Cursive or print?

Is anyone looking at doing away with cursive or print in elementary school? With all the technology out there will it be better to teach one or the other but not both?

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Kev on May 20, 2010 at 7:49am

I'd rather see the time spent teaching cursive spent on teaching typing.

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Permalink Reply by Laura Gonzalez on May 20, 2010 at 4:57pm

I think we ought to do away with teaching print. Use that time to teach cursive. The keyboard is already in print. Teach keyboarding instead of print.

Cursive is believed to be better for students with learning disabilities. Keyboarding is also good for students with disabilities. Print is limiting. Both cursive and keyboarding are faster than printing.

In the real world, a signature must be in cursive in order to be valid (that's why there's a line that says "sign here" and a separate line saying "print name here").

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Wylie on May 22, 2010 at 10:11am

Typing and print for me. When I moved to the US about 4 years ago, reading cursive was like reading Chinese. I had to learn how to read it before I could learn how to write it, let alone teach it. Joined handwriting in the UK does not look much like cursive to me, I think there are better versions of writing than cursive. Oh, and signatures do not have to be cursive to be legal. What about illiterate people? Some are allowed to sign with an X. In the US, many if not most states define signatures as "any memorandum, mark, or sign made with intent to authenticate any instrument or writing, or the subscription of any person thereto".