It's bizarre to me because in France they don't learn printing. Obviously you do it on forms, but they don't teach it as a first step to writing.

And then the fact that standardized tests through grade school do not require it. If it is not tested on, there will be calls to drop it.

I could understand that. Here, there is pretty much a month and a half of school year given over to the high stakes tests and preparing for them.

At Nate's school they're starting to progress into typing/printing their papers out. He actually has dispensation to do this for all his written work because he has processing issues. He has horrible handwriting and it's just difficult for him. I don't think he'll ever have particularly good handwriting unless he decides at some point to really apply himself to learning.

I learned cursive, but was never very good at it, and it never felt natural. In elementary school, teachers required that we write things in cursive, but as soon as they stopped requiring that, I went back to writing in print.

I gave up cursive pretty quickly too. I always thought my print was easier to read.

My brother got all screwed up in his cursive writing education. When he was in 1st grade, the school taught cursive in 2nd grade. He changed schools at the end of that year, and the new school had already taught cursive in 1st grade. So, he had to teach himself, and his cursive is appalling to this day.

I only write in cursive.

For Perkins:

DINAO - Bacon or Swiss Cheese?

Pooner

eta: bacon

BWAH!