Do you get taught cursive in schools in your country?

30 comments

1. 🇳🇱 here still happening.

   But to be hounest,my own writing is a combination of both depanding on the reson to write things down.

2. I was taught it but cursive is no longer taught as of 2015. I’ve never really had any use for it anyway.

3. To me, cursive and handwriting were always just synonyms, that’s how I’ve been taught to write, as a standard. “Printed letters” as we call them are used when you want to make sure that it’s as clear and as easy to read them as possible.

   I would imagine it’s still the same, but I have no kids of my own to confirm.

4. In Italy it is still taught, but in general lower case is more used, I personally am used to writing in cursive, but more because I was encouraged to do so.

5. In my experience:

   Big caps only first year(s) in primary school.

   Then small caps for one year or so.

   Once we learnt cursive it was compulsory to write in cursive until we finished school (18yo). You would get penalised for writing in small caps.

6. Yes? No? Idk, we (or at least me) never heard about “writing in cursive” outside american TV shows. *In Spanish cursive is this*

   I was taught to write in school (in the 90s) with these

   https://static3-sevilla.abc.es/media/economia/2019/02/09/rubioo-kN9–1248×698@abc.jpg

   Is that cursive?

7. Yes, print letters can be used in kindergarten but once you start elementary (6yo) you are expected to learn cursive.

   And since knowing to write more than a few words is not expected before elementary school… Well learning to write *is* learning cursive.

   (writing might end up as a mix of cursive and print in middle/high school though, lots of kids try different things then and teachers don’t care anymore as long as they can read it…)

   Edit : things are still evolving though, looks like they stopped teaching the [“complex” upper case letters we used](https://i.imgur.com/3554mVr.jpg), replaced by a variation of block letters. Always had trouble writing these letters properly, that’s the first thing I ditched, so I’m not against it…

8. Yes, at least that’s how it was back when I was in school at the end of the 90s and I havent read that it changed.

   I still write in cursive every day, even when raking notes. It’s much faster.

9. In France the cursive is [standardised](https://media.eduscol.education.fr/file/premier_degre/05/9/Document_accompagnement_polices_de_caracteres_cursives_V2_295059.pdf)

10. They used but they dont really any more? It’s pretty selective? Some of my peers had the time to learn it but I never had to. I doubt it’s very common now 10 years later.

11. I was taught it from (iirc) 3rd-6th grade in. But I never really “learned it”, I just copied exactly what was in the book and mostly forgot about it.

    Now I mostly write in print (or whatever it’s called), except for a few very small things written in cursive, such as most of the letter before e being connected to the e.

12. Yes. Learning cursive makes you also write faster. It’s very useful

13. As far as I know cursive is still taught.

    I personally write in some combination of printed and cursive latters.

14. I have a disgusting writing style that combines cursive with ‘drukletters’. But cursive is supposed to be the primary way of writing and it’s heavily focused on in elementary school. I remember books where we were taught to write cursive.

15. Yup.

    Tbh seeing someone write in print seems a little childish

16. I was taught cursive at school, but I had really bad handwriting and was always shouted at by teachers for my messy handwriting and holding the pen incorrectly. Dyspraxia wasn’t really known back then, and I also had a couple of teachers in primary school who were particularly nasty and unsympathetic. Obviously computers/phones make things so much easier and whenever I do need to write things, I tend just to write in capitals, because it’s easier

17. Yes, it’s still taught. It’s the standard handwriting, and in my school, we weren’t even allowed to write in print letters.

18. In most Western countries it has been phased out long ago. I had to learn on my own.

    Most people here, and perhaps even you, refer to the cursive italic (like D’Nealian or Palmer) handwriting as cursive, which I will not (you can barely call that writing).

    I would at least refer to cursive as the Spencerian, which is the one phased out in the US. Maybe you refer to that.

19. They taught us to write in cursive in 2nd grade, however they stopped in 2018.

20. My 5 year old started primary school last September, when they began to learn to read and to write. They have been learning cursive since January. The teacher explained that they find the children are less inclined to confuse their letters, e.g. b and d, when they learn cursive early.

21. Yes, 1st grade starts with repeating every element of cursive (like, shapes – circles, hooks, loops) for an eternity before getting started with letters. Imagine my disappointment when I first sat in the classroom waiting for the teacher to start showing us АБВ… and she goes “Today we’ll be drawing little canes.” Half a year spent doodling canes, rings and whips. All to make my writing look like barbed wire.

    Then we had “calligraphy” exercises throughout 2-4th grade. I hated those, it was torture. And it also made zero sense, why was I supposed to write, say, the letter T as a three-legged thing sporting Donald Trump’s toupee? Why did P have to have a curl on its left side outweighing the “proper” one two times over (it looked like a lopsided mushroom). My mother gave me a blessing when she suggested simplifying my handwriting. Now all that’s left of my cursive are felon’s claws.

22. lmao I wouldn’t take anything from that sub seriously. It wasn’t mandatory at my school and I ended deriving my own style of cursive.

23. My 6 year old is learning to write cursive at the moment with a fountain pen, despite how often he may or may not need it, I feel like learning to write well is an important life skill.

24. We were taught it, maybe in first or second grade. But it wasn’t required to be used and I’d say most people dropped using it already in early grades. I can’t even remember last time I saw someone using cursive. Makes everything harder to read and makes bad handwriting exponentially worse.

25. No. They used to taught it in Greek elementary schools, but it hasn’t been a thing for about 40 years now.

26. Depends on what you define as cursive. I’d have said no until I saw what some people consider to be cursive.

    We don’t learn the fancy cursive you read in old documents. We don’t learn “tilted” writing. We do learn a simple and “joined up” version of handwriting when we’re young and learning how to write. I can definitely not understand old pieces of writing in cursive, though.

27. When I was a kid we learnt only cursive and it was assumed we’d be able to read everything.

28. As far as I am aware, my year group was the last to have been given it, but my teachers kinda just gave up on that

29. Nope, only ever heard of it from Americans complaining about it online (I’m 30)

30. In finland not either anymore. That’s a bit sad imo