Death Of Cursive? Not In SC …

A great debate is underway in America’s government-run schools as to whether cursive writing should continue to be taught …

Recently released “Common Core State Standards” for government-run schools across the country no longer require cursive instruction, but states are moving quickly to pass legislation that would keep it in their curricula.

North Carolina’s State Senate passed a bill mandating continued cursive instruction last week, while legislation was introduced in the S.C. House of Representatives last month that would do the same thing.

Specifically, the proposed South Carolina law (H. 3905) would require every school district in the state to “provide instruction in cursive writing to ensure that students can create readable documents through legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade.”

Interestingly, a North Carolina lawmaker sponsoring that state’s legislation said she was receiving her information on the bill from a “source in South Carolina” – which wound up being a sales representative for Zaner-Bloser, a for-profit company based in Ohio which provides cursive writing instructional materials.

Hmmmm …

Frankly this whole discussion strikes us as ridiculous … in fact it’s a “debate” we wouldn’t even be having if government would ever-so-slightly loosen its vice grip over the education industry. Also it strikes us as absolutely insane that South Carolina students – who continue to fall further behind their peers in critical skills like math and reading – should be forced to waste valuable instruction time learning cursive writing.

But hey … this is South Carolina, where the people running our government school monopoly are borderline illiterate themselves …

H. 3905 (.pdf)

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