Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September.
Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September.
It’s great that you had good experiences but I think if you dig through a few threads on the topic, you will see a LOT of people reporting very bad memories and even trauma around how cursive is taught. Not everyone can learn cursive and even if we had the resources to identify the large number of students who will never be able to write cursive, it is still alienating and degrading to de-stream them. And in the end, there is no significant benefit to merit the tens or hundreds of hours spent drilling letter forms. That extremely valuable time could have been spent doing something useful.
Bad experiences around bad teachers will exist regardless of whether cursive is taught, though. Teachers aren’t perfect.
I didn’t say anything about bad teachers. My criticisms are still valid even if assuming teachers are perfect.
Was this something specific to cursive?
I’m not surprised that kids would’ve had awful experiences, especially because this is a skill that takes time to develop, and time is often the thing in the shortest supply when it comes to teaching kids.
But you wrote your post like there was something particularly unique to the awful experiences had with learning cursive writing. I wasn’t expecting that. Does it have to do with how you can ‘get away’ with messing handwriting in math or even in English, but when you’re being graded on the appearance of cursive letters, any fine motor skills a child is struggling with gets piled on?