Portia Baudisch, Staff Editor
I will never forget sitting in my first grade class trying again and again to master the cursive J. The kid with the cubby next to me had no troubles at all, but it took me almost a week to master the script.
After conquering the art of cursive and graduating to Reed Intermediate School, needless to say, I was upset when my fifth grade Language Arts teacher told us we would never have to use cursive.
But Mrs. Brown, I sacrificed watching a new episode of That’s So Raven to ensure I would impress you with my fluid penmanship!
Slowly but surely elementary schools across the country have taken learning cursive out of their curriculum. What was once considered crucial knowledge is now being ignored.
Since 2010, 45 states have adopted the Common Core standards, which do not require cursive instruction but leave it up to the individual states and districts to decide whether or not they want to teach it.
A report the same year by the Miami-Dade public school system found that cursive instruction has been slowly decreasing coast-to-coast since the 1970’s.
“I never use cursive unless I’m signing a paper,” Newtown High School junior Tess Baldino said.
Very few students use cursive in their day to day life, although they spent weeks of first through fourth grade drilling all 26 letters.
What sparked the sudden change of curriculum? Why has cursive been pushed to the side?
“They should teach more computer tools because we need to modernize education,” NHS David MacKinnon junior said.
We all remember AR quiz’s, but Newtown Public Schools has adapted new technology and are now teaching five to nine year olds how to use tablets.
Although signing our John Hancock on checks and receipts, we don’t use cursive too often nowadays. But does that mean we should dismiss it all together?
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