City of Puyallup announcement.
Learn how to read and write with cursive letters. Improve on what you already know or learn from the beginning. We will focus on creating your signature and move on from there. Recommended for ages 8+ on the 2nd Wednesday of the month at 5 pm.
The Puyallup Public Library is located at 324 S. Meridian.
Good news for this opportunity to learn and improve cursive. Shame on our public schools for no longer teaching this. The continued “dumbing of America”.
Why does the inability to write in cursive mean “dumbing of America”? I taught special education students for nearly 30 years, many of whom could not master cursive. These students were not ” dumb”, they had different learning modalities from “main stream” learning students. Cursive writing involves small motor coordination, not general education mental acuity. When we are asked to fill out paperwork we are told to “please print”. Hold on to your shaming for something that matters.
Before chastising the school system for not teaching penmanship, it would be a good idea to take a look at what teachers are bound to teach. They are to stick to the program and not deviate from it. When I left teaching fifteen years ago, penmanship was no longer in the curriculum; so I followed what was dictated to teach.
Anybody can scribble in stick figure language.
Depends on what an individual prefers, I guess.
Always seemed more cohesive, faster, and pleasing to look at.
I think the only “mandatory” need for printing would be on design or architecture plans, blueprints, and the like.
Everything is becoming obsolete, pretty soon it will be books, they will all be online, it’s nice to have an option to learn cursive, they should have a club in elementary schools…
I like the idea of a penmanship club. I think it is a way for interested children to socialize and practice at their pace.
I’m old enough to remember formal penmanship in the second grade. It was a parochial school so curriculum was a bit more specialized. ( I went to 12 different schools, each different). I recall practicing repetitive endless swirls, circles and up and down strokes between the lines of my paper. I was not particularly artistic, but the practice led to a foundation of penmanship that my later teachers praised.
Cursive has fallen to the wayside as keyboarding and computers have been integrated. Progress almost always leaves old skills behind. Of course there are also new skills. My dysgraphic grandson excels in keyboarding despite illegible handwriting.
Not all children’s gross and fine motor skills develop in step with others and so what may be simple for one is a struggle for others. It really has nothing to do with intelligence. Ever had to decipher a doctors chicken scratch? Still a nightmare for teachers integrating every skill level into what is required.
Studies are now showing that the act of cursive writing assists the brain integrate the senses to control movement and think simultaneously. When practicing cursive it imprints strong visuals in the brain, leading to better recall and subsequently improving learning outcomes. I imagine there will be studies about keyboarding that will show positives as well.