Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said it is about more than just teaching students how to sign their own name.
Ontario's new language curriculum, set to be in place for the new school year, introduces a host of changes, including a renewed focus on phonics. Many of the curriculum additions can be traced back to a report last year from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which said the province's public education system was failing students with reading disabilities and others by not using evidence-based approaches.
"A return to phonics and, for example, cursive writing is another example where the government is leaning into the evidence and following the voice of many parents who wanted us to really embrace those practices that for generations have worked."The curriculum reintroduces cursive writing as an expectation starting in Grade 3. That's welcome news for language education experts.
"The more that young writers, beginning writers, are using their hands, they're using another modality to form the letters, that kinesthetic reproduction helps them to think more about the words that they're writing," she said.Hetty Roessingh, a professor emerita at the University of Calgary's Werklund School of Education, said cursive is a valuable skill.
The four major teachers' unions have slammed the timing of the new language curriculum, being made available for teachers to learn for September with less than two weeks before this school year ends. "The province's expectation that educators will be ready to teach the overhauled language curriculum beginning this September is absurd," ETFO president Karen Brown wrote in a statement.
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