My Official Handwriter
My daughter just started grade four in a Canadian public school, and one of the things she is most excited about is learning how to handwrite capital letters. She spent grade three learning how to handwrite lowercase letters, and was so proud to be one of the first “official handwriters” in her class. (I get it. I still have my grade four pen license.) Despite being an “official handwriter” in grade three, she was told that capitals had to wait until the following year. Of course, we taught her how to handwrite her first and last initials in uppercase at home, and she taught herself all of the other uppercase letters using an iPad app, but she wasn’t supposed to use capital cursives at school until she learned the proper form. This was somewhat understandable since I had to actually look up some of the letters, such as capital Q!

Cursive Vs. Keyboarding
Despite my daughter’s excitement about cursive, she may never formally learn how to handwrite capitals in school. Handwriting is no longer a compulsory part of the elementary school curriculum in our district. Many schools in the US have also downgraded the importance of handwriting in favor of keyboarding. Personally, I agree that typing is a much more important skill for today’s kids to learn. If there’s no room in the curriculum to teach both cursive and keyboarding, then it seems obvious which one should get the boot. (more…)