random poll

[rm]

Super busy. Am suddenly curious about this. Apparently most kids entering college in the US this year don't know how to write in cursive. I suspect this is less a sign of the apocalypse than it feels like to me.

So, tell me things (as usual, poll is un-scientific and reflects my biases and experiences (and 49-year-olds can choose which age category they like better!) -- if the boxes don't work, my apologies and comments super welcome.):

[Poll #1607173]

Comments

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I just found this fascinating blog entry that illuminates my confusion about this situation:

http://elementaryteacher.wordpress.com/2007/10/28/how-american-cursive-appears-to-the-british/

My handwriting does look quite a bit like the image.

We never learned separate "cursive" letter forms at all, just the "print" alphabet you linked to. We were shown how to link the letters, I remember, but it wasn't an enormously hard-and-fast thing if your writing was legible (I got sent to do extra practice because mine wasn't...)

[gement.livejournal.com]

Wow. Given the mental contortions I went through trying to wrap my mind around the relationship between a print Z and a cursive Z (there is one, but it's tricky and reminds me a lot of the Kipling Just So story about the invention of writing), I spent a moment boggling as to how one could get any kind of joined up writing having only learned the print alphabet. Then I read the blog entry and it made more sense. Kind of a cheerful anarchy, it sounds like.

It also sounds like it's much more effective for getting people to keep complying with it. People stop using cursive, as far as I can tell, because those who are less utterly picky and obsessive than I am find all the little rules of spacing and slant and proportion (none of which I remember, but all of which I know I internalized into my handwriting to a certain extent) seem insane and arbitrary. Grade schoolers are pretty good at resisting that sort of thing.

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I was so confused by that Kipling story because the 'r' wasn't a real 'r'! I did, however, discover the cursize 'z' on my own and start using it just because I thought it was cool. I also -- I just remembered now -- had a rebellious habit of looping my 'y's and 'g's that my teachers were always telling me off about because it was harder to read... So I guess I resisted my sensibly anarchic print-based style of joined up writing by being seduced by the romance of cursive?

(I've been living in the US for 4 years and I just learned about this cultural difference now, btw. I am totally fascinated :) )

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

That is fascinating. The British 'joined-up writing' in that post is what I would call printing.