Editor, The News:
Re: Schools writing off penmanship (The News, March 28).
It may be soon that the writing will never be on the wall if the curriculum in B.C. elementary schools is changed to eliminate cursive writing.
The phrase will merely become another casualty in our history of eviscerating public education, narrowing its scope, credibility and projection into the future.
It was not so many decades ago that our parents and grandparents were convinced that the trades were somehow beneath one’s educational horizons, and the rush for a university education was on. Now we are reaping the rewards of that with a tremendous lack of tradespeople in B.C.
As the pendulum swung violently towards university degrees, technological marvels, low-level thought exchanges via high tech means and fast foods, even now you can see the pendulum swinging back towards drawing students back to manual trades, locovore and natural foods, and the non-speed reading version of life, in general.
The thought that cursive writing is no longer necessary is short-sighted and off-handed. Can the Ministry of Education now guarantee that every single child will have a life-long ability to afford, maintain and connect with their own computer, that no one will ever need to write a card, a letter, make notes in a textbook or on paper, sign a document (real estate, banking, medical, legal), give an autograph, or need or want to read the cursive writing from current or past (historical) family records, or written records through the course of their further education and lives?
Our ministry and boards of education have managed to cut and dumb down the curriculum that we now have children in high school and post-secondary institutions who have a poor ability to communicate and understand the English language.
Darlene Mercer
Maple Ridge
