A bill requiring every school district to teach reading and writing in cursive as part of the elementary school curriculum provides no skills to help today's youth prepare for the today's digital world.
If the words on this page were written in cursive, chances are few people under the age of 18 could read them.
That's not a lament - just an observation. The dependency on computers, email and texting for communicating has rendered what we used to call "script" all but obsolete.
In the not-too-distant past - say, 2004 or so - New Jersey's third graders were required to "write legibly in manuscript or cursive to meet district standards."
That requirement has gone the way of the floppy disc, photographic film and cassette tapes.
But now two state lawmakers are pushing a bill that would force every school district to teach reading and writing in cursive as part of the elementary school curriculum.
Their measure, which defines cursive as "a type of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected," notes that many documents fundamental to our nation's history and laws were drafted in cursive: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution.
With all due respect to state Sen. Brian Stack (D-Hudson) and Assemblyman Ronald S. Dancer (R-Burlington, Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean), we're living in a digital-driven era. Forcing students to learn penmanship has about as much value as making them learn how to repair a stagecoach.
We understand there are impressive voices out there ready to disagree.
Some research shows that mastering cursive helps children score better on reading and spelling tests by forcing them to look at the interconnected letters as whole words. Other studies indicate that writing in longhand activates different parts of the brain than printing block letters, and that practicing those letters improves fine motor skills.
Has public school teaching become devalued?
Duly noted. But the reality is there are only so many teachable hours in a day, and an unlimited number of essential topics to cover, from the American Revolution to the periodic table.
When it comes to setting curriculum priorities, most of the time we would rather leave decisions in the hands of the teacher and the local administration than in the hands of legislators.
Admit it, grownups: How many of us spent the entire third grade grappling with those weird Q's and G's, and then never, ever used cursive again in our lifetimes? (And if you're a leftie, we particularly feel your pain.)
Many schools opt to continue stressing cursive, and that's their right. A 2012 survey by the New Jersey School Boards Association found that half the districts in the state were doing so as late as 2012.
But to our thinking, it's kind of like teaching youngsters how to use a rotary phone: amusing in a retro kind of way, but not particularly necessary to compete in a digital world.
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