2 out of 3 aint that bad... or is it?

There's talk about dropping cursive writing from the elementary curriculum.  Reasons are people don't use it anymore.  It takes too long to learn.  It's difficult to learn.  Adults use block writing so cursive is a waste of time.  Why use cursive when you can type it, change the font and use spell check?

Maybe adults have a hard time learning new tricks but eight year olds have a learning capacity that's off the charts.  At six, a kid will rapidly absorb everything he comes in contact with as a foundation for everything he'll learn for the rest of his life.  Social skills, languages, mathematics, art, reading, communication, coloring within the lines, spacial relationships, and personality.  As anyone that's been around kids can tell you, kids are learning sponges.  There's nothing they can't absorb and they do it faster and easier than the smartest adult.  Why drop a subject that any kid can learn in a few weeks?  


Is it the inability of the student to learn or the inability of the teacher to teach?

Cursive writing isn't simply a subject that becomes less important as we approach adulthood.  It's not a dead art that's been replaced by computer keyboards.  It's much more important than that.  
It's the last crucial step in basic learning that employs a highly complex neurodevelopmental process, which involves multiple brain mechanisms.  A simultaneous integration of memory, language, motor skill and higher cognition employing various degrees of motor coordination that requires balancing, flexing, and contracting movements as well as simultaneously stimulating some muscle groups while inhibiting other muscle groups.
In order to self-monitor writing output, visual, automatic motor memory, and revisualization feedback mechanisms must be engaged.

The idea that a nine year old can learn to do that in a few weeks boggles the mind.  It REALLY blows my mind that the adults in charge of elementary school education would think it's a good idea to drop this from the curriculum in favor of something they feel is more important.

What's more important than developing a signature or reading script from the past?


The people in charge of our present educational system haven't been making the smartest decisions lately.  Ebonics was a joke.  New math was like new Coke.  There, their, and they're are now acceptably interchangeable.  I suppose to some of the dumb asses making the rules, dropping writing from the standard three R's of the educational system makes sense.


It looks like cognitive thinking isn't required anymore.... at least where learning is concerned.