By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Our goal at First Teachers is to provide a forum for a discussion of educational issues of interest to Catholic students and parents. I am not sure how the topic of cursive writing fits into that framework. Not every tradition deserves to be respected. Not every change in school curricula threatens Catholic values. But there is something about the move away from teaching cursive writing to our children that strikes me as part of the secular liberal agenda.
I don’t know what it is. Perhaps our readers can provide some insight. I realize that I may be overreacting. My mind can be changed.
To begin with, I must admit to being behind the curve on this issue; I have not been aware of how widespread the effort to end the teaching of cursive has become. I can remember hearing a young black woman who testified in the trial of George Zimmerman, the man who was accused of killing Trayvon Martin back in 2013. She could not read a document that was handed to her by one of the attorneys because, she said, “I don’t read cursive.”
I thought to myself at the time that this was a sad indictment of the schools in minority neighborhoods, that this girl had been denied one of the basic building blocks to a successful education, a failure that would set her apart from the mainstream of Americans her age.
It looks as if I was wrong. Nowadays, broad currents in the American mainstream are not being taught cursive. Just a few weeks ago I was told by a friend that her 12-year-old niece, a white, middle-class student with good grades in a school system in a suburb of Boston, could not read a birthday card she had received because it was written in cursive.
This led me to do a little research. An article in The New York Times just a few months ago by Perri Klass reported that there is now a movement in modern educational circles to ignore cursive because “children in a keyboard world no longer need to learn old-fashioned handwriting.”
Is that true? Certainly, it could be argued that if we were starting from scratch it would be better to have just one form of writing, either cursive or print, one or the other. And that, if we were starting from scratch, it would make sense to have students learn the form of writing that matches what appears on their word processing documents when they use their keyboards.
My initial response to that observation is that we are not starting from scratch; that if students do not learn cursive they will not be able to read historical documents or do research involving the written papers of individuals from the past. Do we want generations of future Americans to end up like that, staring at the Declaration of Independence as befuddled as if they were looking at a page of Egyptian hieroglyphics? That seems too radical a break from traditional ways to be wise.
Admittedly, one of the old arguments for cursive has lost much of its persuasiveness: We once believed that it enabled people to write faster than printing each letter individually. The computer keyboard and texting on devices such as the iPad and iPhone have become the favored means of communicating of the modern generation, and they do that as fast as anyone writing in cursive. Moreover, I have seen modern students who print their letters rather than write them in cursive, complete essay questions on a test without any problems caused by a lack of time.
So where does that leave us? An older way of doing things cannot be said to be preferable merely because it is old. The New York Times article on cursive by Perri Klass pointed to an article in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy by Laura Dinehart, an associate professor of early childhood education at Florida International University, who argued it not just a preference for old-fashioned ways that warrants the teaching of cursive; that an association can be seen between good handwriting and academic achievement. Dinehart maintained that there is a need for more research on handwriting and the ways it helps young children develop the skills they need for “a complex task that requires the coordination of cognitive motor and neuromuscular processes.”
The Times article goes on to quote Virginia Berninger, a professor of education psychology at the University of Washington, who contends, “This myth that handwriting is just a motor skill is just plain wrong. We use motor parts of our brain, motor planning, motor control, but what’s very critical is a region of our brain where the visual and language come together, the fusiform gyrus, where visual stimuli actually become letters and written words.”
Berninger’s recommendation is that children need first to learn how to print, then experience at least two years of learning and practicing cursive, starting in grade 3, and then some systematic training in using a computer keyboard.
I must admit that I hope that people like Berninger carry the day in this debate. But, as I say, my mind can be changed. Fire away.
On another topic: Arizona’s Private School Tax Credit. J.M., a reader from Arizona wrote to First Teachers a few weeks back to encourage more Arizonans to take advantage of the plan. Another reader from Arizona, J.T., wrote to explain why he and other citizens of the state are reluctant to do so. J.T. argued it was a bad deal, one that required those who wanted to support a private school to donate to that school in one tax year, then claim the tax credit on their tax return, then wait for the tax credit to be given to them in the form of a tax refund.
J.M. writes, “I apparently did a very poor job presenting the Arizona tax plan if an Arizona resident such as J.T. misunderstands the benefits. Arizona at present has four primary tax credits. Contributions, up to certain limits, act as a direct credit against tax liability. The credits are the Foster Care Tax Credit, Private School Tax Credit, Public School Tax Credit, and the Charitable Tax Credit. The Private School Tax Credit is the credit I recommended in my letter as a way to support our parochial schools. The credit of up to $1,087 for an individual comes directly off of the donor’s tax liability. Catholic Education Arizona has a website (catholiceducationarizona.org ) for specifics.
“To address J.T.’s concerns: To start with there is no additional financial burden on the donor: You are simply being allowed to direct your tax dollars to programs of your choice. Second, there is also no fronting of money since your tax withholding dollars can be redirected to the charity; at year’s end you receive a donation letter which can be used as payment for your tax liability. Also, the tax credits are for all citizens, not just the families of students in private schools.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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