Leave Cursive Writing To The Past

The article on cursive writing (Jan. 15) gets to the heart of our job as teachers: how to prepare students for a future we can’t always predict. Given that complex job, I don’t think the arguments for teaching cursive are compelling enough to justify the instructional time involved.

The central argument that students need to read documents like the Declaration of Independence in the original cursive script doesn’t hold up. Is it better to read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on parchment than a laptop screen? Virtually every signifi cant document is available online in print version. It’s the brilliance and passion of the authors of those documents that matter, not the loops and dots of their handwriting.

When we talk about 21st-century skills, the question for us as teachersoften comes down to form vs. content. Dr.

Marsha Jones’ insight about dift erent keyboard arrangements illustrates her clear understanding of that distinction between what matters and what doesn’t. Children typing text to express their convictions, experiences and imagination is what should endure; whether the arrangement of the type is based on a typewriter, computer or iPhone will keep changing.

Last year I visited the Illinois Teacher of the Year’s class on digital literacy. Students in his class create their own short films, ranging from documentaries to comedies, which they show at a film festival attended by thousands of members of the community. When I asked one of the students what he got out of the class, he said, “Well, it’s not so much this particular technology - that couldall be obsolete by the time I get to college. It’s more about learning to use whatever tools we have to express what we want to say.” While today’s students might not be using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint in 20 years, they will likely be using some type of word processing program that enables them to cut and paste blocks of text, run “spell-check” and manipulate visual information to support their purpose. These are the kinds of skills that even young students should be learning when it comes to both writing and reading.

Arkansas teachers face extraordinary demands on our class time right now because of the mismatch between the state Benchmark test and the Common Core curriculum.

Common Core involves real-world projects, with an emphasis on using technology to solvecomplex problems. Yet the Arkansas Department of Education has decided our students will continue to take the Benchmark test, which has a more traditional emphasis on isolated “school skills” demonstrated with paper and pencil, for many years to come.

I teach in a school and district with innovative leaders who are adept at bridging this divide, often by using technology and real-world applications to teach traditional as well as 21st-century skills. But bridging the gulf between the new curriculum and the old state test isn’t easy, and it takes time. That time is too scarce to teach students a skill better suited to our past than to their future.

JUSTIN MINKEL

Fayetteville THE WRITER IS A THIRD-GRADE TEACHER IN THE SPRINGDALE SCHOOL DISTRICT.