Can we learn from Mexico? - Edda Manley

We can have 101 reasons why we need to write in cursive, but until we find some that connect with parents, teachers, and students on an emotional level, change won’t happen. 

1) Children who are able to learn to write in the USA (same goes for Canada) are those where the parents have enough money to send the children to private schools or tutors.  I fear this will ultimately lead to a “class” system. Ironically, I don’t think most teachers have salaries high enough to send their children to private schools. Something for teachers to think long and hard about.

2) Most Latin-based language countries (all of South America and Central America and others around the world) value cursive writing or “caligrafia” as they call it and make sure their children are able to write fluently. This will, in the future, put North American children at a disadvantage from a global perspective.

We have so much valid information about the Importance of Handwriting, yet we stay on the wrong road instead of getting back onto the right road. 

3) At a 2002 conference that we hosted in Canada, one of our presenters, Inez Emmaus from Mexico, told us that for over 18 years only printing was taught in Mexico because in those days, their President didn't like to write in cursive so he banned it from the schools. Around the year 2000, the education leaders of the country decided that cursive was to be brought back into the curriculum. The first thing they had to do was to send the teachers who could not write in cursive back to school to learn how to write and teach cursive.

Maybe the thought of bringing Mexican people into the USA to teach American children how to write in cursive will inspire the education leaders to look after own. 

Report from the Summit

The Handwriting for the 21st Century Summit was held in Washington DC on January 23rd, 2012. Educators and researchers are concerned that the Common Core Curriculum, which aims towards a National Standards Test in 2014 (more than 40 states have agreed to participate), has left cursive writing out of the curriculum.

Three important points from that summit meeting were:
1) that fMRI research shows that children develop adult-like connections in the brain once they have learned handwriting to the point that it is automated. This cannot be accomplished by reading to children or by keyboarding; you must write by hand to do it
2) During the 1960’s and ‘70’s handwriting and spelling was emphasized and content was considered less important. In the 1980’s and ‘90’s the standard changed to making content the most important, and handwriting and spelling were no longer emphasized.
3) It was agreed that handwriting is one of the foundation skills that must be kept in the curriculum, and lots of work needs to be done to make this happen.

Many of the younger teachers today did not receive enough practice in cursive writing to feel confident to use it never mind teach it. It has always been interesting to me that illiteracy rates have escalated with the de-emphasis on handwriting.

Edda Manley (Canada)