Old-Fashioned Lessons That Never Go Out of Style: Cursive

 Who writes in cursive, anymore? Mostly people over the age of thirty-five. Why is it important? Is it important?

I mentioned to our local postmaster once that I homeschooled and he looked at me very sternly and asked, "You're teaching them cursive, aren't you?" Taken aback, I said, "Yessir!" It wasn't until I left the post office that I realized that you can't work for the post office if you can't read cursive! There are too many people who still use it and too many young people who can't deliver a letter!

But why should we teach cursive to our children? In my book Life in the Trenches, I address the development of the right and left sides of the brain. As I have said in previous "Old-Fashioned Lessons", the more you stretch your brain, the more it can do. The more you use both sides of your brain, the faster it can work because you have laid pathways across the divide between them. Cursive does this astoundingly.

We usually think of writing as being on the left side of the brain, the verbal side. However, the left brain doesn't just do words; it does details, it does trees. The right brain does forests, global thinking, and spatial skills. How does cursive work? It writes words, spelling them out letter by letter, which are left brain skills; but it forms them spatially, with the pen changing direction, more drawing the word than writing it, and it forms the entire word, not letter. letter. letter. And don't get me going on crossing your T's and dotting your I's!

Nothing works like cursive to train the brain every day to work holistically, to stretch the ability of the brain to jump from one side to the other. While it is a strain to learn, it actually changes the brain in a way that is more effective than any other everyday activity.