive alphabet are there's no's no Rel right so I couldn't read cursive and that actually like was a significant thing like I couldn't read so the older kids had to read it for me mhm and it was yeah it was interesting because so it was like a motivating factor for you want to learn to rec cursive no it wasn't okay it was just interesting I it was just interesting how like if some people can read cursive and some people can't does that create any sort of barrier because people can write in normal scripts but I've got to the extent that there's yeah maybe but if go ahead go ahead but I've gotten like letters from old teachers or like um other pen pals and they incursive to the point where it's like difficult to read them that's just like a personal style you know but like if I didn't know how to read cursive and the cursive was just straight out just normal kind of like not to St yeah not flourished cursive and I didn't know how to read cursive if I got a letter like that I wouldn't be able to read it would that like just be weird yeah that would be sad but since only 10 of people from here on out let's say no cursive you're not going to be locked out of whole bunch of information because you don't know cursive it's they just the majority of people by far are not writing cursive so that's but there are advantages to cursive outside of disadv like this besides disadvantages of not having cursive there advantages in knowing cursive some of the advantages for example is it it's faster to write cursive when you when you write cursive when you get good at it it's definitely faster to write and cursive than not to write and cursive yeah I actually forgot about that but that is one of the argents so if you're taking notes and you're taking notes by hand now given that is also going away at some point but if you're taking notes and you're taking notes by hand then cursive is definitely faster than writing uh individual letters in fact there is a subset of cursive you can from Shand you go to shorthand which is light cursive it's um that's a lot faster you can write in short hand yeah in short hand you can write as fast as people can talk um that's one second advantage of having of being able to do cursive it's um I think you can read it faster because the when you're reading cursive you're reading words at a time over time you get better at it you're reading like your brain recognizes word the the entire word what that's as opposed to individual letters you're not reading you reading word word word different words but as it like the word itself becomes an how you read also that would that would kind of go away if you read like a different style of cursive like written by a different person that would look completely different yeah but if you read your own cursive your own handwriting then it'll be fast wait then why would why would you need to read your own handwriting P that was like a a good argument but not really well thought about not not not the best argument okay um when you're writing in cursive um I think it just feels good to have like this art that you produce that other people can readily consume you know it's hard to um sometimes it's hard to recognize good art if it's like a painting like modern art yeah like a modern art let's say Modern Art is like the extreme of it like how do you recognize a a good Modern Art you have to be um you have to study art to be able to recognize good Arts okay but for the most part if you learn little bit like you don't have to learn how to write a lot of cursive just after a little bit you can very easily appreciate good calligraphy and good cursive like you can read like you see it it's like oh this is so good yeah right and that enjoyment is going to be missing in your life if you don't have cursa like the enjoyment of of writing something and look and like trying to perfect it and trying to write it as good and the enjoyment of appreciating somebody else's good handwriting these are things that existed throughout history like appreciating someone's handwriting was the first thing you would notice from someone when you get a letter sometimes people with would meet over letters before they meet in person and their first presentation of who they are first impression of who they are is their handwriting and is their is their actual writing and then like the the content of what they wrote comes in but like when you look at someone's writing and it's beautiful that already is a thing so some of the appreciation that did so I could understand what the teachers were saying like they're not necessarily mean the they don't necessarily mean the uh like you're being locked out of the content of the declaration independence they what they mean is you're locked out of the beauty of the entirety of the document if you're not able to read it and see the cursive and appreciate the entire thing okay I get that so there's there's that layer that is it's like being colorblind in a way like you can see things but the the beauty of certain things is is is lost in that's kind of an exaggeration but yeah I can see how in the art form cruve might be more impressive but like and I think be able to write in cursive because you have to pay attention to how the letters are attached and whatever it might actually be that you remember things better if you like write your notes in cursive cuz it's proven that writing your not notes gives you better memory but like incursive that' actually be a good study for someone to do I'm sure that has been studied that's something that we can look up and see if it's the the differ different handwriting Styles contribute to the amount of memory that you have of the thing that you write okay well I think a lot of the arguments that you made for cursive particularly the art Ones Still stand and in that way cursive should be taught um maybe in schools maybe not but cursive should be taught um some of your arguments uh were not as well thought out but there was a few arguments that I feel like would also apply to typing for example like the speed Factor yeah um it's well known that people can type much faster than they can actually I don't know they can write yeah much faster than they can write and um like you said practicing just a little bit once you actually start to get the hang of it you actually can type really fast the same way cursive would be yeah um or you can learn to type in shorthand which is a lot faster also yeah and also there's like people have invented shortcuts and stuff yeah which is like texting language if you want to go there but yeah but I feel like the the totality of the argument is different than the individual Parts I I having gone through this whole discussion I feel like individual rationals for cursive falls apart like there's you can you can dismiss each part of the the the thing yeah and it's maybe that's why we're in the place we are like individual parts of it people you can't you can't defend the entirety of the thing with just just the art part of it but overall I feel like something is is lost now that we are essentially losing this whole art form or this whole method of communication um and in a way it's like trying to hang on to a past uh like anything else yes but like does anyone talk in Old English anymore do you like no but we still read Shakespeare no we still read Old English and yeah and the documents of Freedom will still be there for you to read them like they'll still be there for you to like admire wow look how people wrote in that time look at the beauty of like we the people look how like flowy they are that'll still be there but with like new ways to write typing with that coming in do we really need to hang on to cursive I guess that's like the whole question yeah but yeah yeah I I don't know if it's uh I feel like there is definitely positives in having it and I could see the arguments for use of your time in some other way okay that was very fun episode cool okay thanks