Alice Armstrong of Springfield, Illinois, is a high school English teacher, freelance writer and copy editor.
If the computer had existed in the 1700’s, would Thomas Jefferson have penned the Declaration of Independence? Probably, but not in his elegant script for he well may have learned keyboarding skills instead of cursive writing in grammar school.
Would the Declaration of Independence be any less profound if Jefferson had typed it in Times New Roman? Probably not. But some neuroscientists concerned about the impact of raising children on technology worry that the Thomas Jeffersons of tomorrow may be unable to think deeply enough to conceive of such profound ideas.
Recent research demonstrates that heavy use of technology impacts many aspects of human development. From inhibiting the growth of social skills and deep, abstract thinking to creating active addictions to social networking and texting, too much technology in the lives of children may cause them to suffer life-long struggles in … and outside … their academic careers.
Charged with educating and socializing society’s children, public schools must teach children how to use technology to their advantage without growing overly dependent on it or letting it take control of their lives.
How can schools accomplish this goal? Perhaps they can do it through more rigorous instruction in writing, both the physical and intellectual exercises.
Curriculum in Illinois
Educators are expected to teach skills identified in their district’s curriculum. Today, much of that curriculum is driven by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
An initiative of the National Governors Association aimed at bringing uniformity and rigor to the nation’s classrooms, CCSS has been adopted by Illinois, along with the vast majority of other states. In 2014, the state plans to replace the current set of standardized tests with assessments aligned to CCSS. Consequently, classroom teachers will be teaching skills identified in the CCSS.
For elementary students, these standards now identify keyboarding but not cursive writing skills. Cursive writing was already receiving short shrift in many classrooms prior to the adoption of CCSS. Now, cursive writing instruction may well be doomed to extinction as teachers will be too busy to give attention to skills outside of the curriculum.
Many parents and educators view this trend toward technological skill development as progress for public education, and as a much-needed leap into the 21st century. Others, however, feel just as strongly that this change signals a retreat, in the name of progress, from teaching a basic skill with which many children struggle.
For most of the 20th century, third-graders across the nation clenched pencils in their little hands and labored to link loopy letters into legible words.
Why, techies wonder, would anyone put a child through that misery when a computer keyboard is available? It’s like teaching kids to tie shoelaces when they could use Velcro. But, just as using Velcro does not teach fine motor skills, it is not always available, nor is it always desirable.
Learning to write in cursive, like tying a shoe, not only enhances fine motor skills, but it can arm a child with a practical skill that can be used in almost any situation quickly and conveniently.
Yes, children also need keyboarding skills in order to navigate modern life effectively. But Marc Prensky, author of Teaching Digital Natives — Partnering for Real Learning, likes to point out that most of today’s kids are “digital natives.”
According to a 2010 study sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 93 percent of American households have a computer and 66 percent of children ages 8 to 18 have their own cell phone. Having used technology practically from the moment they left the womb, these children already know how to use a computer and navigate a keyboard upon entry into kindergarten.
In contrast, kids are not learning to write cursive before they start school. Few who do not get cursive instruction in elementary school will learn it on their own, so how will they learn to sign their names? Most will not. Already a large number of high school students can only print their names. Having no distinct signature may be a handicap in adult life.
While it is true that many electronic transactions no longer require a signature, plenty of paper contracts still do need a “John Hancock” and probably will for decades. The day may arrive when contracts are sealed with eyeball scanning or something similar, but that day is still far in the future. In the meantime, a signature is a necessity.
Cursive as a thinking skill
Writing in cursive remains a fast, convenient alternative to printing. A students’ inability to write and read cursive writing may actually slow down instruction.
Teachers must print when writing on the board and making notations on student papers, a much more laborious mode of communication than script. Students printing their notes rather than writing them in cursive can fall behind and demand that the teacher slow down. Such technologically dependent children may not be prepared for keeping up with a college professor’s lecture or a boss’ instructions, and their demands to slow down won’t likely be met.
Are convenience and speed alone reason enough to spend time and money teaching kids to link their letters in sinuous script? Maybe. However, there are other important reasons to keep cursive alive.
Research reported in Developmental Science indicates that the physical act of writing helps cement learning, a truth that can be seen, literally, on a functional MRI scan. When the brains of children learning to recognize letters on a keyboard and push the button are compared to brain scans of children learning to write with pencil on paper, the scans clearly and consistently revealed much greater brain activity associated with the act of writing.
The 2010 study, led by Karin Harman James, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Indiana University, indicated that the use of fine motor skills in children is strongly linked to learning. Thus, children who put pencil to paper have a firmer grasp of spelling and constructing ideas than children who use a keyboard. Somehow, says James, “ … the act of drawing out letters strengthens learning.”
This notion is supported by professors in other disciplines as well.
According to Donna Werderich, assistant professor of language arts at Northern Illinois University: “We don’t have data showing the effects of taking away cursive, but there is data showing a correlation between putting pen to paper and the thought process: expressing thoughts and processing information.”
The physical act of writing exercises the brain in a way that typing does not. What’s more, well-developed fine motor skills are important all on their own.
Daily life requires the use of these skills for everything from tying shoes to braiding hair to locking and unlocking doors. Anecdotal evidence suggests the decline in cursive instruction is accompanied by a decline in the manual dexterity of many children.
A few years ago, teachers at Penn Manor elementary schools in Pennsylvania, where cursive had been all but cut from the curriculum, noticed a significant increase in the number of children needing occupational therapy and wondered if the lack of cursive writing was responsible. In response, these educators decided to increase the time devoted to teaching cursive writing, and discovered that the need for therapy decreased.
Some special education teachers believe cursive instruction also helps children overcome dyslexia and dysgraphia, with findings published in The Cursive Writing Approach to Readiness and Reading, by Phillip J. McInnis and Sandra K. Curtis. Dyslexic and dysgraphic students reverse letters when they read and write. In their experience, these special education teachers see an improvement in reading and writing fluency when using cursive. They theorize that the continuous nature of cursive reduces the frequency of letter reversal.
In 1995, McInnis wrote that teaching dyslexic children cursive first helps eliminate letter reversals because it reduces the potential for errors that can come with picking up the pencil from the paper to form letters individually.
Dying like Latin
Still, not everyone is convinced that teaching cursive writing is necessary or desirable. In fact, many educators and parents argue that cursive writing ought to go the way of Latin. It has outlived its usefulness, they say, and with the curriculum jam-packed as it is, teachers have no time to devote to an archaic form of communication.
Sharon Eilts, a special education teacher in Cupertino, California, gives voice to an opinion many of her peers hold: “Cursive instruction, although lovely and a reminder of earlier times, has no place in modern education.”
Susan Greenfield of Oxford University may offer some support to this line of thinking. In a recent study she conducted, adults who had no experience with the piano were divided into three groups.
One group spent five days in a room with a piano, taking instruction and drilling lessons on the keyboard. A second group spent five days in an identical room but engaged in zero interaction with the piano. A third group in another identical room was instructed to play piano in their mind’s eye for five days.
Follow-up brain scans confirmed the hypotheses for two of the groups but netted surprising results in a third. Predictably, the piano players’ brains showed significant changes in the brain structure responsible for controlling finger movement. Again predictably, the brains of those who had no interaction with the piano showed no changes.
However, researchers were stunned to find that the brains of the people who only imagined playing the instrument changed nearly as much as those who had actually put fingers to keys.
“‘The power of imagination’ is not a metaphor, it seems,” she concluded. “It’s real, and has a physical basis in your brain.”
Is less more?
Kids spend so much time interacting with technology at home that keeping the emphasis away from technology during the school day may be what kids need. At home, the 2010 Kaiser study also reports, the average child age 8 to 18 spends 7.5 hours per day, seven days a week using some sort of electronic media. When multitasking with various forms of media is figured into the mix, 10 hours of consumption is squeezed into that 7.5 … and that does not include computer use for homework.
Many people worry that this much technology in the lives of children can be harmful to their intellectual development. Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and a member of the Dana Foundation, an organization dedicated to compiling and sharing information about brain research, is one of these people. He fears that children who spend too much time with technology will develop lazy thinking habits.
Grafman notes that while kids can get lots of information quickly, “Fast is not equated with deliberation.” He worries that spending too much time with electronic media “… can produce a tendency toward shallow thinking. It’s not going to turn off the brain to thinking deeply and thoughtfully about things, but it is going to make that a little bit more difficult to do.”
Oxford University’s Greenfield has similar concerns.
“Already, it’s pretty clear that the screen-based, two dimensional world that so many teenagers — and a growing number of adults — choose to inhabit is producing changes in behavior,” she says. “Attention spans are shorter, personal communication skills are reduced and there’s a marked reduction in the ability to think abstractly.”
None of this bodes well for developing students who can write clearly and effectively, for writing well requires abstract thinking skills.
Illinois application
Traditionally, once students learn the mechanical skills of writing, teachers begin to focus more attention on the development of content and the quality of ideas students include in their writing. For nearly 20 years, to hold teachers accountable for instruction and students accountable for learning, Illinois administered writing tests to students in every few grade levels from third grade through junior year.
However, those tests have been eliminated during the last few years to save money and time. Last summer, the state eliminated the last state-issued composition test from the 11th-grade Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE).
The elimination of writing from the state’s spring assessments means teachers will probably focus more instruction on what the state does test: reading, science and math. While one can argue about whether testing should drive curriculum, the simple truth is that it does. Teachers and administrators are under great pressure to produce high test scores, so the teaching of writing may get less attention in some schools this year.
Springfield School District 186 will not be one of them, however, according to Margie Buyze, literacy coach in the district. She insists the state’s elimination of the writing portion of the PSAE is not letting the districts’ language arts and English teachers — or their students — off the hook.
“I do not think the fact that writing is not being tested on our state assessments has impacted the importance of solid writing instruction in our district. It’s an essential element of our Tier 1 literacy instruction,” Buyze says. “Tier 1” refers to initial differentiated classroom learning that all students experience under Response to Intervention strategies.
In fact, in some ways, omitting the writing tests may improve instruction.
“Actually, without the pressure of the ISAT,” Buyze notes, “teachers have expressed that they have more freedom to explore different genres and topics.”
Still, District 186 continues to administer its own writing tests.
“The district pays an outside company, MetriTech, to hand score a writing assessment for all grade seven and nine students once a year,” she said. “This is in an effort to validate our scoring process and to keep our expectations consistent and high. Students take the assessment in December, and we receive the results in February.”
The state does plan to resume administering a writing test, though no one is quite sure at the moment what that test will look like or when it will be in place. A new achievement test, one designed to reflect the curriculum driven by Common Core State Standards, is in the making now, and the state hopes to have it in place by 2014.
With ‘Common Core’
A positive aspect of writing instruction outlined in CCSS does not reflect new thinking, but brings an old philosophy back into focus: writing across the curriculum.
A 2011 article published by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), points out that “reading and writing cannot be learned once and for all; these skills represent complex arrays of capacities that vary from one discipline to another.”
In other words, the writing style and documentation format used in the sciences look very different from those used in literature, which look different from those used in history. The CCSS make clear an expectation of teachers in all disciplines to incorporate writing appropriate to their subject matter into the course work.
If implemented, this writing program has the potential to improve student learning, which should translate into higher test scores. However, it will not be easy or inexpensive to implement.
Districts will have to invest heavily in professional development to prepare all teachers, even those who teach P.E., to incorporate writing into their lessons. However, if the experience of Brockton High School in Massachusetts is a legitimate measure of the success such an approach can deliver, the investment would reap big dividends.
In 1999, Brockton’s test scores were dismal, some of the lowest in Massachusetts. The faculty and staff implemented a rigorous program of reading and writing in every classroom regardless of the course. Over the past decade, their scores have steadily climbed and now are among the highest in the state. Researchers tracking Brockton’s progress and approach assign much of the credit for their success to this reading and writing across the curriculum.
Implementing such a program in Illinois high schools would not be easy even if districts would be willing to invest in the necessary professional development. Writing is hard work and many students resist hard work, though ironically, they will often work very hard at avoiding the work.
In fact, teachers can attest that many students just plain refuse to write. “Sally” may be willing to bubble in A, B or C on a test, but if she’s asked to write answers in sentence form, she will leave the page blank.
This resistance to writing may be a result of the lazy thinking neuroscientist Grafman frets about or a result of a discomfort with writing born of feelings of inadequacy. Whatever the root cause, overcoming student reluctance to write will present a challenge for educators.
References
Karin Harman James, “Sensori-motor experience leads to changes in visual processing in the developing brain,” Developmental Science, 13:2, 2010
Phillip J. McInnis, “Simplifying the writing process,” Spring 1995, http://www.nathhan.com/mcinnis.htm
Phillip J. McInnis and Sandra K. Curtis, The Cursive Writing Approach to Readiness and Reading, M/C Publications, 1982
Mark Prensky, Teaching Digital Natives — Partnering for Real Learning, Corwin, 2010
Questions board members should ask about writing
Just like the reading program profiled in the January/February issue of The Illinois School Board Journal, school board members should maintain a “balcony perspective” when it comes to district writing programs. However, board members also need to ask the proper questions of administration to make certain that what is being taught regarding writing follows the direction that the board has set for the district.
The following represent some board-level questions that might be raised for discussion regarding writing in the district:
• Are our students receiving instruction in cursive writing? If so, at what grade level does it begin? Is there reinforcement in subsequent grades?
• Do teachers from different grade levels talk about writing instruction and compare what they are asking of students?
• What sources of research do teachers in the district use as a basis for writing instruction?
• What amount of time do teachers spend on writing assignments?
• If the district conducts writing tests, what are the scoring trends for the past five years? Ten years?
• If the district has discontinued writing tests, have teachers seen a change in written classroom work?
• Has the district received feedback from local employers regarding students’ abilities to write effectively on the job?
Types and forms of writing
In addition to two styles of penmanship (printing and cursive), the art of writing, according to education.com, also takes at least six different major forms: narrative, expository, descriptive, persuasive, journaling/letters and poetry.
“Because students are learning the distinctions between various genres, it’s important that teachers use the correct terminology and not label all writing as ‘stories,’” says Gail E. Tompkins, writing for book publisher Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall.
Descriptions of the six forms of writing are:
Narratives involve retelling familiar stories, developing sequels for stories that have been read and creating original stories that have a beginning, middle and an end to develop plot and characters.
Expository involves collecting and synthesizing information to give directions, sequence steps, compare things, explain cause/effect relationships or describe problems and solutions.
Descriptive involves observations and choosing precise language to convey sensory details, create comparisons with similes and metaphors, and make writing more powerful.
Persuasive involves using logic, moral character and emotion to win others over to a particular viewpoint by use of clearly stated positions, examples and evidence.
Journaling/letters involves writing to themselves or known audiences in a personal, often less formal style, to share news, explore new ideas and record notes.
Poetry involves creating word pictures and playing with rhymes and other stylistic devices to create vivid yet concise language that can be arranged in different ways on a page.
A multitude of examples can be found within each form of writing, including newspaper articles, technical manuals, business letters and contracts, books (both fiction and non-fiction) and e-mails.