My first question is – when will these students use cursive in their adult lives? They will use the internet, they will send emails, they will have to curate information but somehow there is no time to teach these skills . Maybe if we gave up some time in 2nd grade – time alloted to learning cursive- we could make a difference.
Here is the problem. We are not teaching kids basic digital literacy. How to form a subject line of an email, conduct an effective search in google. We leave them alone to figure out the internet on their own. Little to no lessons on how to validate information they find on the web, but we have time for cursive??? Really? Why not teach them how to choose a decent font, or complementary color scheme for a presentation. What about the concept of not giving a powerpoint that is too heavy in text and lacking in proper visuals?
Please, as tech savvy educators can’t we tweet, text and blog to other educators that its time for a change!!!! If we can do away with cursive – the world is our oyster. We can accomplish anything. We can start to change the worst practices like kids sitting in rows reading textbooks and if we dream really big we could do away with worksheets and turn the education world upside down. It starts with saying “No to cursive.”