Quote: Eglman wrote in post #1

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These kids today! What’s the matter with them? They can’t even sign their names.

Seriously: They can’t sign their own names because they have no idea how to write in cursive.

The reason is simple. Scores upon scores of American schoolchildren cannot produce a signature because American public schools haven’t taught this basic skill for years, the New York Post observes.

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@Eglman @Rev

This peaked my interest, I wondered what, if any, benefits handwriting gives the brain. A quick search found two interesting articles:

The Joys and Benefits of Cursive Writing
""Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it's not just what we write that matters -- but how.""

" ... She discovered that free hand writing lights up three areas of the brain -- the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex. When we type or trace letters, there is much less activity.

Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at the University of Washington, offered even more insights in the article. Her studies proved that children who wrote compositions in cursive generated more words and ideas than children who typed. In fact, children writing in cursive generated more words and ideas than children who printed their compositions long hand as well."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cynthia-da..._b_5440013.html


Biological and Psychology Benefits of Learning Cursive
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/201...-beyond-writing

This fits in with the idea proposed by some that relying exclusively on media, iPads, computers, TV, DVD's promotes a form of ADD, the inability to concentrate and analyze anything not presented in sound bite format.