Cursive vs. Keyboard - an interesting debate

There have been many debates over the centuries regarding the education of our children.  From integrated schools to No Child Left Behind and Common Core curricula, teachers have had to deal with a plethora of revisions to their daily lessons.  However, hidden beneath the mandated revisions is a new discussion that centers around cursive writing vs. keyboard entry for student assignments.

Certainly, there has been much discussion regarding the teaching of cursive in elementary school.  Cursive writing as we know it today began in the 16^th century.  People started adding curls and connections to the letters in words.  Around 1840, Platt Rogers Spencer felt it was important to make handwriting an art form. He developed his own style of writing and taught his Spencerian method to his students. The Spencerian method soon became the official writing style of government and corporate documents from 1850 to 1925. However beautiful this style of writing appeared, it was also time-consuming.  The world was becoming a faster-paced place and the fancy handwriting slowed forward progress. Enter Austin Palmer to the scene.  The Palmer method was easier to use and to teach.  Schools used it almost exclusively until his textbooks ceased publication in 1980. Finally, Zaner-Bloser’s books took over the school market because they were easier for little learners to understand.  Today we are left with children who print, rather than write their assignments because even Zaner-Bloser’s style of writing was sometimes difficult for teachers to understand.  RIP, cursive writing!

Now those same little learners have little use for any style of handwriting.  The computer keyboard has supplanted any effort by both parents and instructors to teach cursive writing in school.  The keyboard, too, has had a long and twisted history.  Christopher Sholes invented the first modern typewriter in 1866. However, the keys jammed frequently.  James Densmore came up with what has become known as the QWERTY keyboard.  He put commonly-used letters in locations that were separated by some space to prevent jamming of the strike keys.  This was great for the early secretaries, but is a problem for modern elementary students who look for the letters in alphabetic order on a keyboard.

So what are we teachers to do?  Have students print assignments so we can read them more easily?  Or ask them to type their assignments, making them even more easy to read, but more difficult for the child hunting and pecking for each letter?  Ultimately, that will be your decision.  

One day I watched my 2^nd grade grandson struggle to write a 5-sentence paragraph on his tablet because he had to look for every single letter.  I decided that he needed to memorize the locations of the letters.  Sound like a difficult task?  Not at all if you consider that he has memorized the names of at least 50 dinosaurs!  And other children of that same age have memorized the location of piano keys in relationship to sheet music symbols.  So, I devised a 10-page practice packet whereby he can learn the locations of each letter on paper and on a keyboard.  You can find my KEYBOARDING PRACTICE PACKET for little fingers HERE.  Hopefully it will also help your little people learn how to efficiently use a keyboard, which will definitely help them later in life… unless voice recognition software takes over the universe!

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