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July 30, 2007
Write or wrong?In the days of NCLB, AYP, and all the requirements therein, not to mention the prevalence of the keyboard, an old standard of elementary school education is falling by the wayside: penmanship. The AP (via CNN) covers the subject here.
The article points out that, "The reality in many schools is that handwriting instruction has slid far down the list of education priorities. Many teachers have all they can do to ready students for standardized tests and requirements for core courses like math, science and reading." So what's a kid to do? "For one thing, younger children may not have the skills to fully learn keyboarding, and not all classrooms have computers. Handwriting is how young students express themselves and develop as learners, said Steve Graham, special education professor at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee."
Additionally, it seems there is some benefit to students who learn cursive handwriting.
On the essay section of the SAT, required by most colleges for admission, students writing in cursive averaged slightly higher scores than those who printed. The College Board, which administers the SAT, said the difference wasn't significant and couldn't be attributed to handwriting, yet the result has intrigued researchers.In one study, college students who took good lecture notes got higher scores on essay tests. The best predictor of quality notetaking was writing speed, said researcher Stephen T. Peverly, professor of psychology and education at Columbia University's Teachers College in New York.
"Since at least for many kids the thoughts they think up are a little ahead of their handwriting, they need to be able to write fast or they're going to forget them," he said. Faster writing also helps the brain spend less effort on forming letters and more on higher-order cognitive tasks like composing good essays, he said.
Cursive or not to cursive, that is the question.
Posted July 30, 2007 1:50 PM | Curriculum
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