Cursive or no Cursive

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!

Should our children learn cursive?  My thoughts are yes unless you want a generation of people walking around who can't read half the business signs or writing on cards and historical documents.  When I heard that they were no longer teaching cursive writing in school, it seemed a bit ridiculous to me.  It does not take long to teach and it is necessary to know.  True, a lot of work is done on-line now, but there is cursive font. 

Now that you know my blunt feelings about this, we will move along.  My son likes to try to read all the signs now since he is starting to read a little better.  He is 7 years old and he was not one of those reading 3 year old geniuses nor is he one who will not read until the age of 10 which is ok too.  He is somewhere in the middle.  We were driving along and he was trying to read the Walgreen's sign and I never really thought about it, but the sign is written in cursive among many other signs and he could not read it, so I asked him if he'd like to read and write cursive and he enthusiastically said, "SURE!"  so with unschooling being child lead learning, cursive seemed like a good holiday project since there were not homeschool activities going on over the holidays. 

I thought about getting workbooks on cursive writing.  I attended public school as a child, but I just happened to be in a generation where they felt cursive writing was necessary to be productive in this culture and world of ours, so I know how to do it.  Because of that, I just grabbed some big line paper I received from another nice homeschool mom with teenagers and I write each letter on the line for him and he then can copy it so that he too can learn the cursive letters.  After checking his work, if I discover there are letters he is not quite doing correctly, I just include them on the next sheet of paper along with some new letters.  He is doing a great job.  Once  we cover all the letters, I'll teach him to write our family names and then go from there and he can choose the words he wants to write in cursive. 

One of the perks of unschooling is that children can learn things when they show interest in learning them rather than waiting until the school decides it is the appropriate time which may be sooner or later than what an individual child wants to learn a subject or skill.  If there are some lonely schools out there who still are rebellious and teach cursive writing, they do not do this until 3rd grade when a child is probably between 8 to 10 years old.  However, my 7 year old is ready to learn it now and he seems to be doing it well, so if unschooling is an approach you are happy with, just pay close attention to your child and what they are showing interest in at the time.  I would not have thought to teach my son cursive at this time if he was not struggling with reading the Walgreen's sign. 

It really is amazing how many signs and cards and documents are written in cursive.  You will be surprised if you really pay attention to this.  So by not learning it, there will be a generation of children who are more dependent and a little lost when trying to do basic reading.  So my thoughts are, teach your child cursive even if they are attending public or private schools and it is not covered, teach it at home.  It is a necessary skill.