At a Small Maine School, Cursive Endures and Wins National Awards

[Demovictory9]

At a Small Maine School, Cursive Endures and Wins National Awards
Although cursive handwriting “is a dying field,” as one teacher said, it has made a comeback in some schools, including one in Maine where two students won awards this month

For years, screens have replaced notebooks, keyboards have subbed in for pens and digital life has revolved around the printed word.

But at a small school in Maine, cursive handwriting thrives, with two students recognized in a national contest last week for their skills crossing T’s and dotting I’s with precise and legible shape, size, spacing and slant.

The students, from the town of Woodland, won awards in the Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest, which is open to students from public and private schools in kindergarten through the eighth grade. The students learned how to properly loop their L’s at Woodland Consolidated School, which has a history of winning awards in the contest.

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Although cursive handwriting is not as widely seen or as prominent as decades past, it has made a comeback in some classrooms. After Common Core standards no longer required that cursive be taught in public elementary schools in 2010, some administrators — including in districts in Texas, Ohio and Illinois — reintroduced a cursive curriculum in elementary schools.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/us/writing-cursive-students.html

[Baitball Blogger]

1. kick

[secondwind]

2. This warms my heart. I'm 74, and still remember my cursive

classes, I enjoyed them tremendously.

[Bettie]

3. Cursive writing and writing in general

opens different neural pathways.

It's also good to have the ability to read "old people secret code" (cursive writing).

[Chainfire]

4. I am an old man so I was taught cursive (although I was never good at it.)

For people my Father's age, ( b. 1911) Latin was imperative to understand, speak and write for people to be considered well educated. I am not sure that cursive writing is not as obsolete as Latin.

Cursive writing has been an albatross around my neck in researching family history. While some of the records left behind are written in beautiful script, I find quite a bit of it very difficult and some of it impossible to decipher. I have copies of a series of letters written between my GGF and Francis Scott Key, and some of it just as well be in Mandarin.

Times change, it may be time to move on.