Teach Children Cursive Writing

I have heard a lot of controversy surrounding the practice of teaching cursive writing to children. I have definite ideas on this subject!! Here is my rant on this important subject.

OF COURSE, CHILDREN SHOULD LEARN TO READ AND WRITE IN CURSIVE!!!!!!

“Why?” You may ask. All the children and young adults I know spend all their time texting on their phones or they type on the computer. They rarely pick up pen and paper any more.

First of all, it is an important developmental step that aids in brain development, particularly in hand-eye coordination. It develops the small muscles in the hands and develops greater dexterity in the fingers. The children use different muscles to write that are not used to type or text and developing them provides them with more fine muscle control.

Adults need to be able to provide a signature for many important documents. Printing your name on these documents is not legally acceptable. Documents like job applications, marriage licenses, wills, contracts and more do not accept printed names, they require a signature in cursive.

Most important, if a child learns to write in cursive, he will be able to read cursive. Without the ability to read cursive writing, the child (who ultimately becomes the adult) loses the ability to read historical documents. Think about this for a moment; all our grandparents’ letters, all our historical founding documents, the Magna Carta, etc. are all written in cursive.

Yes, right now copies of those documents can be found with a simple internet search. And they are printed and easy to read. But what if someone went in and changed those documents that come up in a search? There are unscrupulous people in this world that would not have a problem with going in and changing the wording in those documents to suit their own agenda. Our children and the generations coming after them won’t know that it had been changed, because they won’t be able to read the original documents. They won’t be able to compare the original documents with the printed copies to see if they are correct.

The generations to come won’t be able to read their grandparents letters, or original national or international history. How much of our history will be lost or changed into something unrecognizable? How will the people understand where they came from, what their personal family history was, what the founding fathers of our nation tried to accomplish, what is true and what is false?

By not teaching our children to write in cursive we are depriving generations of people the ability to read and understand their own history and their place in the world. This is a monumental travesty and opens up future generations to exploitation and the deprivation of their own history. All because the adults in our schools are too lazy to take the time to teach our children to write in cursive? All because the powers that be have declared that cursive writing is not important enough to put on a standardized test?

Too much is at stake here. If your child’s school does not teach cursive writing, teach your third-grade child yourself. Make it a game. Call it magic grown up writing. Race each other to see who can make a row of capital B’s first. They will happily beat you.

It is “one more thing to do” in a busy day, but it is worth it. You will improve your child’s fine motor skills, give them the ability to create a unique signature, protect them from unscrupulous people that might try to change our founding documents on the sly and give them lifetime access to the rich history of their family and of the world that is available to anyone who can read it.

OF COURSE, CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAUGHT TO WRITE IN CURSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!