Dear Readers, Please check out our new Opinion Poll on whether Physical Education should be competitive or not, and cast your vote by the end of September 2015. As you know …

your opinion counts

Our August 2015 poll was about focusing on improving handwriting and teaching students to write in cursive:

Teachers should not focus on improving handwriting and teaching children to write in cursive, because these have become irrelevant in the age of computers and mobile phones.

• I agree. Handwriting will not be used much in the future, as people are mostly typing to communicate. Instead teachers should focus on teaching more useful skills. (15%, 8 Votes)

• I disagree. Handwriting stimulates parts of the brain and this has many learning benefits. Writing by hand not only affects early literacy, but also improves children’s creative writing skills. (85%, 46 Votes)

The majority of those who responded to this poll (85%) think that handwriting is important and should be taught because it has many learning benefits. These respondents feel that when teachers focus on handwriting and children are taught to write cursive, it affects early literacy and improves their creative writing skills. On the other hand, a small percentage of the respondents (15%) believe that handwriting will lose its importance over time (due to technological advances), hence it is not necessary to focus on it or to teach it in schools.