TEXT
RIP cursive: keyboarding is king
Under the new Common Core Standards, adopted by 45 states and in various stages of implementation and debate across the nation, third and fourth graders are no longer required to curl over their dotted lines and scrawl loopy letters in exchange for scribbled stars in the margins. Instead, they will be expected to learn keyboarding in elementary school, a skill once relegated to the vaguely vocational sixth grade elective known as typing class.
Some states have responded to the consternation: Florida legislators recently announced that the state would add cursive into their standards. Six other states have moved to preserve cursive in their Common Core recipe as a part of the 15 percent rule (for adopting states, it’s understood that the Common Core will be 85 percent of the subject matter standards, leaving each state room to adopt up to 15 percent additional standards). And although Common Core doesn’t require cursive, many teachers dedicated to the practice will no doubt continue to teach it.
But with the new emphasis on keyboard skills, one shouldn’t be surprised to notice a slackening of expectations in children mastering those crazy capital I’s and the majestic G’s. The problem is that although formal cursive training may not be necessary in the cultivation of an educated human being, having bad, tortured, and slow penmanship is a real deficit. Children will be expected to write more than ever under Common Core — whether that means penning an in-class explanation of how you arrived at a math problem or taking detailed notes on a reading assignment – and much of this will not happen on a computer unless your child’s school has a specific 1-to-1 computer program or your child has an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) that allows them to use a device for everything.
http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/cursive-under-common-core-writing/