(Smoky Mountain News) Gone are the days of students hunched over wide-ruled paper, forming endless strings of perfectly manicured cursive letters, painstakingly matching the dimensions of each loop of an L or swoop of G’s tail.
Cursive, at least the way your parents learned it, is on the way out.
“It is an emotional issue for a lot of us, but practically speaking, people who learned how to cursive write really, really well in second or third grade just don’t use it after that,” said Bill Nolte, assistant superintendent of Haywood County Schools. “Why would we drill somebody in something they would be very unlikely to use?”
Cursive is markedly absent from the new curriculum adopted by North Carolina last year — as well as 46 other states — known as the common core curriculum. Schools can still teach cursive if they want to, but it’s considered optional.
While Haywood County has phased out intensive cursive instruction for third-graders, teachers will still expose their students to cursive in some form rather than kicking it to the curb entirely, Nolte said.
“We still teach it so people can sign checks or write notes, but it is not something we spend an exorbitant amount of time on,” Nolte said.
Jackson County Schools likewise no longer teach cursive.
“With technology, most kids write as they get older with a computer, so that is basically why,” said Susan Griesinger, the elementary curriculum coordinator for Jackson County Schools.
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