There is no value property in textarea when form tags are used. Path property is used for data binding. For eg., just before rendering the view in which you are using this textarea, populate the model object with the data in your controller as:
@RequestMapping(value="/prepareArticleForm")
public ModelAndView prepareArticle(Model model) {
Article article = new Article();
article.setDescription("Your text");
return new ModelAndView("articleView","article",article);
}
In your articleView jsp:
<form:form action="someAction" commandName="article" method="post">
TextArea Description: <form:textarea path="description" onKeyUp="validationmethod($(this));" onKeyDown="validationmethod($(this));"/>
</form:form>