My son who is now 23 prints his signature. It's really goofy and he told me that in high school the teachers didn't want the kids to write in cursive because it was too hard to read, so they made them print everything. Thanks alot public school teachers, showing us once again how useless you've become.

Print, like my 10th grade son does :(

Well, with the obesity problems rocking our children that's IF they grow up.

I'm concerned about when kids grow up and have to sign something and they don't know how. What are they suppose to do, make an X?

You just print your name. What's the big deal?

Another point I need to make:

In an age where we're doing twice as much twice as fast, you'd think you'd want an easier way to write. The only problem is, people are doing less writing and more typing.

Hmmm, maybe because typing is FASTER? Show me someone who can write at 50wpm and then we'll talk.

That's what parents are for....

Actually, I started printing everything because many teachers would accept print or typed (no cursive). It simply took them too long to read cursive.

Typing is much slower unless you type over 50 wpm.

So for most of the people, printing is quicker than typing.

As for signatures, sure, teach the kids how to do that one thing if it's that important.

But as for legal documents, it is not required. You can print your name. Forging signatures is not what causes identity theft or check fraud. The merchant has no idea what the real signature looks like, and banks no longer check signatures.

hey btj89 do you remember shorthand?

Gee, I guess we can add writing to math, science, and all of the other things our kids can't do. Oh well, at least they're being taught the really important stuff, such as self esteem, ethnic history, birth control.........

Jaimo....public school teachers usless? That's what YOU as a parent is supposed to do! Talk about L A Z Y!

Kristy, I see those teachers taught you some real grammar..."that's what YOU as a parent is supposed to do!"???

If you learn to type, it is MUCH faster than any form of writing. It's not difficult to type well over 100 WPM with proper technique and practice.

At the rate this country is going they wont have to sign anything, the government will have control over everything and they will just scan their foreheads.

"thats what you..........ARE supposed to do" not "is", Christi ! Apparently, with you, context & grammar went the way of cursive. BTW, teaching cursive IS a teacher's job! Perhaps not to the exclusion of parental effort.. BUT that is one of the things they are paid to do. dublj1296198 beat me to the gate on this one! Have a nice day.

Jaimo.... I see that public were useless for you too. Here is a very common mistake they failed to correct..... a lot.

Before the conspiracy issues start flying.......15 years ago the Dept of Agriculture introduced "chips" for livestock to track and record data. Now most horses and domestic dogs/cats have them for identification.

Military ID's followed so all records could be kept on the servicemembers ID reducing lost files and paper records.

Now I have read of people having them put under their skin for ID and medical records in case of emergency. The next natural course of action is everyone obtain them for verifiable ID and medical scanning by EMT/ER personnel.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you, who think cursive is so important, can read Sumerian cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphics? Can you read latin or ancient greek? Even english written in cursive a couple of hundred years ago looks different than today's cursive, ever seen a "s" that looks like an "f"? I learned to read and write cursive in the third grade, but find some of those old documents somewhat difficult to read. The fact of the matter is languages change and evolve as does writing and writing mediums, I mean we don't still communicate with cave paintings or write on clay tablets or on papyrus.

For all or you grammer fanatics out there, I'm sure my punctuation and sentence structure are all terrible but are you really not understanding my points? We still argue about the exact meaning of the second amendment mostly because of the position of a comma.

Just because a person isn't capable of reading or writing in cursive doesn't make them lazy or uneducated, and I find the constant implication insulting. I've met plenty of stupid people who have beautiful cursive handwritting. What is important is that a person is able to clearly express his or her thoughts by writing or typing and that those thoughts can actually be understood by the others who read them. I happen to find my thoughts are much easier for others to understand if I type them, because even though I can write in cursive I have struggled with my penmanship since I learned to first pick up a pencil nearly 30 years ago.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you, who think cursive is so important, can read Sumerian cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphics? Can you read latin or ancient greek? Even english written in cursive a couple of hundred years ago looks different than today's cursive, ever seen a "s" that looks like an "f"? I learned to read and write cursive in the third grade, but find some of those old documents somewhat difficult to read. The fact of the matter is languages change and evolve as does writing and writing mediums, I mean we don't still communicate with cave paintings or write on clay tablets or on papyrus.

For all or you grammer fanatics out there, I'm sure my punctuation and sentence structure are all terrible but are you really not understanding my points? We still argue about the exact meaning of the second amendment mostly because of the position of a comma.

Just because a person isn't capable of reading or writing in cursive doesn't make them lazy or uneducated, and I find the constant implication insulting. I've met plenty of stupid people who have beautiful cursive handwritting. What is important is that a person is able to clearly express his or her thoughts by writing or typing and that those thoughts can actually be understood by the others who read them. I happen to find my thoughts are much easier for others to understand if I type them, because even though I can write in cursive I have struggled with my penmanship since I learned to first pick up a pencil nearly 30 years ago.

The faster I ever got was about 15 wpm typing, and that was 100 years ago in high school. Writing is faster, for me anyway.

Remove computers from the classroom until high school or college when they are talking a class that requires one.

I feel it is a real shame to do away with cursive writing. My friends from England agree with me. It is a beautiful art and I want my signature to be completely different from others. Plane writing is not so distinctive.

The soldiers in my husband's unit cannot read his cursive, what a sad situation.

I hate to tell you this, but that's already happening. I've had co-workers (usually 20-somethings) tell me they couldn't read my writing because it was in cursive, not printed. My response? This is the way I write, deal with it!

Your 20 something co-workers are probably incapable of reading at all.

Sorry your writing style is so antiquated.

The article never mentions that it takes much longer to read cursive.

Or that one person may not be able to read another person's cursive.

I've written in all uppercase print since high school. It's just as fast, and everyone can read it without much effort.

Hopefully, soon Doctors will do the same. What is the point of saving .1 of a second but then having written something no one else can read?

My response? This is the way I write, deal with it!

That's like me writing in all scribbles, then telling you it's your problem when you can't read it. I can read cursive, but it's more difficult than printing, unless it's very, very neat.

Hypothetical:

Person A and B write the same thing.

Person A's writing is legible to both Person A and Person B.

Person B's writing is only legible to Person B.

Who has the inferior writing style? Obviously, Person B. That is you, Miss Cursive. This is obviously assuming Person A doesn't have chicken-scratch printing.

AKap: "That's like me writing in all scribbles, then telling you it's your problem when you can't read it. I can read cursive, but it's more difficult than printing, unless it's very, very neat."

I must disagree with you. My husband does what your example describes- all the time. It makes me nuts. I cannot read a simple shopping list from him. He supposedly 'merges' print and cursive and... it doesn't work. He makes letters up, honestly. They aren't legible if you look at them through an eye looking for cursive or an eye looking for print. It's just gibberish.

Cursive doesn't have to be very, very neat in order to be legible. It just has to be standard. There are personalized variations which are acceptible to be included but if it is based on STANDARD cursive then you should not have a problem reading it.

If someone is scribbling then they're scribbling. There is no arguing around that. If they don't care if their handwriting is legible and then want to yell at someone because they point out that their handwriting is illegible then all that means is that the person is a narcissistic a-hole who thinks the world revolves around them. "Oh yes, struggle to read my chicken scratch for twenty minutes. Have fun!" Yes, THAT is an a-hole.

Correct standard print or cursive was never enforced in my husband's family. Nobody cared to check on him. And people like my husband are not rare. It's not just certain neighborhoods or certain income levels. It's all over the place. It has to do with parenting!

If the parents don't care and aren't willing to invest in enforcing concepts then no, the child isn't going to care and then what? You have a husband like mine who consistently told his sons all through elementary school that "Don't worry about it. It's not important. You're just like me. You'll always have bad handwriting." Like sloppiness is genetic? Get real. He totally undermined my attempts to teach them better! Well, this year he got a surprise: his children's handwriting looks ten times better than his and it was all because of my will power and their ambition. They learned to tune out his negativity and focus on me.

He doesn't say such ridiculous things to the kids any more, thankfully. Is he still too lazy to correct his own atrocious handwriting? Yes. And that is his personal choice.

Another thing most people don't think about: bad handwriting gives the impression that a lazy person wrote it.

Cursive doesn't have to be very, very neat in order to be legible. It just has to be standard.

Same with printing.

Cursive is art, not a core subject. Make it an elective. Don't force it on grade school kids who need more time on a strong foundation of basic English. Think about it...before these kids even understand how to spell, they are being taught a whole new way to write their misspellings.

In the case of a doctor writing illegibly, it could be a deadly mistake if the pharmacist can't read what was written and gives the patient the wrong drug... in fact, I believe there was a story about that a few years ago.

Anna, I agree. When transferring my patient file from one doctor to another I've tried reading the writing from one particular doctor and it was so bad I had to get the office to translate it into typed text. I'm talking whole pages of writing! It was obscene.

From what I understand the medical schools are starting to crack down on such sloppiness. The jokes about 'writing like a doctor' just aren't funny any more.

"The children struggle along trying to draw the letters, which in reality takes time away from real learning and focusing on the subject before them [social skills, like talking in class or having fun in school, literacy issues detract from self esteem building]."

I am a 3rd grade teacher, and I take the time to teach cursive, and to make sure the students are forming letters correctly. Please don't lump all teachers together and say they're lazy. In order to change this situation, it will have to be parents who make it known to the school board that they want cursive taught.

This is so true! I work as an occupational therapist in the schools, and teachers come to me all the time concerned that their students can't form their letters (printing). But I have watched how they "teach" their students. They write a letter on the board once and expect them to write. How can they learn if they aren't actually being taught? When I was in school, we had penmanship. We got a star for every letter that we wrote correctly and fit in the lines. I am 30, and I am shocked at how schools have stepped back in teaching students print and cursive.

Teachers are not to lazy to teach cursive, our educational system has been defunded to the point that only subjects that are these standardized tests are tought and everything else has fallen by the wayside. Shameful that our educational system has deteriorated to this level.

Not all schools are so foolish as to do away with cursive. Printing is just what it looks like. Juvenile.

Printing is just what it looks like. Juvenile.

It's easier to communicate to a wider variety of people with printing than it is with cursive. I'm pretty sure that makes it the superior form of written communication. There is no point to cursive- why teach it when children already know how to print?

It isn't as if cursive is 300% faster and more efficient than printing... the speed difference is marginal, at best, and tends to sacrifice legibility.

I learned how to print, write in cursive, and calligraphy. The latter two serve no purpose in the world of business, and I couldn't care less if my children weren't exposed to them.

Cursive is just an outdated holdover from the days of pens that had to be dipped in ink. There would be splotches every time the pen is lifted off the paper, so people devised a way to write without lifting the pen off the paper as often.

We don't use those antique pens anymore, we use computers with keyboards.

Time to move out of the 1800's folks, it's 2011 now.

Thank you JayEm and Rana! I wholeheartedly agree.

My boys' elementary school started teaching cursive then backed away from it only a few weeks into it. I was ticked enough about it to take my butt down to Walmart, go into the children's writing tablet/construction paper area, and purchase one of those dry erase paged booklets which teaches cursive and print. They have fought me and struggled with their handwriting since third grade but you know what? I can actually read their print AND their cursive! Their handwriting is now beautiful and they can write quite quickly, too. I tell them to take pride in their work and they have taken that lesson to heart. It shows in all their school work.

Monday through Friday they write a small paragraph in the neatest cursive they can. They do their homework in cursive unless it is typed up and printed to be brought to the teacher. The few teachers who have complained about 'consistency' in their class and all the students needing to write in print- I went to the principal and won the argument. It was quite simply this: "My children will learn how to read and write cursive because it is part of our heritage. Period."

And it is! It is most definitely part of our heritage. The founding fathers did not write the Declaration of Independence in print. And not just that important document but so many other online resources which have scanned copies of a person's work... their in CURSIVE! How in the heck are these kids going to handle it? When this generation gets to college they're going to be flabbergasted at how much they've missed out on.

I agree that it is ridiculous for there to be such inconsistency, though, in what is accepted on official documents. My twelve year old niece cannot even pretend to scrawl her signature in cursive and she can barely write her name in print. It looks like a three year old wrote it! My other nieces and nephews are the same. It's atrocious what's going on in our school. So what did I do? I yanked my kids out of brick-and-mortar public schools and my boys now attend a state virtual school. (flvs.net)They learn far more in a shorter hours in the day and we have time to work on things like cursive, reading, documentaries, art, and SOCIAL time with their friends.

The brick-and-mortal public school system is going down the toilet. I feel very sorry for the teachers.

"Printing is just what it looks like. Juvenile."

Better juvenile than illegible.

"My children will learn how to read and write cursive because it is part of our heritage. Period."

So was slavery.

StoneCold, your flip little comment doesn't even compare apples to oranges. It's just totally off topic and you're being snide.

Try this on instead: people who enforce writing cursive are old fashioned and probably tell their girls to suck in their stomach before locking them into a corset for the day.

Want to be snide? Do it right. Slavery doesn't have anything to do with handwriting but corsetry has everything to do with proper decorum and so falls within the same range as legible handwriting.

And no, I don't advocate corsets unless you need one for support or to protect an injury. Or you're above 18 and can do whatever the heck you want.

There are a lot of things which are being cut in the public school system but I don't think that handwriting should be one of the subjects which deserves the ax. Kids today would rather write in netspeak than English.

Rana, you are so right about some teachers not spending enough time teaching cursive (or in some cases, even print). My son, who is almost your age, was getting O.T. in school because he had some difficulty with motor skills. His teacher left it to the therapist to teach him. None of the other students in his class could write cursive either. He prints everything, except his name, which looks like a scribble. The bank where he has his account even questions his signature on occasion.

On the other hand, my mother had an uncle who had the most beautiful cursive writing I ever read. I loved when he sent letters, just to see his writing.

"Kids today would rather write in netspeak than English."

You got that right. Unfortunately, it's not only kids.

But why do you equate cursive with proper decorum? Most people write cursive illegibly. Legible printing is better than illegible cursive. Netspeak vs. proper grammar is a different issue.

In your case it's not print or cursive, it's grammar and punctuation. Your post was almost unreadable.

Not to mention spelling.

i think you need to take a class or two, my head almost exploded trying to read your post.

Debbie S. Knight Romeo

I apologize for the rude comments made to you by Taurian and Wisco!!!

I read your piece without difficulty and the thoughts you were trying to convey were easily understood.

I hope you ignore their ignorance - some folks like to tear down others when it would be a good thing for them to first take the mote out of their own eye!

Have a happy day!

Delores - did you just compliment her on her lack of gammar/spelling skills?? Please dont apologize on my behalf for statements that I have said and meant. I stick to my original comment. If you want people to take you seriously then you should learn to converse like an adult, not a six year old.

It shouldn't really matter whether she writes in cursive or print, it should matter if her writing, especially her signature, is distinctive and readable.

If someone types out word for word what the Constitution says, which is the case for pretty much any reputable text book, it's not interpretation and it's not translation. It's the exact same words therefore it's copying. There is no loss of meaning.

But how would you know that if you can't compare it to the original?

I agree Kendall, I remember growing up and being fascinated with cursive writing. There was always something so distinguished and intriguing about it. And though I type well above the 50wpm, I still prefer to put pen to paper and write in cursive. When I was in school we even learned Calligraphy!

Or, maybe, with the time saved omitting cursive lessons, something of merit and use can be taught. Learning multiple methods of writing the same language is redundant and unnecessary.

I understand what many are saying about the personality involved with cursive, but people can inject their personalities into printing, too. People don't print like a computer. Plus, creativity has outlets in art, music, drama, etc. It's not as if cursive is the only way children can express themselves.

I'm not sure how it works now, but if you send your kid to a foreign language class, especially one where they teach a different alphabet, cursive is often taught more. In addition, it might help them learn their own native language better because of the better focus on grammer or adjectives, nouns, etc. which the teaching of also seems to be a lost art. I learned better just reading books by my own choosing, which helped me enjoy the activity more when I didn't have to analyze them like a math problem.

I completely agree Kimmie! I've been in Indiana my whole life and I remember all the fun I had learning cursive. And when I was in 5th grade and spent my recess every day being a teacher's assistant for a 2nd grade class - I would teach her students cursive writing on the projector. It was a wonderful feeling. And they really loved to learn it just like I did. I weep for my son as he will not learn it with his friends like I did in school and when I teach it to him, his friends won't have any idea how to read it.

oh come on, you're being a bit dramatic, dont ya think? You weep because your son doesnt know cursive? i think there are bigger fish to fry out there, cursive shouldnt make you weep.

I wept because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I took his shoes.

StoneCold, stop being a troll. You don't add anything to the discussion here.

Wisco, Molly isn't weeping just because of the handwriting issue. She's weeping because she knows it's just the tip of a very large iceberg!

Kimmie, go to a store that has children's school supplies, paper, and crafts. Near the lined paper tablets and construction paper you'll find laminate pages in a small spiral bound booklet you can use to teach your children print and cursive. They give awesome examples in BIG letters with numbered arrows showing how to make each letter.

Walmart had both version for under $3 apiece when I bought my set two years ago. My boys learned with erasable markers first and then on regular lined notebook paper. We even bought a small erasable whiteboard which would fit on their lap and I'd give them a few words to write out in practice. Once they were good with that we moved onto notebook paper.

Another hint for practice: copy pages out of their favorite books or go to Wikipedia.org and copy/paste info on some fun topics they like and then have them write a tiny bit of it every day in cursive. That's what I've done with my boys and they have loved it. They like that I take an interest in what they're curious about and this is also a way to overlap lessons: handwriting + learning about the topic + READING skills! And if they hit words they don't know then that opens up another avenue of discussion:

1. How do you think you can find the meaning of that word?
2. What references could you use?
3. What do you think it means just by using the context in the sentence and the surrounding sentences?

In a way, this is child-led learning.

Last week my children wrote a huge chunk of the wiki page about the fictional planet "Cybertron." The week before they they wrote about the various types of tree wood and what it's used for. The week before that they learned about Siamese cats. We have a siamese. They were curious about paper products. And they love the Transformers cartoon. I asked what they wanted to write about and they told me.

Modern fun learning. We use our imagination to make learning fun and to keep everyone engaged. Handwriting practice doesn't have to be tedious and boring!!!

it's funny how teachers don't have enough time to teach a method of communications and yet they have a lot of time teaching about christopher columbus and the civil war, both of which are not needed for employment "and" both of which are mandated courses to take by first year college students.

@shpperben - seriously??? i think teaching the history of our country and how it came to be is a bit more important than learning fancy ways to write letters. the fact is that the world is moving away from cursive and there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it. also, quit playing the blame game - if it is that important to you then stop leaving it in the hands of the teachers and teach it to your children yourself.

yes, seriously.

if you think about it, no one give a damn that christoper columbus was looking for a quick way to india. what people care about now is how to get to india faster and cheaper for more important reasons.

Ok, I did think about it and I'm still going with history over cursive. And btw, your statement is entirely contradictory. Obviously people are looking for bigger/better because its better than the original. Thats how progress happens. Please dont speak for entire groups of people when you have no opinions to back it up but your own.

Might as well do away with spelling also like they did in your school LOL.

No, because I am one of the dinosaurs, and not extinct (dead) yet.

Excel and Word? Do all students have computers on their desks now? While typing and graphs maybe good subjects to learn, they're not really that practical or important to 3rd through 5th graders. By the time they learn those subjects at later grades, they should already know how to write by hand and be able to read others'. I'm 36 and hate to see what else becomes a dying art throughout the generations.

I'll agree with your comment on signatures. Believe me, mine just looks like my initials with a couple of scribbles after it. And I DID learn cursive in school, 3rd grade to be specific, and I haven't used it for anything BUT my signature since 7th grade.

People writes their own way and shouldn't have to write in cursive if they are not comfortable with it. What's more important that they be given the option and be able to read it when they see it, otherwise those that don't will just have trouble reading even if the cursive was a font on a fancy sign and it would be sad if a 13 year old asks "Mom, what does that say?". At this rate it will go the way of calligraphy and be nothing but an acquired art that is taught by older generations with most of the future writing in hard to read chicken scratch in the language of cell phone texting. I find it easier to write in cursive because it flows more naturally and doesn't strain my hand, though I'll print if clarity is needed. It shouldn't be hard to read anyway since some of my letters look like standard print instead of traditional script like G's, Q's, r's, x's and z's. Even when I print my words I still link the letters together. Anyway, I don't think cursive will go away in other countries, no matter how technologically advanced they get. We are just getting lazy here.

valerie, very good point. It was probably easier for them as cursive flows from one letter to the next.

Cursive is not important if you can print legibly. You describe people who don't enunciate; well, they're just bleeding their letters together like cursive, and adding a little extra flair... like cursive. If these people had the choice of speaking clearly or mumbling, and chose mumbling, it'd be like choosing cursive over printing.

Bad English doesn't have 'extra flair," AKap. It's just ignorance coming out from the mouth.

People who went to crappy schools as kids are able to take classes to correct their past learning. Eliza Doolittle. Heard of her? The same principle still applies today. Speak low class and you'll be thought of as low class. It "bleeds" over into every area of their life.

You can check out books from any public library about proper grammar.

I have no problem with proper grammar. People with extreme regional accents have extra flair in their speech, and some may consider their colloquialisms to be "bad English."

Katie, most calls I make require me to ask that the young person on the other end s l o w down their speech. I feel like I'm at an auction. Then they say 'like' every other word. Children learn to wriggle and crawl before they can walk. In turn, schools should teach proper enunciation and printing to cursive. Heaven help them when technology has a blackout.

Angelpointe, your #20.2. I remember a book we read in elementary school, back in...well, it was decades ago, about clothes making the man. The same principle applies today. It still amazes me that 'pants on the ground' is acceptable and legally-allowable.

"'pants on the ground' is acceptable and legally-allowable."

Not so much anymore, MomGrandma. Thankfully individual companies and communities are banding together to make such a thing illegal and are fining people for doing it in public. People are finally working to make change happen instead of just griping about it.

Every time I drive by someone here in my city with their pants down under their cheeks I am tempted to roll down my window and yell, "I'm sorry but that is NOT sexy!" Because honestly, it's not. If I wanted to see that part of their body then I'd date them.

Colloquialisms are still considered bad English, AKap. I won't argue with you on that account. Just because they're quaint doesn't make them right. But we still use them. It's strange because I can say "Y'all" in conversation occasionally but I can't write it. There's a disconnect there in speaking and writing rules. My hand knows what it should do what my mouth shouldn't.