Writing vs. typing debate is for schools and parents

We all know that some guarantees aren’t worth the paper on which they are written.

Most of us have a drawer filled with unused yellowing guarantees for appliances large and small, lawn machines, even garden hoses with lifetime guarantees.

And yet, the mystique of a “guarantee” survives, especially among legislators when they are looking for easy fixes for complicated problems facing the state’s educators.

This isn’t anything new. We recall in the early 1990s when a group in Youngstown talked about how every city school student would graduate beginning with the new millennium. When an editorial pointed out that it was wildly unrealistic to believe that every student in an obviously troubled school district was going to pick up a diploma in the year 2000, we were criticized for our negativity.

There is a difference between being negative and being realistic. Realists have a chance of getting something done. Pollyannas, not so much.

And yet, educational philosophy in Columbus has been driven for decades by a desire to see quick – and almost always unrealistic – results. There was a reading guarantee, a third-grade guarantee, a fifth-grade guarantee. There were various metrics approved for what students were going to have to do to get a diploma – or perhaps they would get one diploma for doing the work and a less prestigious diploma for just going through the motions.

And always, when the guarantee came due, a way had to be found to move the goal posts. Who knew, for instance, that forcing hundreds of thousands of fifth-graders to repeat a grade because they couldn’t pass a test would cost local school districts millions of dollars that they didn’t have? The Pollyannas certainly didn’t know.

Politicians should be very careful about what they demand schools to do. Sound educational policy is not built on “do it because I said so.”

And it is not built on wishful thinking. Just look at the Ohio fairy tale that said giving educational entrepreneurs free rein and billions of taxpayers’ dollars to run largely unregulated charter schools would drive an educational renaissance.

General Assembly edict

We’re reminded of all this by the latest General Assembly edict, which is designed to restore cursive writing to the curriculum. House Bill 58 requires the Ohio Department of Education to create instructional materials for teaching handwriting through the fifth grade. Students should be able to print letters legibly by the end of third grade and write in cursive by the end of fifth grade.

For those of us who recall the green and white blackboard borders that showed beautifully formed letters of the alphabet and adorned every classroom, it may come as a surprise that cursive writing is no longer viewed as an indispensable life skill. It is painful to think that something once considered a marker separating the educated from the uneducated has gone the way of the buggy whip.

But almost a decade ago, a Vindicator reporter did a story based on interviews with local college and high-school students, and she found that students who learned cursive writing in elementary school were no longer using it. They printed their notes. And printed notes have given way to typed notes on tablets or smartphones.

It was charming to hear during the eulogies for President George H.W. Bush that he was known for having sent thousands of handwritten notes to people. There is no doubt that today’s text or email lacks the same warmth as a written note, not to mention permanence. But that is a reality of a changing world. (And it is not as if anyone who really wants to write thousands of notes over the course of a lifetime wouldn’t be able to develop the necessary talent.)

Many states dropped cursive writing from the mandated curriculum. Some are moving toward its restoration. And regardless of mandates, many school districts have never stopped teaching cursive.

To teach or not to teach cursive would be better left to the decision of local school districts. They know their teachers, their students, their parents. If parents are convinced that the future requires their children to be able to write rather than print or type, they’ll let the school board know.

It is parents and teachers of today’s students who have a better idea of what their students need to face the challenges of tomorrow.

We’d count on them to be able to assess their students’ needs rather than politicians who are inclined to wax nostalgic about the merits of the Palmer Method of handwriting.