It’s Not a 21^st Century Skill

     Writing using a pen or pencil on paper appears to be fading, as students move up through the grades.

                         

                        Communication is done in an electronic format:

“I’ll text, email, Blog, Facebook, or twitter . . . but write a letter . . . too 20^th century.”

     Steve Graham, a professor at Vanderbilt University studies handwriting. He found that students write better in word processing. He goes on to say that there is still value in teaching cursive and focusing on handwriting skills. The legibility of work can influence how it is graded. Studies showed that neat manuscripts earned higher scores than messy ones, even if the quality of ideas were the same.

     The mechanics of writing can inhibit production if there is and issue in a student’s fine motor skills.  Some students experience success with cursive when they had difficulty with penmanship in printing. Then there are the students who are excited about reaching the grade where cursive is taught. 

     One reason given to teach cursive is so students are able to read historical documents and recognize script by a “low-tech generation”. 

     “The times they are a changing”. Whatever tool used to write students still need to be fluent.