Don’t Replace Common Core With Cursive—Cursive Is Pointless

Plenty of states are pulling back from full
implementation of Common Core, the national education curriculum
standards pushed by the Obama administration and certain Republican
governors. The standards have
drawn criticism from libertarians, conservatives, and even
teachers unions who worry about an
erosion of local and parental autonomy over schooling
decisions.

However, Tennessee is modifying Common Core in at least one
discouraging way: state officials are going to re-require that kids
study cursive.

Readers born after 1995 may not know this, but cursive is a
system of hand-drawn, swoopy, loopy ink marks that represent
letters and words. People used to “write” notes to each other
(instead of typing, you see). It was a real pain for us left-handed
folks, who tend to smear everything we write by hand, rendering it
unreadable and getting ink all over our wrists.

But even though typing outmodes cursive in just about every way,
Tennessee legislators passed a bill that would require kids in
second, third, and fourth grade to study the “lost art,” according
to
Reuters:

Schools are expected to start bringing back the declining art of
cursive in 2015-2016 under the new rules, signed into law this year
by Governor Bill Haslam.

Keyboarding and print writing will still have their place, but
legible penmanship will be required by third grade.

“I am surprised we have stopped teaching it in some places,”
said Gary Nixon, executive director of the Tennessee School Board.
“It’s an art that is losing its form because of the keyboard.”

But pretty much nobody else sees the point:

For millennials, cursive is quaint and not much more.

“It’s kind of like hopping on a Pogo stick. If you can do it,
great, but if not, it doesn’t matter,” said Cory Woodroof, 21, a
student at Lipscomb University in Nashville who felt grade school
handwriting classes were wasted time.

Also at Lipscomb, 20-year-old Janice Ng of Singapore said she
took immersion studies in English back home but “they didn’t
mention cursive. It’s not used.”

If kids really wanted to learn cursive, that would be one thing.
Ideally, they would simply petition their school officials to
schedule a few lessons. Kids shouldn’t be bound to rigid curriculum
standards handed down by distant authorities, unable to concentrate
on study areas that interest them—that’s the whole problem with
Common Core.

But replacing national standards with a weird requirement
clearly thrown in for sheer nostalgia by change-averse local
planners isn’t so great either. (And it really isn’t great
for left-handed kids.)