Thank you, Kate!! (By the way, I also follow you on Quora!)

Bonnie, I am an expert Cursive Teacher of 30 years. I have also had expert instruction from left-handed cursive teachers in the right way to teach left-handed cursive. Perhaps you are not aware that the paper angle taught to left-handers in the 1950s and 60s has been updated during the 70s and 80s so that left-handers can still obtain nice handwriting without having to bend their wrist forward at a 90° angle in order to avoid having to drag their hand through what they have written. The updated method enables them to keep their wrist in a much more healthy position. Most cursive “experts” are right-handed (as am I); but thankfully, I was taught about this by a cursive expert teacher (of 45+ teaching, herself).

As far as “letting children use whatever slant they want,” this is the worst advice I have ever heard! My thought is that you must be of a much younger generation (under 30?), or perhaps you are British? Perhaps you are not a teacher, and you do not know the implications of what you are suggesting.

Different cultures have different ideas about what slant is correct. Traditional American cursive (I am American) has a forward slant, and acceptable slant can be within a “range” of more or less. However, perhaps you are not aware how job candidates (particularly in America) are judged on their handwriting (not necessarily on just neatness, but on letter formation, slant, and quite a few things); this is why applicants are often asked to fill out job applications on-site IN THEIR OWN HANDWRITING. If you have an unacceptable slant, you will be judged as “having something wrong with you,” if not outright REJECTED. For example, if you have back-slanted writing, or muddy-looking writing, or letters not completely closed at the bottom, or a signature where you either cross through your name with one or multiple lines, or circle your signature several times, or even writing which is forward-slanted, but more slanted than the acceptable range–you will be negatively judged.

However, if you are from another culture than America, your own country will have a typical slant (and this is true even in languages which write from right-to-left, such as Arabic). What you actually want to do is learn to write in the slant range which is acceptable for YOUR country. Sometimes slant of a country changes over time. For example, traditional American slant is about the same as French slant was before World War I. Current French slant tends to be vertical. If a cursive teacher must teach in a foreign culture, they should study the typical slant of that culture and adjust their children’s paper positioning and instruction in order to teach the slant which will give those children greatest success in the country where they are living.

I can only imagine that you must be an adult who did not have any decent cursive instruction; or perhaps you had trouble with cursive and didn’t have a teacher who was adequate to help you succeed. It is only normal that you would have such a negative attitude if you had such inadequate instruction and feel so frustrated yourself. I’m sorry about that. If you had been in my class, I could have helped you.

Thank you, Nury! Thanks for reading.

I personally don’t like those sorts of illustrations in text books, either. I see them a lot in text books from France. One advantage I can see, from the publisher’s point of view, is perhaps those sorts of illustrations are less expensive to print, and also “don’t look old” to students after a few years. But I personally just don’t like them. I’ll have to ask some of my students what they think of them, compared to traditional illustrations.

One other thought, perhaps we don’t need as many “real” photos as in the past since we can now Google images of anything. In the past, that option wasn’t available.

SMT, I do agree with you.

SMT, this is a very interesting question. I seem to recall seeing some illustrations like that in some modern French textbooks used for middle school students to learn English as a second language. I noticed those same books are also including dialogs for students which contain a lot of slang (before students have picked up sufficient standard vocabulary). Maybe both are attempting to make the books more relevant to students. I always disliked both, but I hadn’t thought to ask my students if they liked these types of illustrations and text. I’ll remember this conversation at an future time I run into this circumstance and follow up with you if I get an answer.