By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
In the October 6 edition of First Teachers, we featured a discussion of the growing movement away from the teaching of cursive writing in our schools. A professor from a large university has forwarded to us some additional information in defense of the teaching of cursive. It comes from a study in the journal Psychological Science by Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mueller and Oppenheimer write, “As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing your notes is faster — which comes in handy when there’s a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way.”
Surprisingly, the fact that taking notes in cursive is slower than typing them on a laptop or tablet is actually an advantage.
The professors write, “A study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run. When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can. The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective and to paraphrase what they hear — because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them. When writing longhand, you process the information better.”
Do the professors offer proof of this thesis? They do. The professors compared students who took notes on laptops or tablets to those who took notes by hand. “For questions that asked students to simply remember facts, like dates, both groups did equally well. But for ‘conceptual-application’ questions, such as, ‘How do Japan and Sweden differ in their approaches to equality within their societies?’ the laptop users did ‘significantly worse.’ The more words the students copied verbatim, the worse they performed on recall tests. This is suggestive evidence that longhand notes may have superior external storage as well as superior encoding functions,” write Mueller and Oppenheimer.
The professors concede that their study is not likely to lead the new generation of students to give up their laptops and iPads, but their findings are another arrow in the quiver of those who feel there is value in teaching cursive.
We received another letter in response to our October 6 column, in this case from S.A. of West Hills, Calif. She focused on another portion of that column, the question of how we should go about securing the financing needed to keep Catholic schools operating.
S.A. writes:
“I would like to comment on your First Teachers article re: private school tax credits. I spent 11 years in very strict French-American Catholic schools in New England, but I left the Catholic Church as an adult and was an evangelical Protestant for 20 years (I reverted in 2002, thanks be to God). During this time, my son went to Christian elementary, junior and senior high schools. One day while in the principal’s office discussing an athletic event, I asked him if our General Baptist junior/senior high school took government money of any sort to help fund the institution. He replied that our school would never take one penny from the government in any form whatsoever!”
Why? The principal at her son’s school “went on to say that in doing so the elephant’s nose (a/k/a, the government) would be sneaking under the tent and before long the entire elephant would be inside and calling the shots against our Christian values. I never forgot that conversation. And that is why I object to any funding whatsoever, whether by direct means or indirect means like tax credits. It is just not a good idea, especially in this day and age. This conversation with my son’s principal happened 15 years ago and it’s much worse now.”
S.A. offers examples of what concerns her:
“Even then and without taking government funding, California was trying to flex its muscles by calling for the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) to ban certain schools and individual student athletes from participating in any CIF events, meaning our athletes could not compete against other public and private schools in city, regional, or state events! Why? Anyone or any institution that did not subscribe to the LGBT agenda would be punished in the worst possible way.
“Liberals always want to take it out on the kids when the parents don’t obey their mandates. An uproar ensued and the ban never happened. But it might have turned out differently if government money had been involved.”
S.A. agrees that financing Catholic schools is an issue, but offers a different approach from government aid:
“Our Catholic elementary school has many students who come from families that are unable to afford the tuition. They are provided with scholarships from the parish that enable them to receive a Catholic education.” S.A. believes this to be a better option than becoming dependent upon government financial assistance.
One final topic: the ongoing question of Common Core. On October 17, the Cardinal Newman Society released an alternative set of standards for Catholic schools. The Newman Society calls it Catholic Curriculum Standards, and describes it as a “way of encouraging greater emphasis on what makes Catholic education special while moving beyond reliance on the controversial Common Core State Standards.”
Catholic Curriculum Standards offers proposals to Catholic educators for “teaching students in English language arts, math, science, and history beyond what’s taught in a secular school.”
The proposals were coauthored by Dr. Denise Donohue and Dr. Dan Guernsey, who lead The Cardinal Newman Society’s K-12 education programs, with input from Anthony Esolen, Joseph Pearce, and Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ.
The Cardinal Newman Society press release informs us their undertaking is receiving high praise: “These Catholic Curricular Standards are an invaluable contribution to Catholic schools everywhere,” said Fr. John Belmonte, SJ, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Diocese of Joliet and a national expert in Catholic school administration.
“A splendid achievement,” said Dr. Ryan Topping, author of The Case for Catholic Education and a fellow at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, N.H.
Dr. Sandra Stotsky, developer of the highly respected Massachusetts Academic Standards, praised the Catholic Curriculum Standards for providing “the academic rigor missing in most public school English language arts curricula.”
Additional information and the full text of the Catholic Curriculum Standards can be found on the Cardinal Newman Society’s website: https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/program/k12standards/.
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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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