Cursive–The Power of Connected Writing PART 2
PART 2: If Manuscript Writing (block letters) is Better, Connected Writing (cursive) is Best
These real world observations from educators (Sanseri and FitzGerald), who have personally noted the benefits of cursive writing for those they have taught, solidly hold up in the world of research, as well. With keyboarding and touchscreen texting interfaces, not to mention voice-to-text writing, dominating our school children’s worlds, there has been a lot of conversation, and now research, about the benefits of handwriting in general, whether it is cursive or manuscript style. Konnikova (2014) looked at Common Core (CC) standards that were still actively followed in the 2010s and noted that CC called for teaching legible handwriting in kindergarten and first grade; the CC curriculum then shifts its focus to keyboarding for the remainder of a child’s primary and secondary public school career. The writing taught in the CC setting was usually manuscript.
Manuscript handwriting provides benefits above and beyond keyboarding, etc, and the Konnikova article backs this up with excellent detail. However, educators like Sanseri and FitzGerald (and another to be introduced later) show that connected writing, or cursive, adds significant outcomes to those of manuscript handwriting. It should be argued that low amounts of handwriting (emphasizing handwriting in just kindergarten and first grade) is clearly not enough. It can be argued that the handwriting taught should be cursive first; the brain/word order/spelling/reading skills all develop better with cursive first, cursive often, and cursive over the long haul. The following blog entries will make this case.
