Keyboarding Pushing Handwriting Off Assignment Pad

A few years ago, I was stunned to hear a mom say at a PTO meeting that her high school son could not read her cursive handwriting. It wouldn't surprise me today. There's been a major push toward keyboarding in earlier grades in my kids' schools, while handwriting has been relegated to when-we-get-to-it in a curriculum heavily focused on standardized test results.

The Washington Post points out in this look at the cultural shift that only 15 percent of students who wrote the first essays on the new SAT section wrote their words in cursive. And they are in the vanguard of students who are tapping more words on keyboards than writing stories on yellow legal pads.

As one teacher tells the Post, she teaches cursive once a week, mainly so her students can read it. Cursive—that is so low on the priority list, we really could care less. We are much more concerned that these kids pass their SOLs (standardized tests), and that doesn't require a bit of cursive.

Here's a look at the history of penmanship lessons, per Zaner-Bloser, maker of a well-used handwriting curriculum. In the '40s and '50s, teachers spent as much as two hours a week on handwriting. In the '70s, it was a separate daily lesson through sixth grade. Today, most elementary school teachers spend 10 minutes a day or less on penmanship. To adapt, Zaner-Bloser has developed a 15-minute daily lesson plan.

As I mentioned in this post on kids and ergonomics, my 4^th grader has 15 minutes a night of keyboarding practice, but no cursive homework. While my generation and parents before me may lament a lost art, educators today say they are preparing for the reality that our kids will be composing and editing everything with their finger tips.

But more than art may be lost. Historians worry that a lack of handwritten documents will lessen the breadth and accuracy of future historical research. Margaret Webb Pressler writes, Academics who specialize in writing acquisition argue that it's important cognitively, pointing to research that shows children without proficient handwriting skills produce simpler, shorter compositions, from the earliest grades.

As a journalist and a blogger, I like a good simple and short sentence. But not if there's little depth behind the brevity, or limited ability to make connections and explain complicated ideas. Many studies, the article notes, have found a connection between good handwriting skills at a young age and expressing thoughts better at all ages.

By the way, the SAT essays written in cursive scored slightly higher average scores than those written in print.

So what do you think? Are we on the verge of an age of another lost art and diminished abilities? Or is it much ado about nothing? Is it just as this Washington, D.C. area high school student who can barely read or write cursive says? "It doesn't matter because any important thing you turn in is typed."