Here’s how I see it.
PROS
- All lowercase cursive letters can be written using 4 basic strokes.* You can find a couple approaches to this but the strokes our kids were taught are found here. When letters are taught be stroke, retention is much quicker than teaching printing.
- Cursive is a gross motor skill rather than a fine motor skill so it’s more developmentally appropriate…especially for boys.
- There is less letter mix-up with cursive since b’s and d’s and p’s and q’s have distinctively different shapes.
- The practice of cursive writing develops parts of the brain in ways printing manuscript cannot.
- Because cursive flows and does not require the writing implement to leave the paper as often as manuscript, it does not infringe on thought flow as much.
- Cursive’s bottom-up motion is easier for lefties.
- Cursive is a more efficient writing style and even more important now that standardized tests (such as SAT) are requiring timed writing sections. As children get older their print usually morphs into a less-readable hybrid but they are too set in their ways to re-learn a new writing style such as classic cursive.
CONS
- One must learn to read manuscript but write in cursive.
This hasn’t been a problem for either of the older two. - It goes against the grain of what the majority of the world does and so there are less resources.
I was able to download a cursive font so I can create my own worksheets and copy work and there are enough out there to make do.
*In case you were wondering which letters fall in which stroke category, here they are:
swing ups-i,j,p,r,s,t,u,w
roller coasters-b,e,f,h,k,l
hills and valleys-m,n,v,x,y,z
ocean waves-a,c,d,g,o,q
For other articles on cursive check out:
]]>