Thursday, May 9, 2019

Common core standards and unusual cursives - how keyboards and cursives change the learning process

Common core standards and non-common standards

How to use the keyboard to eliminate cursive and replace it may change the brain and learning process

The common core standards of education began to be launched in schools across the country. Many people are unaware that the language art part of the common core standard omits the cursive handwriting as a subject that must be taught. Since it is not included in the common core standard, cursive handwriting is classified as "we have time" or "if we choose to teach it" in the classroom. Although many public schools have given up, most private schools continue to teach it.

The time to reduce the cursive handwritten instructions has been slow and subtle. At some point in 1980, cursive handwriting began to receive less and less classroom instruction. It has changed from more than two hours a day in the 1940s and 1950s to fifteen minutes now two to three times a week. Schools often begin to teach cursive texts at the end of the second year and begin teaching after the third grade.

Since the cursive did not emphasize the third grade, the students did not give enough practice to write a habit. As a result, many children who have been educated in the past two decades cannot write with cursive scripts, read, or even sign, but use block printing. It is worth noting that the decline in cursive handwriting is in parallel with the decline in reading performance for decades.

The need to learn keyboard skills is obvious. However, the need to learn how to write cursive books is less obvious. Rarely consider the interrelationship between handwriting development and reading, spelling and composition. The practice of handwriting and keyboard manipulation can change the way children learn and the way the brain develops. Neuroscience researchers are trying to understand why language units are affected differently when handwritten with a pen and keyboard.

Because of the discovery of neural plasticity [also known as brain plasticity or brain plasticity], we now know that whenever we acquire new skills, learn new things, or remember new information, the neural groups in the brain create new ones between them. Contact and access. Changes in neural connections produce long-lasting functional changes in the brain. It is important to know how these two basic skills, keyboard and cursive writing affect the brain and the learning process. In education and medicine, the creed should "do not hurt first."

Many neuroscientists are researching and publishing research on the impact of cursive handwriting on brain pathways, especially for young learners. We don't know how changes from cursive to most keyboards affect the brains of young learners, but there is evidence that caution must be exercised before discarding cursive handwriting from our country's primary school curriculum. Here is a list of scientists and their research summaries and expert opinions for human reading.


  • Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, studied normal writing development and writing barriers. She claims that the value of handwriting goes beyond its basic utilitarian value. She said that the physical process of hand-made letters is more powerful in embedding written language-making techniques into children's brains rather than buttons. Her studies using fourth- and sixth-grade students show that students write more complete sentences when using pens. Her research also shows that hand-made letters may be different from the way they think when they press a button.


  • Karan Harman James. Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Indiana University conducted research using handwriting and keyboard scanning and MRI scanning in children's brains. Her research in 2012 showed that among children who practiced printing by hand, neurological activity was more intensive and "adults liked" than those who just looked at the letter. She said, "It seems very important to manually manipulate and draw the two-dimensional things we have been seeing."


  • R. Shadmehr and H. Holcomb of Johns Hopkins University published a study in the journal Science that their subject brains have actually changed their response to physics teaching such as cursive handwriting. The researchers provided PET scans as evidence of changes in brain structure. In addition, they also demonstrated that these changes led to "immediate improvement of fluency", which led to the development of later neural pathways. By practicing motor skills, the researchers found that knowledge became more stable.


  • William Klemm, Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, D.V.M. The doctor wrote an article that appeared in Psychology Today: What is the effect of cursive handwriting on your brain? from

    His article, Cursive writing makes children smarter Released on March 14, 2013 Memory doctor. Dr. Klemm said that scientists have found that learning cursive writing is an important tool for cognitive development, especially when training the brain to learn "functional specialization", which is the ability to improve optimal efficiency. In the case of studying cursive writing, the brain develops functions of specialization, integration of feelings, motion control and thinking. Brain imaging studies have shown that multiple areas of the brain are activated during the process of learning to write letters, rather than typing or just visual exercises. He said that using thinking skills in reading and writing can lead to spillover benefits. Moreover, "the cursive writing is more advantageous than printing because the movement tasks are more demanding, the letters are less rigid, and the visual recognition requires a wider representation of the letters."

Obviously, these experiments need to be continued, increased, and designed to provide the hard data needed to determine the outcome. However, it is wise to examine the results of an expert's research rather than making assumptions based on assumptions when making changes to the course. It is especially important when these changes involve the elimination of the long-standing roots of education, such as cursive handwriting.

Two well-known neuroscientists have written books on cursive writing and learning processes.

Dr. Frank R. Wilson, a leading neuroscientist, published an extraordinary book that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Hand: How does its use shape the brain, language and human culture? [New York: Pantheon Books, 1998]. He described in detail the key role of hand movements, especially in the development of thinking and language skills and the development of deep confidence and interest in the world, which he called "the preconditions that arise together." A person who has the ability and care. "He explained that although the repetitive exercises required for cursive handwriting courses seem to be outdated, this kind of physical education will help students succeed. He said: "You can't distinguish the content of the mind from the content in the body, the teacher. You should not try to "single education alone, otherwise most of the knowledge will be well handled and under-researched."

Dr. Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist and neuroplastic specialist, wrote a bestseller. Change your brain [published in Penguin Books 2007]. In his book, he describes specific cases of people with different brain abnormalities, with the help of neuroscience programs developed to improve their function. He discussed excellent research on various learning disabilities that may change the way education problems are addressed. He also said that neural plasticity is not a good thing, news. "Once a specific plasticity change occurs in the brain and becomes perfect, it prevents other changes from occurring. By understanding the positive and negative effects of plasticity, we can understand the extent of human possibilities."

On September 9, 2008, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Kerry O' Brien [www.positscience.com/news/kerry-obrien-speaks-norman-doidge] interviewed the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and interviewed them. Provides a fascinating discussion and extraordinary insights. The value of a draft handwritten course comes from an excerpt of the transcript.

KERRY O'BRIEN: "You wrote that in the era of rote in education, humans instinctively walked on the right track, and you quoted Abraham Lincoln as a speaker's skill as an example. Can you elaborate? "

NORMAN DOIDGE: "Of course. In the 1960s, something belonged to a classical education that people canceled because they thought they were irrelevant, like almost fanatical attention to language and handwriting, or remembering long poems, but now the facts Prove that what these activities do is that they use a very important part of the brain, allowing you to think in long sentences, with deep inner monologues and a certain degree of elegance in various expressions. Maybe many of us do not understand by canceling these There are well-founded exercises to complete the damage."

Few people would think that "deep inner monologue, memory and all forms of grace" are gradually disappearing, or at least will decline rapidly. For example, consider texting: "lol" and "mbff", lol's shortcuts and my forever good friend. SMS has created a new language that is reminiscent of the original form of written communication.

It's also important to understand how keyboard operations affect the brain and the learning process, especially because it's ubiquitous and rapidly increasing, changing, and expanding.

While acknowledging the scarcity of data makes it impossible to know what is certain, but some are outstanding...




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