Is Handwriting Irrelevant?
It shouldn’t surprise you that many university students can’t remember how to form cursive letters…
Their argument is that handwriting skills are essentially irrelevant because the majority of the time, student work is done on the computer.
Some schools are even doing away with teaching cursive handwriting beyond the primary grades, preferring to focus on keyboarding skills and other digital communication.
Even so, proper cursive writing still has its place in education. Yes, more and more students use the computer for their assignments, but keyboarding skills can’t help when writing exams or tests, or when taking notes in class–not everybody has a laptop!
You might argue that printing works just as well during exams and for taking notes in class… if you can print what is the purpose of cursive? The answer is that when time is limited, cursive writing is quicker and more fluid because the pen doesn’t leave the page as much as with printing, and there are fewer stops and starts. This means that you can write more during an exam, or take down more of what the teacher said during class.
But, like everything else, practice makes perfect. You’ve got to practice penmanship daily, or you’ll end up with comments about illegibility on your tests.
Want to read more about handwriting? Read our post about neatness here.
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