Getting Rid of Cursive Writing?

There has been great debate about whether cursive handwriting should still be part of the elementary curriculum. The main reason that teachers have been disregarding it in their lessons is that cursive is no longer valued as necessary in the age of technology and standard based education. Many teachers have stated to me that they no longer teach it because it is not tested on Virginia Standards of Learning. Their claim is further justified in the fact that the SOLs only have cursive handwriting stated one time - third grade. The few teachers that are teaching it, are only having students learn how to write their names in cursive.

My concern for getting away from cursive, it that we will have several generations of students who will not be able to read our country's historical documents. When students read these now, they are often just reading reprinted blurbs in textbooks. No one ever mentions this fact about accessing our country's early documents.

Just on a whim, I did my Friday lesson, entirely in cursive. Only a fourth of my students could read my science notes. The kids wanted to know how to write and read in cursive because their parents know it and they can't read their parents' notes. This really blew some my colleagues away who did their own gathering of data and got similar findings as I did.

I told the kids that I would teach them but it was going to have to wait until June because we had to get through our SOLs. I had one parent that wrote me and said thanks; I told her she was welcomed and that I hope I don't get fired because I was teaching something not in the SOLs for sixth grade. She quickly responded that if that happened, she would personally bake a cake with a file and set up a collection for me:)