Dear Editor:
An open Letter to Ontario’s Minister of Education Stephen Lecce.
I am sorry, Mr. Lecce, but you are wrong: cursive writing will not be “helping young people to express more substantively, to think more critically, and ultimately, to express more authentically.”
Instead, it will be another barrier to students who are already disadvantaged in the education system. I was a child in the ‘70s who was constantly berated for my less-than-stellar writing as a left-handed student trying and failing to produce the right-handed slant that was required.
Imagine being a person with more serious learning problems such as dyslexia having to produce copperplate writing as a sign of learning achievement.
Despite my reprehensible writing, I managed to attain two post secondary degrees. I also learned enough to think that the one expert that the Toronto Star quoted admitting that “[t]here isn’t a lot of research specifically on cursive writing”, makes this new curriculum focus questionable.
Jane McFadden,
Fergus