Cursive writing
The wrong decision
I read in West Hawaii on Dec. 11 that Hawaii was one of the first states to stop teaching cursive writing in schools. I was shocked.
First of all this means that Hawaii Schools are discouraging students from going to college. Longhand writing is the best way to take notes in class, omitting it shows that Hawaii is not heading our kids to college. They must want them to stay right here — making minimum wage or on welfare.
You cannot tell a student to prepare for college and at the same time tell him to print like a pre-schooler.
Hawaii’s national academic scores are low. There are other reasons for bad scores, but forcing students to print is a major factor in dumbing them down. Printing takes in less information and having less knowledge equals lower scores.
The next problem is the negative stigma to printing. The belief is that only little kids print their letters, so keeping a kid printing like a child, in a large way, keeps him a child through life.
The islands are silly with childish behavior, grown men saying childish phrases like “go shishi,” adults howling at corny eighth-grade racial jokes, and most of our island is (over 60 percent) on welfare, like children dependent on a parent government.
Being treated like a kid your whole life gives you a lower self-image and might tend to hold you back financially.
In a larger sense, refusing to teach cursive writing is a cavalier snub to all of civilization. There have been scribes teaching students cursive, or stringing letters together in a line, for thousands of years. Suddenly, Hawaii schools throw it out?
Have these great civilizations been doing it wrong for 5,000 years? Hawaii seems to think so. Handwriting is an ancient art and should not be discarded. What bizarre, educational theory are they using to justify this developmental handicapping of our young people?
There is a debate going on (check the net) pitting cursive against printing. The underlying and shocking premise is educators are trying to eliminate any handwriting at all. They begrudgingly teach printing but the move is toward eventually teaching typing exclusively, believing computers are the only thing and writing is archaic and useless.
This is absolutely stupid and based on the ridiculous notion that people in everyday life always have a keyboard in front of them and never have the occasion to use handwriting.
They might be right if we kept a computer hanging around our neck all day, but people like to keep their hands free to do a thousand things and one of those things is the all-important scribbling on paper. What, no more pens or pencils?
They are wrong. Handwriting is a beautiful and useful skill, completely necessary. It is personal expression and gets pent-up thoughts out quicker thus easing the heart and soul.
Cursive writing should be required and taught in the fourth grade.
People learn handwriting on their own, but the school is against it. Learning should not be in spite of school but because of it.
If students in every high school could write in good longhand, fast enough to catch every word a teacher says and express themselves in poems, letters and term papers, every student could be a University of Hawaii or Harvard Graduate.
Whenever school holds you back, learn it on your own and listen to Huck Finn, who said, “Never let school interfere with your education.”
Dennis Gregory
Kona