Is cursive handwriting obsolete?

[The Straight Story]

Is cursive handwriting obsolete?
Parents and school administrators consider ditching the art of cursive writing so the teaching time can be used for other subjects.

Kids today are growing up in a texting, typing and emailing world. Sure, they take notes in class and some even scribble out the occasional phone message at home, but for the most part, their written communication is not written at all. Combine that trend with the pressure on schools to squeeze every last drop of instructional time into a child's school day and you have the latest educational dilemma. Is it a waste of precious class time for schools to continue to teach cursive handwriting to kids?

Those who want to drop cursive handwriting from classroom education argue that the subject is no longer necessary. Other than homework for penmanship class, what paperwork is turned in using cursive? And if you do need to write something by hand, wouldn't printing work just as well? You're not even required to use cursive for signatures — a printed signature is just as valid. And just think of the amount of instructional time that is wasted teaching and correcting children in the fine art of cursive handwriting. That's time that could be spent reading, strengthening math skills or teaching geography.

So with all of these arguments against it, why bother teaching cursive writing? For starters, cursive handwriting does have a few benefits over printed handwriting, namely ease and speed. Once kids master the subject, they can take notes using cursive much faster and more intuitively than when they print the letters. Some educational experts also argue that cursive handwriting is an excellent cognitive exercise, helping to improve motor skills and strengthen the connections between the brain and hands.

http://www.mnn.com/family/family-activities/blogs/is-cursive-handwriting-obsolete

[Drale]

1. Besides my signature,

I haven't written anything in cursive in years.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. Yup. That's a year of my childhood I'll never get back.

I never use it at all - far less often than, say, algebra.

[immoderate]

23. Algebra is dealing with an unknown quantity -- you never do that?

Can you figure how much you spent from how much you have left? That's algebra. You do it implicitly, but you do it. When it's time to count up, that's arithmetic.

Now if you're figuring whether you can make that left turn fast enough to avoid oncoming traffic, that's calculus.

People use math all the time but it's folded into language.

As for cursive, I think brain processes are developed from this and other hand-language coordination. I think this could be tested.

--imm

[lumberjack_jeff]

147. You misunderstood me.

I use cursive writing far less than algebra.

[immoderate]

170. Oh.

--imm

[Capitalocracy]

96. You're lucky

if they only made you do it for a year

they did it to us every year... they always said you don't need it this year, but next year, oh boy, if you don't know how to do it, you'll be in trouble!

And then the teachers all started saying yeah, don't give me stuff in cursive.

[lumberjack_jeff]

150. Back in the day, you did everything in cursive.

Added together, I have probably a full year in cursive writing instruction.

[Hestia]

195. We had cursive through the 6th grade, not just one year. Personally, I use it everyday, because I

was drilled to write in cursive. I couldn't imagine being a kid and not being able to read someone's handwriting. I think it uses a different side of your brain and is a good tool. Also, the banks here, if you do not use cursive for your name, they mark it down with an X, assuming you are illiterate. They just had an article in the paper about this.

[Liberal_in_LA]

22. I don't use it much anymore either

[Hissyspit]

141. I quit using it immediately out of high school.

1980, and hardly ever used it since.. My printing is fast and quite legible.

[Leopolds Ghost]

171. Important issue I forgot to address: Hissyspit, et al: Do you know how to READ cursive?

See, before us kids learned cursive in school, we did not know how to READ cursive either. It was an important tool learning how to READ other people's writing, growing up.

It's like if the Chinese or Japanese decided to stop teaching kids how to write anything but simplified-alphabet. They would stop being able to read traditional alphabet as a result.

And lord knows, the time they spend learning oriental alphbets is such a drain on their educational system... :sarcasm:

[Hissyspit]

280. Obviously, I do.

I haven't argued once in this thread that we should stop teaching cursive. It might be useful to teach Morse Code, too.

[Leopolds Ghost]

295. Cursive, unlike Morse Code, is useful in daily life. But yes, we learned Morse Code in school

I forgot it immediately though.

On edit, I wasn't meaning to suggest you don't, just making a point that a lot of people will lose the ability to read irregular cursive or equivalent fonts if they can't write in cursive.

[mwb970]

339. Weird connection: I always print BECAUSE of Morse Code!

I got my ham radio license when I was 11 (in the 60s) and became very good at copying high-speed Morse Code. When you are copying code at 35 words per minute there is no time for niceties like little loops and squiggly lines connecting pairs of letters in pre-approved ways. Each letter comes over by itself, and at 35 wpm you have about a quarter of a second to write each one down. The only way I could do it was to print, and print quickly. As a result, I have always printed everything except my signature and continue this practice to this day.

[Skidmore]

2. I hope not. You acquire discipline from learning good

penmanship. Even if you never become the best writer of script in the world, there is something to be gained from the practice and execution of it.

[xchrom]

4. +1

it's all about the old reading, writing{including cursive} & arithmetic for the basics.

[MattBaggins]

12. Why?

[alcibiades_mystery]

131. Because that's the way they did and gosh darnit, it was the right way!

There's no arguing with silliness.

[Mojorabbit]

163. It is beautiful though

I do calligraphy also and that is obsolete but also beautiful.

[Chef Eric]

179. Imagine how easy it will be to forge checks when cursive is obsolete.

Yes, cursive is so silly.

:sarcasm:

[fishwax]

258. what are these "checks" of which you speak?

:P

[kick-ass-bob]

6. I feel the same, but I fear that it is going away.

I tried to do all the letters in cursive the other day after I read the story the OP probably got this from and I couldn't remember how to do all the capital letters. I'm 38.
(I did remember all the lowercase, though)

[MattBaggins]

10. Specifically what?

What if the "discipline" can be learned through something useful?

Why waste so much time learning two different ways to write?

[Odin2005]

97. LOL, that is the argument used by the defenders of all obsolete skills.

"Those damn kids aren't disciplined anymore, why, when I was their age..." :eyes:

[Skidmore]

108. Not talking about that kind of discipline.

There are a lot of skills that have gone by the wayside with reliance on audio and visual electronic media.

[bluestate10]

174. Agree. I remember the writing drills that my first grade teacher put my

class through as if they happened yesterday. As a young child, I thought that teacher was a beast, but years later I realized how critical she was to my development as a human being.

[Cleita]

5. Not with me. It's all I know. n/t

[bluestate10]

177. Cursive writing is faster than any other form of manual writing. And it is beautiful. nt

[Cleita]

273. Well, apparently some can't read it anymore.

I just had some mail returned by the Post Office at work that I had hand addressed cause the printer wasn't working. They said they couldn't read it. Both the boss and I were astounded. He could read it and thought my writing was fine.

[ginnyinWI]

7. grammar seems to be going obsolete too

I regularly catch bad grammar and wrong usage of words on tv news casts, and see it in the newspaper. Journalism isn't interested in good grammar anymore?

[CountAllVotes]

9. It bothers me a lot too

In fact I hate reading everything typed in lower case letters, no punctuation, poor spelling (at best), no rules of grammar, etc.

I still use cursive handwriting. When I was in school, I had my hands beaten with a stick for failing to capitalize one of the letters in my surname. I never forgot that and no, I've never done it again either.

:kick:

[CrispyQ]

16. I read a few years back that a lot of younger people can't read a traditional clock.

All they know is digital. I mentioned it on another DU thread & someone responded that a friend of her daughter's asked her the time once & she replied, "It's a quarter till three." The girl gave her a blank look until she responded, "It's 2:45."

[Codeine]

25. I had a co-worker in her late twenties who couldn't tell time without a digital clock.

We use a standard clock up front and she simply could not determine when she needed to return from a break or when it was time to do drops and such. I had to get a small digital clock for her station.

[Davis_X_Machina]

28. Tell teenagers 'I'll pick you up at twenty of six' and they're baffled. n/t

[Sentath]

91. I'm 42 and into anachronisms

What? When? Are you sure thats not regional?

[Leopolds Ghost]

196. Twenty of six?

"of" = before

"after" = after

Regionalism? Perhaps. Do people make fun of Southerners for using the word "uptown" to mean downtown (or upriver in the case of New Orleans?)

[Davis_X_Machina]

275. 5:40...

Regional? Maybe Northeastern. Where were Arlen and Mercer from?

Its quarter o'three,
There's no one in the place cept you and me
So set em up joe
I got a little story I think you oughtta know

Were drinking my friend
To the end of a brief episode
So make it one for my baby
And one more for the road

[mwb970]

337. The "of" is no regionalism, Son.

It was universal in the 50s and 60s. I was there.

[Art_from_Ark]

347. It didn't seem so universal in my part of the world in the 1960s

Northwest Arkansas
"Quarter to three" or "Quarter 'til 3" were far more common.

[octothorpe]

342. I'd be baffled with that one too.

I'd assume it's 6:20 or 5:40, but that seems like an awkward way to say it. I've never heard it that way.

[octothorpe]

341. Why didn't she just learn how to read one?

I'm guessing it wouldn't be too difficult for most adults to pick that up with ease.

[Codeine]

354. Don't kid yourself.

Most people are idiots.

[csziggy]

254. I had to learn how to read a traditional clock

The flip clock we had in our family room while not digital had numbers that flipped over. That was the clock I learned to tell time with even though we had antique clocks in the rest of the house. When I started school, they had regular dial clocks and I had to learn to read them.

I started elementary school in 1958, so this is not a recent problem.

[CrispyQ]

276. A flip clock. I'd forgotten about them.

I have this clock - I call it a place holder clock.



In the photo, the time is 12:34. Cool, huh?

[csziggy]

302. That is neat - but it would take some getting used to!

I never really thought about the flip clock until one showed up on some TV program - Antique Roadshow or one of the more commercial imitations. if Mom & Dad still had theirs, it would be worth a good amount these days!

[octothorpe]

343. I take it that's a 24 hour clock?

[CrispyQ]

352. I'm not sure what a 24 hour clock is.

This clock has no AM/PM designation.

If it were 10:24, there would be one light lit up in the first place, no lights in the second place, 2 in the third place & 4 in the last place. It takes some getting used to, but it's a great conversation piece. People always comment on it.

I saw a binary clock once & could not figure it out.

[Odin2005]

101. Oh noes, people are dropping -ly from adverbs! The world is gonna end!!!

:eyes:

languages change, and some changes, like -ly dropping, are becoming an accepted part of the language, deal with it.

[Codeine]

104. LOL, that is the argument used by all defenders of sub-literacy. nt

[Odin2005]

119. I can write and speak perfect standard English if I want to.

In most situations, I will keep speaking like a normal person.

Oh and there is nothing wrong with that preposition at the end of the header line of my post, that rule was made up by folks in the 1700s that were ignorant of Linguistics and thought English should look like Latin.

And most people I know that rant about the evils of the passive voice don't understands what it actually is and what it is for, it is not "weak writing", it is a grammatical operation that deletes the agent of a sentence or demotes it into the object of a preposition.

And don't get me started about the twits that keep wanting to keep "whom" on life support, it's dead, NOBODY I know uses it in everyday speech.

[Leopolds Ghost]

Sir, there is a big difference between welcoming difference in language and ENCOURAGING ignorance

By encouraging people NOT to learn how to understand something YOU consider obsolete.

That is a Republican (and now Democratic, among the technocratic school of thought) mentality.

[Le Taz Hot]

146. Yep!

It's too hard!!!!! :rofl:

[Sonoman]

8. I never learned it.

I have always written in all-caps block letters. Although I appreciate the art of calligraphy, I never understood why people would all want to write in a style that others would have to adapt to read.

Sonoman

[MattBaggins]

17. My wife is German and doesn't use cursive

I guess she has no discipline.

[theHandpuppet]

18. Actually, I'll bet those skilled in cursive writing...

... can write much faster than those who only print in block letters. Cursive writing is a skill that really helps to develop fine motor coordination. It will be a sad day when/if that skill is lost.

And who in the world taught you that writing in all-caps block letters was normal?

[Sonoman]

34. I taught myself.

I simply figured that I could learn 26 letters (block letters, 2 sizes) or 52.

That was an easy choice.

I never had to worry about writing quickly, as I never had to take notes. I never went to a real school.

My fine motor skills were honed while I was growing up on a ranch.

Sonoman

[aquart]

39. Do you denigrate every skill you don't possess?

Just wondering.

[Codeine]

42. I find most people do.

If they can't do it then it must be - by definition - a useless skill. It's a way of convincing ourselves that those glaring holes in our skill set aren't holes, just a casting off of useless societal baggage. "It's not a bug, it's a feature."

[MattBaggins]

47. Not to mention the folks that denigrate

people for not having a so called "skill"; or for pointing out that's not that important.

[Codeine]

54. I'm not denigrating anybody.

I'm just pointing out that we do not serve our children well by making education easier and less challenging, and that tossing away the idea that learning for the sake of learning and stretching our minds is a bad thing.

[MattBaggins]

58. Removing an unnecessary second way to learn to write

and spending more time on math, science, reading or critical thinking is making education MORE challenging.

[kick-ass-bob]

82. you're right. we should drop block printing from the get go.

I'm all for that :thumbsup:

[Sonoman]

51. Man, I don't have time for that.

The list is far too long.

I did not intend to cast asparagus, I was simply stating that I never learned to write cursively ( I am/was just too lazy and did not see the need to learn).

Sonoman

[Codeine]

56. And you had a decent reason.

Non-standard learning environments are a different kettle of fish.

[kick-ass-bob]

66. because it is faster, for one.

no wasted movement picking up your pencil.

[Confusious]

309. They were the first fonts. nt

[LoveIsNow]

11. I'm 21, and when I was in school

the only people who used cursive were the perfect little Republican Christian girls who wore long skirts. Everyone else realized it was stupid to have to learn to write a second time after we had already learned it the normal way. As far as I'm concerned, it's already dead; I know no one under 55 who uses it.

[aquart]

44. "The normal way"?

What way would that be, exactly?

[Codeine]

70. Printing like kindergarteners, I suppose.

Heaven forbid one should develop a new adult skill when the children's skill is sufficient. Hell, ever watch the average young person hold a fork or try to write a letter? It's a joke.

[WolverineDG]

77. Wouldn't be the first time I was considered "abnormal"

and, btw to the poster you're responding to, I'm under 55.

dg

[Leopolds Ghost]

299. Abby... Someone?

[MedicalAdmin]

75. I'm 45. And I don't use cursive.

I can print or type faster than anyone using cursive that I have met. And let's not even mention speach recognition software which is blindingly fast once set up. Cursive was dropped in my school after 3rd grade (back in the day) but I refused to learn it even when it was required. It just made no sense to me to learn how to write twice when I could already print faster than the teacher could write in cursive.

Want to challenge the kids. Make them do 3D modelling. http://www.alice.org/

[KittyWampus]

105. I write in cursive. It's actually quicker than printing- you don't lift your hand from the paper as

much.

[MedicalAdmin]

213. Ergonomically you may be correct in a statistical averaged way.

But my printing is blazingly fast and much faster and more legible than any cursive writing I have ever seen. I don't deny the benefits of cursive for some perhaps but the same benefits can be gleened from other disciplines such as printing, typing, etc. FYI - I also think the "keyboarding" classes - much like typing classes are a complete waste of time (voice recognition is just a few years away so the keyboards will be tossed out anyway ...).

Technology and the accompaning skills roll on. We either roll with them or get rolled over by them.

[Rebubula]

144. Well...

...only 21 and you already have the denigrating people different than you down to an art. Darn girls and long skirts.

I am 42 and only use cursive...and keyboards.

Golly...learning is stupid

[bluestate10]

180. Is the normal way drawing alphabets with crayons? nt

[kurtzapril4]

283. 52 here...write in cursive

at school when taking notes.

[rpannier]

326. You must not know many people nt

[PDJane]

13. I'm old fashioned, I suppose.

Although I have been typing for long enough to suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis in the first joints and my thumbs...40+ years, touch typist, 100+ words per minute and at least some of that time spent on keyboards that were slanted upwards and required a lot more pressure than the current sort...I write my letters, cards, lists and diary in cursive, usually with a fountain or dip pen, because I consider it an art form and a pleasure.

It's easier to think about what one is writing, the grammar and spelling comes more easily, and it's more attractive. I do think it increases hand-eye coordination. The loss of cursive will be an unfortunate step.

[juajen]

14. Well, sure, and why do we even need to learn how to spell?

In addition to writing and spelling, we could just rent talking books and not have to learn how to read. We already ignore history, and most people cannot even tell you where Washington, D.C. or Washington state are located. After all, how important is that. We all know that most do not need to know math, so let's just stop educating anybody. Of course the elite can have governesses, and so forth. Gee, what century does that sound like.

Cursive writing was my first introduction to the artistic side of my brain. IMHO, it is very important and I am saddened by its demise.

[theHandpuppet]

21. +1

Well said.

[Raine]

62. I agree. I see it as very creative, you can show your

uniqueness by the way you make the letters, something you can't do with printing. Very sad if it becomes a lost art. :-(

edit: typo

[SoCalDem]

136. and back in my day, we even got a grade in penmanship:)

The Palmer method... ink wells, fountain pens (I still use them)blotters memories:)

Here's a fun site for ink-aholics

http://www.jetpens.com/

I order ink from them:)

[Codeine]

241. Or, in my case, a BAD grade in penmanship.

There are times even I'm not sure what I've written.

[ChazII]

319. I am a south paw

and also received bad grades in PENMANSHIP. However, 2 other southpaws had the best penmanship in the grade level. During the teachers' strike in 1972 I taught myself to mirror write in cursive as well as write upside down and backwards. I can do all 3 quickly and neatly. Although I think my teacher would change my grade from a 'U' to an 'S'.

I have taught for 31 years and feel there is a difference between handwriting and penmanship.

[CrispyQ]

353. My mother was a lefty & had beautiful handwriting.

She would turn the paper almost upside down & as she wrote, her hand would move from the center of the table to the edge, toward her. It was weird to watch.

[Cleita]

297. I remember those days, including the boy who

sat behind me and dipped my hair into his ink well.

[eridani]

331. And when inkwells got replaced with cartridges, they switched to going for distance n/t

[Confusious]

310. ooooo, pens

So cool. Love a nice pen that feels like an extension of my body.

[DFW]

15. I still use it, but.....

living in Europe, trying to deal with all the different versions drives me bonkers (French and old German, and
don't get me started on cursive Russian--I can write it, and the Russians can read mine, but it drives me nuts
trying to read it from others). It should be learned, but its relevance is definitely waning. My wife is German,
and when she leaves me a note written in her unadultered German script, I feel like running down to the local
mosque and asking the local Koranic scholar to help me decipher it.

[Samantha]

19. Point of fact: if you want to REMEMBER something

write it down.

[Heidi]

20. Not among people who understand the value of creating choices for themselves. (nt)

[FLAprogressive]

24. Absolutely and for good reason.

There is no need for it anymore.

[CountAllVotes]

26. that is not true

Can you read old records? They are handwritten in cursive writing. If you are a researcher and you don't know cursive, you can't read what was written by our predecessors.

It is a valuable tool that should not be allowed to "die out".

I'd rather see typing in all lower case letters with no punctuation and horrid spelling die out. That would suit me just fine.

[MattBaggins]

35. Then people will train for that

By your logic we should all learn every variant, of every language and writing that has ever been used.

[CountAllVotes]

68. Just learning basic English would suit me

just fine.

[jberryhill]

126. Can you read this?

Neither can I, and I've seen it up close.

It's the Magna Carta.

[yawnmaster]

201. only a very small percentage of people will ever need to read old records...

and as someone else said, some can be trained for it.
Teach the high use and critical thinking skills first.

[FLAprogressive]

261. I'd much rather have people who are able to write coherent sentences than write in cursive.

Cursive does not teach anyone how to write coherently, it just teaches people how to write quickly and fancily. Handwriting as a whole has been supplanted by typing, and as someone with poor handwriting, good riddance.

There is a lot more wrong with our youth than lack of cursive; and teaching students how to write elegantly will be of no help to them if they do not know how to spell (and properly arrange) the words that they are writing.

[Davis_X_Machina]

27. Ease and speed are not to be sneezed at....

...when hundreds of thousands of seniors and juniors take an SAT test every year with an essay component that's hand-written.

Scorers are trained, and try, to score the content, and not the packaging, but humans are....human.

[Modern_Matthew]

29. I graduated in 2006. By 6th grade, it was optional. nt

[pipi_k]

30. I don't get it...

Why is it so hard to teach kids the same things today, in the same amount of time, as it was when I was a kid?

Kids today can't read well, it seems.

Their English skills stink.

And now there's "not enough time" for teaching cursive handwriting?


What happened in the last 50 years? My teachers somehow found the time to teach just about everything we needed to know. I think I got a pretty decent education.

Now the kids today can barely form sentences.

Here are a couple of sentences copied from one of my teenaged (about 15 yrs old) cousin's FaceBook page:

when lifes going ok and im getting back on track something goes wrong....:| i dont even have words to describe what im going threw right now bad day dont txt nothing


ewwwww ppl gros me out but idk what ima do tomarrow

this isn't quickie texting from an iPhone or something...it's done on a computer where there's lots of neat letters and numbers and everything

very sad

[Codeine]

36. I recently acquired a stepdaughter.

The other day I discovered that at seven years old she still counts and adds on her fingers. I was floored.

[MattBaggins]

41. You were floored to find that a kid does something kids do instinctively?

[Codeine]

48. By that age they should be able to handle

simple mental arithmetic and counting in their heads. 2+5 should not require breaking out your fingers and then physically counting them off.

[GreenPartyVoter]

94. It depends on the child. She'll develop past finger counting when she is ready, and it's

no black mark against her for still doing so. That was the way kids were treated back in the day, but educators are more understanding and flexible about those things now. :)

[Codeine]

103. I'm not sure that being "understanding and flexible" serves kids all that well.

Kids are remarkably lazy and need to be pushed to excel and learn at a faster and more rigorous pace than they would choose themselves. Understanding flexibility retards their development and allows them to stagnate, in my opinion.

[GreenPartyVoter]

142. But there's a difference between having high expectations and _too_ high expectations. I find that

if one pushes too hard it can be just as detrimental as not pushing at all. Kids shut down or start feeling anxious that they don't measure up when really there is nothing wrong with them.

It's all about the individual child, what they are capable of, and what you can get from them. Hopefully your newly acquired step-daughter (Congrats btw! :D) and you will have a good relationship where you can nurture her abilities, and really enjoy yourself while you do. :hi:

[Codeine]

148. Thanks!

She's a cool kid; we'll get her on track soon enough. :hi:

[Confusious]

311. That would be one hand + two fingers right?

:)

[Codeine]

322. Hang on. . . one. . . two. . . yeah, that's right.

:rofl:

[Skidmore]

78. By 7, a child should have moved from the concrete to the abstract.

But abstract thinking is for computers I guess is the message I take away from all of your protestations. Developing the mind and motor skills is too old fashioned. Use it or lose it.

[pipi_k]

214. Well, to be fair...

sometimes people never do move from concrete to abstract, either completely, or partially.

I do well with most abstractions except for math.

I'm 58 and still, at times, have to count on my fingers. I've always hated math. I see numbers and my mind shuts down completely.

So maybe the other person's stepdaughter will develop past the finger-counting stage, or maybe not...

I'm testament to the fact that not everyone gets past it.


~ admitted math moron. :)

[Confusious]

312. Well, when you get a higher level math course

They switch to letters.

[Skidmore]

59. My daughter does supplemental teaching of the

basics from the 3 Rs and PHONICS and GRAMMMAR too for her kids. We all vocabulary build with them. Every event can become an opportunity to teach and learn. We all buy books for them and they have a room full of them. In fact, she has a better children's library in her home that the school does. May not have all the fancy AV equipment, but it has books. Any time a child wants to read a book with an adult, the adult puts down what they are doing, provided it is safe to do so, and sits and reads with the child. Now the older two children also read to the little ones.

My pet peeve is that god awful whole word method of teaching reading. Because of it, I also taught spelling, phonics, and grammar to my two at home.

[Codeine]

63. My plan exactly.

Luckily she's moving in with me in a few weeks and the new school she'll be attending is adopting a new curriculum that seems pretty exciting. I'll be supplementing that with as much learning at home as I can possibly manage. And my apartment has a few thousand books all around the place, so one hopes she'll learn that books and reading are a positive thing.

[Skidmore]

340. Just a note for you.

If you have Kindle for PCs downloaded on your computer, Amazon has e-books for children in all age groups available for download for free if she likes a little computer time.

When I was a kid, I used to sneak the flashlight and a book into bed and read under the covers. LOL, as if my mom couldn't see the light. My kids did the same thing. My daughter gave each of her kids flashlights as a preemptive strike, and they use them to read books under the covers after the lights are out. My favorite picture is of my youngest grandson when he was about 3 who fell asleep with an open storybook in his bedroom doorway and was halfway out into the hall where he could benefit from the light that is left on there at night.

[MattBaggins]

38. You mistakenly think there is the same amount being taught

Much more being thrown at kids these days.

[ieoeja]

61. Exactly. Human knowledge has expanded greatly.

If each generation learned the same stuff at the same speed as the generation before them, human knowledge could not expand as it would take them a lifetime to learn what the previous generation learned in a lifetime.

[Codeine]

67. I know enough kids to know they aren't learning squat.

They're semi-literate at best, and if have to train another 19-year-old how to make change at a cash register I'll shoot myself.

[Goblinmonger]

83. And 25 years ago when I graduated from high school

everyone was a genius and quoted Shakespeare.

[proud2BlibKansan]

252. It's been 40 years for me - my reunion is this weekend

And we not only quoted Shakespeare, we had the bible memorized also. :)

[Goblinmonger]

291. Well, yeah, the Bible was ditched in those 15 years.

Which is why we have all the school shootings.

[eridani]

332. Not to mention walking ten miles to school in the snow--

--uphill both ways!

[CountAllVotes]

71. I guess that using a spell check takes too long

It is easier to use one finger to text messages that are incoherent.

[Odin2005]

92. LOL, I bet you want us to get off your lawn, too.

Hysterical old folks were saying "Now the kids today can barely form sentences." since the down of time.

[KittyWampus]

107. It's a matter of fact- many kids entering college can't produce an essay & can barely

manage a paragraph.

[haele]

320. Good lord, there are an increasingly larger number of 30-year-olds

who can't write an introduction through a comparative essay, let alone figure out tenses.
Back in the 80's, my "community service" to put on the evals to make Chief Petty Officer was to help tutor older adults in skilled trades who were functionally illiterate. These were adults who, for twenty, thirty years, had never before needed more "schooling" than was required to sign their names or perform simple math on pre-printed forms. When faced with the requirement to move into a supervisory role or lose their jobs to younger workers, they scrambled to learn to read and write - and it was a long, sad processes.
But those adults were usually a small percentage of "the norm". Now that I'm going back to college, I'm finding a far greater percentage of adults who are almost as functionally illiterate as the adults I tutored - thirty years ago...
And most of these adults have supposedly been assessed for reading and writing comprehension at a college level.
But honestly, as far as I'm concerned, that assessment test is a joke; I remember the same type of reading comprehension tests back in 6th grade...

Haele

[Le Taz Hot]

160. Since the "down" of time . . .

Appropriate word usage, it's just SO outdated! LOL!

[Odin2005]

287. Oh no, a typo on a message board! The HORROR!

:eyes:

[Le Taz Hot]

350. The word is "Irony," dear.

not "horror." Appropriate word usage seems to be an area of learning on which you may want to focus. Just a suggestion. :hi:

[KittyWampus]

106. Computers/Texting has diminished child's capacity for sustained effort.

Teachers now report most kids can't write an essay and can barely put together a paragraph.

[JoeyT]

330. There are multiple reasons

There's a lot more information to teach, for one thing. How much of school time fifty years ago was taken up by learning to use computers and the internet? How much time did kids spend learning to create spreadsheets, PDFs, and Powerpoint presentations? Pretty much every field of science has gotten larger and more complicated since then, so there's all that too.

Fifty years ago we also didn't have No Child Left Untested and Test to the Top.

I will admit the grammar and spelling of people on the internet drives me insane too. I've noticed it isn't really confined to any one generation.

[tammywammy]

31. I use a mix of regular letters with cursive the majority of the time

I write minutes for meetings and other various notes for school. Cursive is much faster than block writing.

[KittyWampus]

109. Thank You. I posted the very same. Cursive is basically faster as you don't lift

your hand off the page as much.

[tammywammy]

125. I rarely use all block letters

Takes way too long to write.

[mwb970]

344. How strange. I find printing to be faster.

When I try to write quickly in cursive, or what we used to call "script", I make lots of mistakes (too many humps or dips in some letters, not enough loops in others, etc.). It looks like a holy mess when I'm done. When I print, I can go MUCH faster (see my comment about copying high-speed Morse Code upthread) and the result is MUCH easier to read.

Perhaps you might call my printing style "semi-cursive" in the sense that letters do get connected whenever it is easier than lifting the pencil and coming back down. But it's definitely not the "script" I was taught in school, with all the fancy loops and squiggles. (I remember an entire class period working on getting the proper "boat" shape in the endstroke of a capital B. And we were taught to never, NEVER connect an initial capital to the rest of the word. You HAD to lift the pencil. This all seemed silly and unnecessarily ornate to me, and still does. I print.)

[RC]

32. Another step in dumbing down the populace.

For some reason Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind. Really.
Someday I fear it will become a true story.

[MattBaggins]

45. I'll bet the same "sky is falling" statements happened

when schools stopped spending hours upon hours learning calligraphy with a pen and quill.

[Goblinmonger]

85. Instead of teaching kids to type at 70-100 wpm on a computer

we should teach cursive. Because typing faster is dumbing down.

Good lord.

[bluestate10]

192. No. But cursive writing forces children to develop useful skills that

fast typing does not. Cursive writing training unleashes creative power that simple fast typing training doesn't match. I am a scientist, the part of my education that I remember most is the first and second grade classes where I was taught to write and then sentence and paragraph formation. The writing was in cursive as were the first sentences and paragraphs that I formed.

[Goblinmonger]

289. I know of no studies that show

that you need cursive to teach nor to understand sentence and paragraph formation. Teaching writing is critical. Teaching a fancy out-dated way of writing is not.

[eridani]

333. Those skills would be developed far more comprehensively in an art class, IMO n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

237. Teaching them that they can't do SHIT in life without a consumer device is dumbing down.

[RC]

277. I fully agree.

The battery dies. The power goes off. What can you do if you can't handle paper and a how to sharpen a graphite pencil?
Can you do math problems without a calculator? Too many people today cannot even make change.

Hopefully your books are not battery powered. Board games?

[themadstork]

360. Yet even the things they're writing by hand will most likely have to be typed up after a few drafts.

I sometimes draft first by hand, especially with poetry, so I'm not exclusively a keyboarder. But if students aren't being taught to type 70wpm they're just as far behind as the person who can't write with a pen. (Pen, paper - also consumer products, no?)

[Codeine]

33. How many skills and bits of knowledge are we going to throw away?

A few months ago DU was ready to consign algebra (which is sixth-grade knowledge if we're being honest with ourselves) to the educational dustbin, and now handwriting has been deemed useless because it might tax the little idiot's brains more than an episode of American Idol. Elementary schools serve finger foods because forks and knives are too challenging for today's youth.

What will be considered too difficult/obsolete for the little beggars next -- multiplication tables? Poetry? Essay structure? Parts of speech? :shrug: At what point have we dumbed the curriculum down to its most basic parts?

[tammywammy]

37. +1 !!!

The algebra thread! I was shocked that people thought that was a useless skill to learn. How much dumber do we want to make students?

[kurtzapril4]

288. We really need to bring back

Vocational schools. Not everyone is college material. Some people don't want to go to college. Some people can't afford it. It's a sad state of affairs that a vocational degree is considered inferior to a college degree.

As far as I'm concerned, algebra IS useless in everyday life. I've managed to live 52 years without it, and I'm not dumb by a longshot.

[MattBaggins]

69. Didn't you claim earlier you weren't denigrating people?

[Codeine]

72. I'm not.

It's not their fault we made them idiots. We just decided it was easier to let them slide because we didn't like school when we were kids.

[jberryhill]

129. Well, as long as we don't say "gay" or mention sex, we'll be fine /nt

[Hippo_Tron]

186. Algebra isn't 6th grade knowledge

x + 3 = 7 is 6th grade knowledge. But knowing how to solve for x doesn't mean you know how to do algebra. Dealing with functions and polynomials of a higher degree is something that maybe a very gifted 6th grader could understand, but most do not.

[Confusious]

315. Sitting on the toliet

They should just go in their pants.

[Codeine]

323. Ive heard potty training can be very traumatizing.

Mustn't injure their self-esteem. Poopy pants can be the new Indigo Child hallmark!

[mwb970]

338. Are you equating a knowledge of algebra with writing that connects the letters?

These seem to me to be in two different realms. Why is connecting letters so much better than writing them individually (as I have done all my life)? I don't get it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

40. Where do you stand on this, Straight Story? Is long division obsolete? Are blackboards obsolete?

After all, we have machines to think for ourselves, don't we?

And pretty soon, those machines will be combined with the television set as was predicted when I was a little kid, in the 70s and 80s.

And the technocrats on this blog will cheer the death of books and encourage us to burn the old.

[Leopolds Ghost]

46. I just learned, my old high school has replaced all blackboards & projectors w/ giant touch screens.

No joke. This was after the manufacturer took teachers and admins on a company funded junket to show them the advantages of teaching kids not to learn how to do anything themselves without the aid of a machine.

To their credit, the school newspaper opposed this, noting that programs for the poor are being slashed and decimated.

When I went to this same school, the regular students got typewriters and the magnet kids got the most advanced computers in a sealed lab available only to magnet students. That was in the mid-nineties.

[aquart]

49. It's okay. The Chinese will build our machines for us.

Their writing system is much more difficult so their brains are finely tuned and we can safely leave it all to them.

[Leopolds Ghost]

53. Heh heh. But you forgot, pretty soon only machines can build other machines.

Even though our schools are designed to churn out a 5% elite and a mass of service industry drones,

And theirs are designed to churn out an army of professional engineers...

[MattBaggins]

60. Why would people with finely tuned brains work 23/6 for pennies a day?

[Leopolds Ghost]

111. Finely tuned brains like yours and other Americans?

:shrug:

[aquart]

243. Because there are billions of them and only millions of jobs.

[The Straight Story]

84. My Stand: Leave it up to the individual school districts/PTA/Parents to decide

Personally the only use I see for it is to sign your name and be able to read things from history written that way.

Make it an elective and leave the decision to those most impacted by it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

112. You can't make a basic skill an elective. Why am I not surprised folks get all their news from tube

Can't physically write and don't want others to physically have a book or newspaper?

[Goblinmonger]

88. Blackboards are long gone.

And good riddance. White boards have taken over. Personally, I very rarely use the white board (teach high school English). Most of what I do I put into a Google Presentation so that I can share it with the kids after class.

Apparently I'm bringing about the end of the world.

[Leopolds Ghost]

110. Why am I not surprised that this is coming from DU technocrats? Also, white boards are a menace

They create a huge mess.

The fact that you're an English teacher and are encouraging the death of writing makes me puke.

And promoting Google as a platform for desktop computing? REally?

[Goblinmonger]

115. Well, let's go point by point.

1. Worse than chalk boards? No.

2. Who said I'm encouraging the death of writing? Is writing on a computer somehow less "writing" than doing it with pen and paper? No.

3. I promote Google as a platform for writing in an education setting because:
A. It's free. Don't know if you have noticed, but education ain't swimming in money.
B. It has everything students would need for general word processing.
C. There is NO better platform for collaborative word processing. The ease with which students can share a document with me so that I can write comments on it (and I can write a whole shitload more typing those comments than I can if I were to write them in cursive) is something that no other platform can even come close to touching. Which then also means I can have students working collaboratively on a document in about 1 minute in class.

[Leopolds Ghost]

122. And so Google promotes the death of single authorship.

In the future, all documents on "the cloud" will be owned by our corporate bosses. It's already beginning to happen in the wiki-world, with the death of collaborative editing on wikis.

[Goblinmonger]

127. Don't share it and work with someone on it if you don't want to.

Google doesn't force shared collaboration.

So you are telling me that a tool which makes it ridiculously easy for kids to work together on something is bad?

Where's your witty comeback to my stupidity for advocating Google for word processing?

[Leopolds Ghost]

149. I didn't say it was stupid, I said that cloud computing is teaching kids to be at home with

Putting their entire desktop, their entire intellectual life in the hands of a corporate service provider. Like television.

[Goblinmonger]

151. Booga, booga, booga. n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

153. Wow, that's an intellectual response.

My uncle is a retired executive (no I don't share his politics) and I'll just let you know this stuff is for consumption by the proles. Not the corporations that fund it. They don't put all their work info and personal documents in the hands of a money-making, ad-supported service provider.

But feel free to advocate the merger of cable TV and internet, as the Administration does. So we can "Teach from TV" using those 1984-style touch screens already installed.

They even look exactly like the ones in Fahrenheit 451 the film.

After all, it's your parent's generation that advocated turning TV into the Internet, back when it was first born.

[LanternWaste]

183. I'm certainly a worse person for having learned how a bill becomes a law via Saturday morning cartoo

I'm certainly a worse person for having learned how a bill becomes a law via Saturday morning cartoons, or the variations in the use of the letter E from Sesame Street...

Unless of course it wasn't my entire intellectual life being branded, but merely one small percentage, allowing both my parents, my teachers and myself to further stimulate a love of learning.

But I certainly can understand how an individual would melodramatically infer the above as being in the "hands of a corporate service provider..."
:shrug:

[Leopolds Ghost]

191. Would you prefer Public TV be brought to you by Google, Verizon, or Lockheed Martin?

Because that is the future of Public Broadcasting and the shows you're talking about are next on the list of "expendable" items.

In fact the examples you cite have already been expended. They eliminated "Reading Rainbow" too, BTW, on the grounds that encouraging kids to read a book is not what's really important (that's the rationale they cited, apparently.)

[LanternWaste]

248. I imagine many people think it's either one or the other...

I imagine many people think it's either one or the other... with no thought of additional possibilities.


In church, we call it Dogma... :shrug:

[Duer 157099]

43. This is tragic. Studies show that brain function improves with cursive writing

I've read studies where kids who had learning disabilities showed dramatic improvement simply by learning and practicing cursive writing. It stimulates a particular region of the brain that is involved in learning.

[Leopolds Ghost]

50. There is no need to learn a foreign language when everyone will speak English on the wired future.

No need to use any script other than Latin script, foriegn civilizations have already adopted IAUA names of the Latin gods for the planets (!) and international scientific date system based on the Roman gods and based on the birth of Christ for dates. As a Christian, I see no reason why a self-respecting person who is not a Christian would adopt our date system for local use.

[Confusious]

316. I see no reason why a self-respecting person who is not a Christian

uh, for a common frame of reference? Like a metric bolt being a 7, 8, 9 10, etc....

If you have no common frame of reference, you have no communication.

[MattBaggins]

65. Is it cursive alone or just writing?

Can they get the same improvement with something new rather than a second way to write the same language?

[Duer 157099]

74. It has to do with the flow of the letter

When the letters are written indivudally, the brain processes it differently than when they are attached together and flow.

Although this does bring up the question of languages that don't have a cursive version! Now there's an interesting study.

[Leopolds Ghost]

113. I take it you didn't learn cursive since you're bitching about a basic skill.

You probably think it's a waste to have multiple alphabets in this wired world, too.

[MattBaggins]

284. Take what you will

You will however, be completely and utterly wrong.

[Raine]

52. That's a shame cursive is much faster than have to print

each letter. Also there can be creativity in a style unique to each individual. I always enjoyed just practicing the letters and trying diffrent ways of writing them with swirls, loops etc.

[Leopolds Ghost]

55. The irony is I find this repulsive, yet I almost always write in print. It takes me longer but

My cursive SUCKS and always has since I was in 1st grade! :-) I dread writing cards for that reason...

[Duer 157099]

64. There is also an association between cursive writing and reading speed

Kids who learn and practice cursive writing are able to read more efficiently, because they see words flow, whereas kids who print see each letter individually and it takes them longer to process words (both reading and writing). It makes sense. We are handicapping our kids by not teaching them cursive!

[Goblinmonger]

116. Is it a correlation or causation.

I would take most people on in reading speed and I have never written in cursive. Hated studying in it and hated writing it.

[Duer 157099]

175. There are always exceptions, always

The particular study I'm thinking of was with kids with learning disabilities, and they found that by having them practice cursive writing, their learning and reading skills improved dramatically. That's the specific finding. The implications are, of course, open to interpretation.

[eridani]

334. Early reader here--not at all learning disabled. I could read long before I could print--

--let alone write in crappy cursive. Eight years of being knuckle-rapped by nuns had no effect on that.

[Leopolds Ghost]

117. Kids today celebrate the demise of paper and pen. They speak & think in chatspeak, aka newspeak

Not surprised, they were raised to think in black and white, all or nothing, people my age don't need this-or-that terms.

The first to go was civics. They weren't taught art, either. Did you know that there is no art or music?

[road2000]

286. This is

one of the most cogent arguments I've seen on this thread for continuing the teaching of cursive handwriting.

[hunter]

57. I've got the motor skills to work on cars and computers...

... but cursive writing has always eluded me. I can't easily read it or write it and it's not for lack of effort by myself or my teachers.

From fifth through ninth grade several teachers tried to hammer it into me, making me quite miserable.

Learning to type was magic. When I got to college word processing was even greater magic. I lived in the computer labs and I started writing term papers using vi just a few days after the Second Berkeley Software Distribution was released.

My actual handwriting is has become a little more compact than my second grade scrawl but the style (or lack of) is still the same.

I still think cursive should be taught, much like art or music used to be taught, giving kids with that inclination the opportunity to excel in penmanship. But I don't think it should be battered into every kid by force. I also think today's increasingly narrow curriculum and standardized testing damages our children's critical thinking skills.

[Leopolds Ghost]

158. I am the same way. But it's impt to write long form. I learned to do Sumi-E in art class as a kid

I was always much better at that than cursive, it's what inspired me to get into design.

Kids today won't even read a long-form EMAIL, as I've learned from working with student volunteers in my community. And I'm a Gen-Xer...

[Leopolds Ghost]

159. More to the point-Most young DUers would not lament the death of art class either. Who needs Sumi-e?

[guardian]

73. It seems like schools in general spend less time actually teaching

High school graduates cannot

* read
* write (certainly not cogent expository writing)
* do basic math
* speak English properly
* form a grammatically correct sentence
* describe American history
* count change
* tell time

Why is it that our public schools used to be able to produce young adults that were actually ready for society, the workforce, or college? All of this with average classroom sizes of 35-40 students.

They knew English. English literature. They at least had a passing acquaintance with a handful of literary classics. They could write a book report. They could diagram a sentence. They knew how to hold a pen and write legibly. They knew basic algebra if not geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. The could divide 1234788.432 by 3409.3 or calculate the square root of 225 without a calculator. They knew geography (world and US). They could draw a map of the United States with each state and its capital city on a blank piece of paper. They knew which countries fought WWII and on which side. They knew that the War of the Roses didn't mean that hybrid teas went to war with heirloom roses. They knew civics. They studied earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics. They could play dodge ball and not cry. They knew how to lose, regroup, and do better next time. They knew some basic courtesy and manners.

If you ask me the solution to fixing the school system is to go back to the way school was taught prior to 1970.

[montanto]

80. Pure, ignorant, outdated, benighted bullshit.

Go sit in on a few classes at your local high school. Ask your teachers what's going on. Get a clue. Yet another 1955er with "the way things were in the good ole days."

[guardian]

87. Touch a nerve?

The average high school graduate from 1955 could run circles around the average graduate today.

[kick-ass-bob]

100. That's all great if the world stopped having history in 1955.

But it didn't.

And no, the high school graduate would not run circles around grads today. My son takes a HS class in meteorology, and knows all sorts of stuff that I have no clue what he is talking about, and that's just some "silly elective" course. Chemistry/science did not stop progressing, 50 years of history did happen, and more complicated math is being taught at the HS level.

[Leopolds Ghost]

140. And more complicated math requires using a blackboard to fully comprehend.

Which in turn requires good handwriting skills and comprehension needed to understand something other than typesetting.

Good luck with teaching via tablet and using Wikipedia as a textbook.

[pipi_k]

240. One thing I thought of as I read your post....

was that even though schools these days may be teaching things I didn't learn in school in my day, they still don't seem to be teaching the very basics.

There are some things kids in junior or senior high don't need to know, like meteorology or whatever unusual things they're teaching in schools these days.

If a kid can't spell properly or express him/herself in writing, what's the point of learning meteorology or whatever?

If a person gets a good enough basic education, s/he never stops learning anyway, even if formal schooling ends at the 12th grade level.

My dad never graduated from HS, yet he was one of the smartest people I've ever known. He kept learning throughout his life. He was literate and well-spoken. He sounded like a college graduate even though he never got past the 11th grade.

I think kids need to know more about HOW to learn so they can keep learning the rest of their lives.

:)

[eridani]

335. Indeed. I'm jealous of the ASL option that kids in my district have now n/t

[LanternWaste]

185. I'm sure he could write code just as quickly too...

I'm sure he could write code just as quickly too... :shrug:

[Leopolds Ghost]

193. Funny, I seem to be able to write in code faster than some of the folks I run up against

Who are always bitching and moaning about how I want to hand them stuff on paper, draw things out on paper, when they want to conceptualize it all in their heads, on their computer, with no consultation (this is for a nonprofit...)

I'd be able to do it even faster if the whole industry weren't geared to planned obsolescence, meaning any language you learn today will be useless tomorrow (and that is the premise behind the new thinking in schools too, I imagine. Why learn something dificult when our industry masters will give us an easier version of the story tomorrow?)

[LanternWaste]

246. Well of course you could...

Well of course you could...for all the anecdotal irrelevancy it's worth...

[Leopolds Ghost]

308. Well, since coding and cursive have little to do with one another... there u go.

But yeah, I'm sure learning less cursive will make much more time and brain focus for students to learn programming languages. :eyes:

[Leopolds Ghost]

145. "Yet another 1955er with "the way things were in good ole days." Translation: Grew up in Bush era

At home with the death of parts of the educational curriculum and at home with the death of certain skills / culture.

[Riftaxe]

76. Not for me, almost all the handwriting

I do is in cursive, it's easier and faster then the alternative.

[49jim]

79. Cursive Writing

I teach at a community college and use cursive to comment on student papers. Last semester a student told me she couldn't read it! On a lighter note, I taught 3rd grade (71-76) and cursive handwriting was a large part of the daily curriculum- right after reading and math. One eight year old went home and told the parents they were learning "cursing" in school!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

81. For some reason, kids in the 1950s all learned cursive in the third grade

It was something we looked forward to as a part of growing up. We were learning to write like "big people." Printing was for little kids.

Did we all have good handwriting? No, but it wasn't considered "too hard." I'm left-handed, and I never had any trouble with it because we were taught how to hold the pen and position the paper as left-handers.

Neither was doing arithmetic without a calculator. When I took a course in college algebra as an adult in the early 1990s, I was shocked to find that some of my younger fellow students didn't know how to divide and multiply fractions.

School has been dumbed down (I am not blaming the teachers), and I think that part of it is parents' desire to have their kids get good grades. Since not everyone can get good grades in a completely unbiased system, the curriculum is dumbed down so that everyone can master it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

128. Not learning hand division and multiplication is not learning basic mathematics.

You can't be a professional mathematician / scientist and not have a grasp of such things, regardless of how often you use such a basic skill.

Do Immunologists use basic anatomy in daily job? HELL NO? So why learn it?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

272. I hated learning arithmetic, but I use it nearly every day

and I'm not even in a scientific field.

[Lucian]

86. I'm pretentious enough to write in cursive.

[Goblinmonger]

89. You god damned kids and your fancy telegraphs.

Why isn't pony express good enough for you?

Get off my lawn.

[Bennyboy]

90. Kids should be taught to type/10 key, not write in cursive.

Cursive is dumb. If kids learn to type it makes them able to find jobs.

[kick-ass-bob]

93. Because 6 weeks of 20 minutes a day when you're 8

of writing gets in the way of that. :eyes:

[Codeine]

98. They can learn both.

Entire generations learned to print, write in cursive, AND type; none of those things is a difficult skill, and each expands the abilities of the student when learned.

[Bennyboy]

133. Funny but I am the ONLY male I know that can type...

Graduated HS in 73. I know very few that can type of either sex that are my age or older.

[Codeine]

138. Somebody was using all those typewriters. nt

[tammywammy]

I learned both in elementary school. I'm 30 n/t

[WinkyDink]

118. Because it's IMPOSSIBLE to learn both, is that your argument?

[Bennyboy]

139. No, cursive has no purpose...

that is why it should not be taught. The schools are limited on time, and resources and teaching them a skill that is obsolete goes against everything we should be striving for.

[kiranon]

324. Agree. Times have changed and keyboarding is a necessity. n/t

[Odin2005]

95. I learned it, but I have never used it, manuscript style ("printing") is more legible.

[WinkyDink]

120. never? You wasted time on school exams by printing?

[Odin2005]

135. My printing is faster for me than cursive because I have awful eye-hand coordination.

I simply cannot write fast, cursive or no cursive.

[Goblinmonger]

294. I spent many years doing and coaching college policy debate

People in that activity speak well upward of 150-200 words a minute. I don't write in cursive. I print. I had NO problem writing down what was being said printing. If you've heard the best in college speak, you know the speed. I'm out of practice, but at that level I would take anyone on in cursive.

[IcyPeas]

99. it's a right-brained activity...

might be good just as a brain exercise (somewhere in there with art perhaps?). I think it takes patience and concentration which are sorely needed in some people today.

I like cursive writing and don't usually have trouble reading it (I work for lawyers who still do mark-ups in cursive).

[marions ghost]

206. that's how I see it

as a brain exercise (yes related to art) that NOT everyone must learn to do perfectly but everyone should be exposed to. So it could be a "fun" thing, kind of like how people take calligraphy for fun. Not painful for those who don't want to do it. Don't spend large amounts of time in school teaching it
Just expose kids to it.

Why does everything have to be so either/or? Why can't we have both? When I want somebody else to read my handwriting, I print in all caps (but it is slower). When I jot notes for myself or want to write a draft of something to be typed, I'll write in cursive because the connection to the brain is more immediate & faster. BUT IF I want to THINK slower, more deliberately, I find myself printing. So I like both.

Yeah make it fun. Don't force kids to do it well, or even to do it at all if they don't want to.

I have terrible handwriting, but I love the act of scribbling...:)

[Leopolds Ghost]

232. American education is designed to suppress right-brained activity.

Always has been, read People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

[bikebloke]

102. I always post here in cursive writing.

:P

[Leopolds Ghost]

239. Instructions for Posting in Cursive on DU -- your post inspired me.

Your post inspired me to write this.

Instructions for Posting in Cursive on DU

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1085298

[WinkyDink]

114. Kids don't write; they don't read. But printing like a first-grader? That they can do.

[Leopolds Ghost]

124. Who needs cursive to write in chat-speak? And I say that as a Gen-Xer

[Codeine]

134. Some folks take the "everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten" line

a bit too literally, eh? This is the same crowd that claims teaching math is unnecessary because we have computers and considers literature "overrated garbage."

[JoePhilly]

121. Stop teaching it ... it is DEAD.

I think if you asked the AGE of the people responding, you will find that cursive is dying out like Morse code.

I learned cursive as a kid in the 70s. Other than signatures, I NEVER use it now, and there is no instance in which I MUST use it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

123. And why do you think it is dead? How do you go about writing things quickly on paper?

Oh, let me guess, people who celebrate the death of cursive want the death of books and paper too.

They WANT kids to stop learning certain skills that are "no longer relevant." Like long division, art, and civics.

Anything that doesn't make them good little drones for Bill Gates et al.

On edit: I write things on paper using print often, but that is because my cursive is slow and sucks.

I DON'T PRIDE MYSELF ON THAT like some people apparently do.

If I kept a journal, my cursive would be better.

People who are chained to their electronic devices are imaginative-impaired.

[Hissyspit]

154. Electronic devices make things work faster.

Cursive was designed to make things work faster.

One good. Other bad?

Death of cursive = desire for death of books = straw man.

"I write with print often... My cursive sucks..." um...

Cursive is a social convention. Agreed upon dependent on society's needs, often at the expense of those who fit outside expected normative abilities (ask Lefties).

[Leopolds Ghost]

164. So you believe people should not be able to write long-form on paper AT ALL.

I am not most people. If I were a better long-form writer, I would write more often in cursive. My writing style lends itself to long missives which I must then edit down. Not a good thing for a writer, but e-mail encourages it. Most kids who grow up with no ability to write on paper have limited ability to think. They don't even READ long messages. The reason they don't complain about long posts on DU is because they IGNORE them, or ignore entire FORA such as these.

Study after study has correlated handwriting with brain development and personality. Inability to write except in print implies a different personality, one that is apparently sought after. We just love to mold kid's brains to be consumers, dependent on the latest gadget (available only from their corporate owners--er, service providers) to think and read.

[JoePhilly]

182. Ok, now this if HILARIOUS!!!

1) The person you responded to did not say people should not write on paper. Where you get that I am not sure.

2) As a PhD in Psychology (which I am), I love the "study after study" part. People who print are "molded" into consumers????? Oh God, that is funny.

I suppose that I could point out that "studies show" that the weak minded cling to what they know, and abhor progress of any kind, even when better approaches are apparent.

But I won't go there.

Better ... I'll simply use an video from Jerry Seinfeld on chop sticks and shovels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEjMxd8BkTo

Bottom line ... you don't need to stop using chop sticks if you like using them (I do), but let's not pretend that they are more efficient.

[Leopolds Ghost]

194. Yeah, nobody NEEDS to do ANYTHING different. You have the choice... if you want to be shunned

That's the foundation for modern American youth culture.

[Control-Z]

227. I use a combination of

cursive and printing. Overall it is mostly cursive, though, and can look beautiful when I am writing something important. Most of the time it sucks like everyone else's on this thread, though my printing sucks just as much. (Funny, just last week I was showing off to my daughter that I could write in teacher's cursive, which she pointed out was it a far cry from my own cursive.)

I think everyone should learn cursive, though perhaps as adults. I learned to touch type in one class. How long could it possibly take to learn cursive once basic reading, writing and spelling has been conquered? There are a few odd capital letters to "memorize" but most are just a variation on the block letter version.

Cursive is somewhat of an art form, I'll admit, but it is far more. I am an artist who has made the transition to doing most of my work on the computer. I have to tell you, there are days when I NEED to sit down with paper and pencil, some colored pens, or a handful of clay. Even some carpentry or "fix-it" tools will do. I NEED to use my hands. It is like breathing air to me - to use my hands, to make or create something.

Even though I make things on my computer (I do mostly animations), it isn't the same. It isn't really tangible. I guess I feel the same about cursive. I can type/key email and other writing all day long, but when it comes right down to it, I still need to pick up a pen and write. (And I prefer to do so with a black, fine point retractable pen.)

My only real question is, how will people have unique signatures without cursive - epecially for those who are not creative or artistic?

[JoePhilly]

169. Personally, I PRINT way faster, and far more legibly.

And YOU seem very defensive.

What's wrong?? ... do you have a few thousand VHS tapes??

I'm not sure how you connect cursive writing to long division (which is useful) or Art and Civics (also both useful).

Seems you ASSUMED facts not in evidence. Might want to check your CIVICS.

And thanks for this line ... "On edit: I write things on paper using print often, but that is because my cursive is slow and sucks."

With this you PROVE my point.

Who gives a flying %^%$#% about the journal that you don't keep. If you want to maintain a journal, in cursive, no problem.

The question is whether we should be teaching this, or maybe spending time on something else. I'm going to vote "something else".

[Leopolds Ghost]

Kids who can't write cursive can't read cursive... nuff said.

And as I noted elsewhere, cursive is always faster than print. I have gotten in the habit of printing for legibility but that is because people's handwriting changes over time and I'm not happy about not being able to write fast. I'd be even less happy if I was blissfully ignorant of the knowledge needed to do so!

[JoePhilly]

184. Two more assertions, both wrong.

First ... cursive is not "ALWAYS FASTER" ... that is your claim, and it is FALSE.

Second ... kids CAN read cursive even if they never learned it. The vast majority of the letters are similar enough that they can very quickly determine what the words are.

But let's play "make believe" ... let's assume that your point that "kid's can't read cursive if they are not taught to write it" is true.

Now ... given that "truth" ... in what situations will these kids be REQUIRED to read cursive? Math tests? Social Studies tests? Tests on Shakespeare's plays?

Oh wait, I've got it ... when grandma sends a birthday card with $20 in it. The kid won't be able to read "Happy Birthday Bobby" in cursive!!!!

Exactly when does a kid or an adult need to read cursive?

[Leopolds Ghost]

199. Oh, I see, you think that kids should / will only read printed text in THA FUTCHA!

Please. <<--- see what I did there? Used the same dismissive rhetoric you are using.

Because THEY WON'T READ OR WRITE LONG FORM!

And as a PhD in Psychology, YOU believe that they are "similar enough" that they will have no problem "picking out" the letters and won't alert the person writing it that they CAN'T FUCKING READ!!!!!!!!!!!

In Remedial curriculum, CAN'T FUCKING READ is known as having a diminished capacity to read quickly because they are picking out individual letters.

[Leopolds Ghost]

200. Just to add, in THA FUTCHA we will all wear identical clothes and shop at identical stores

And consume all information through identical devices using identical service providers.

[JoePhilly]

345. A few simple questions.

1) In which form are children taught to read?

2) In what form are the letters in every text book they read?

3) Every novel they?

4) Every web site they go to?

5) DU?

6) In which environments are individuals required to write and read in cursive?

Now, when we talk about speed, initially kids start out picking out the letters. They then move on to what are called "sight words", and then as they encounter longer words, they begin to learn how to sound words out.

Of course as they proceed through this process, something else interesting happens. They begin to be able to read words that they can't spell. All they need are a few letters and the overall structure of the word.

For fun, last night I took some text put it in a word document and then set the font to BRUSH SCRIPT, then asked my 9 and 11 year old daughters to read it. Neither has been taught cursive writing and both could read it fine. Not as fast as they could read PRINT but they had no trouble reading it.

Try it, see what happens.

[Goblinmonger]

296. I'm guessing BETA.

It has better quality.

[Quantess]

167. Do you really use cursive on your signature?

Or is it a bastardized version of cursive, like what I do? I stopped using all those silly loops on my signature once I got to be a teenager.

[JoePhilly]

176. Ding Ding Ding ...

Even my signature is BASED on the cursive, and if I decide to do so, you can see each letter. That signature is usually only used on Birthday cards.

For checks, legal documents, etc, my signature has become what could be described as "an extremely difficult to reproduce arrangement of squiggly lines".

Of course I have no problem reproducing it.

[road2000]

293. Latin was considered a "dead language"

when I was a kid. Yet we were offered Latin, French, German, Spanish and Russian (including the written alphabets) in my small "hippie" progressive school in Fairhope, Alabama. Now, Latin is offered at least in some public schools, and it was not when I was a teen in the mid-sixties. My point is that any branch of science and learning often recognizes its premature decisions, and makes amends.

[rug]

130. I prefer not to.

"Why, how now? What next?' exclaimed I, "do no more writing?"

"No more."

"And what is the reason?"

"Do you not see the reason for yourself?" he indifferently replied.

- Bartleby the Scrivener

[Quantess]

132. Cursive writing is obsolete.

Cursive writing and pennies need to just be relics of the past.

[Leopolds Ghost]

152. Again I ask: How do YOU write?

Can we see a sample?

[Quantess]

156. That's the first time you asked me, actually.

I use printed letters, sometimes connected. I have my own way of connecting certain letters. Capitalization is standard.

Cursive has too many loops. And I don't like the way you are required to connect letters. It's just goofy.

[Leopolds Ghost]

168. Fair enough. As mentioned above, I'm a bit of a hypocrite on this issue.

But it's not something I'm proud of. It takes me forever to write in print, which I hate, and I much prefer cursive, but my cursive sucks. I have to think about each letter or it comes out looking like a third-grader wrote it. Always has, since I first learned cursive. I had a hard time with it but never, never thought it was a skill we shouldn't learn. As someone else said, it was an important part of growing up... learning to write on paper fast. I'm sure there are other forms of cursive that are also fast. As a stop gap, I've learned to print letters fast for the sake of readability, in a sort of semi-cursive.

[Quantess]

178. In my opinion, legibility is most important.

I didn't like practicing cursive in school because I thought it was boring. I'm just a rebel that way, I guess. :)

[Leopolds Ghost]

189. I think the latin alphabet needs to be reformed anyway. We need an easy-to-write alphabet

Runes perhaps? A naturally cursive script would be ideal. I made my own modified "evolved into the distant future" cursive English alphabet back when I took a summer course in Etymology (another thing everyone should learn). It was fun. It looked like this:

[yawnmaster]

212. The rote practice nowadays is a waste of time. If they need rote, make them learn state capitals...

state flowers, gems, etc..

[Leopolds Ghost]

219. Since when is "rote learning" bad? That sort of thinking got us into this mess.

With an entire generation of emotional cripples, willing to vote and listen to people like Bush.

[yawnmaster]

256. Please read that in context of the subject at hand....

rote practice of cursive writing is a waste of time.
Some things are best learned with rote. Like Hamlet's soliloquy.

btw, please supply a link with evidence that that sort of thinking got us into this mess.

[Buns_of_Fire]

137. I have an opinion, but "Ow! My Balls!" is coming on and I don't want to miss it! nt

[Codeine]

143. That pretty much sums this thread up, sir. nt

[Rebubula]

155. Epic Response

Well said, Hormel Chavez...

[Hissyspit]

157. We could replace cursive instruction classes with classes in logic?

Just a thought.

Ow, my brain.

[yawnmaster]

257. YES! now that would NOT be a waste of time. eom

[NYC Liberal]

161. I guess it's time for this debate again, and time for people here to tell us

again how awful today's youth is. :eyes:

Writing in cursive does not make you intellectually superior to those who don't. People who don't know how to write in cursive, or who don't like to, are not uneducated rubes worthy of scorn and derision because of it.

Get off your high horses.

[Quantess]

172. I'll add to that.

Cursive looks too fussy.

Cursive s looks stupid.

Cursive writing, when used in it's strict form, makes you look like you are on the extreme ends of the age spectrum.

I don't like to connect some letters because they are more legible when separated.

[FLAprogressive]

260. +1

[TheKentuckian]

162. I never use it other than my signature and have never been fond

of the variance in styles for reading and my penmanship is weak so people are better of reading my print.

I see no reason not to learn it but it is way down the list of important things to be taught.

[Arugula Latte]

165. I use it frequently (notes, shopping lists) but my kids NEVER do.

I think it's going the way of the 8-track tape.

[Leopolds Ghost]

235. Do they write ANYTHING down on paper?

Will they be capable of leaving the house as adults w/out a cell phone or other consumer device as a life line?

[Arugula Latte]

242. Well, when they write, they print.

[last_texas_dem]

166. Of course we should stop teaching cursive!

(We'll use that time that the kids used to spend learning cursive to teach them how to pass whatever their state's standardized test is.)

Hell, let's stop teaching anyone how to print, too. Everyone who's anyone types all of their correspondence, anyway...

Oh yeah, and we should definitely stop wasting *any* valuable class time teaching spelling; spell-check will take care of all of that nonsense.

:sarcasm:

[Leopolds Ghost]

173. Is this why, when I hand people stuff written on paper, they say "I can't read this?"

Or usually just greet it with a blank stare and hand it back?

People under the age of 25 do the same thing when I hand them a piece of paper with more than two paragraphs of writing on it.

[Courtesy Flush]

181. You can say the same for algebra

I'm 51 years old, and I doubt I've needed algebra more than twice since I finished school. Still, I thought it was worth learning.

[yawnmaster]

208. more need algebra than cursive in modern times...

plus algebra is a "timeless" skill, it is always valid and will always solve unknown equations.
cursive writing is something that can and is going out of fashion.

[Courtesy Flush]

245. But science is going out of fashion

I wouldn't have predicted that 30 years ago. If we can ditch evolution, everything's on the table.

[yawnmaster]

251. Thats a bit of hyperbole as science even if out of fashion is still a valid technique...

for gaining knowledge, and it will be no matter how it is viewed by society.
Cursive writing, on the other hand, is more like a technology that has been superseded.
We don't need it anymore as we have other, better ways of transmitting data to others.

[Courtesy Flush]

263. Dude, you take yourself too seriously. nt

[yawnmaster]

351. define "too" eom

[LanternWaste]

187. I still write and receive letters in cursive.

I still write and receive letters in cursive. I enjoy it, I know it, and I'm not too shabby at it. If the world decides it's obsolete, so be it... my godson has an Etch-A-Sketch the world has also said is obsolete that we still enjoy playing with together for hour a time. I imagine there are some things that I really don't care what the world may or may not think.

I imagine if cursive indeed becomes obsolete, I'll still write and receive letters in cursive despite the world's righteous protestations. I'll also type on a keyboard-- one doesn't deny the other.

[geardaddy]

224. What are these l e t -t e r s you speak of?

[jsamuel]

188. If they don't know how to write cursive, how will they be able to read it?

All kinds of documents are written in cursive and if you never learn to write it, you won't learn how to read it very well either.

[Leopolds Ghost]

203. That's my concern as well.

I'm going to start writing all cursive documents in my own simplified alphabet to protest this:

[yawnmaster]

205. little need anymore for that. Plus its easier to read cursive than to write it...

the rote training is a waste.
I can read hundreds, perhaps thousands of different fonts and have not had a single minute of formal training for it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

207. "Anymore"? What, because you only read stuff on computer?

You don't have any call for drawing or writing on paper, mm, interesting...

[yawnmaster]

220. no I do not read only from a computer...

I also read from books, magazines, newspapers, reports, etc..

99% of it is printed. My kids reports are printed (printed meaning by a printer).
When I write I use my own form. It's readable and definitely NOT what is taught in school ( I was taught cursive).
It is a waste of time that can be much better spent.

[Leopolds Ghost]

228. Well they should be taught to write some reports on paper

As mentioned, the high school I went to is trying to make teachers use giant touchscreens for EVERYTHING. In place of a board. This is at a time when they are slashing programs for the poor.

[JI7]

190. how about Wedding Invitations ?

[yawnmaster]

202. What font should we learn to write?

Rote training of cursive is a waste of modern time.

[Leopolds Ghost]

209. Because "modern time" is so goddamn valuable and well-informed.

Why, just look at modern ethics and civics.

[yawnmaster]

218. unconnected to the issue. In modern times (recently, now, and in the near future), cursive is...

becoming obsolete. There is no need to waste the time teaching it.
This is irregardless of the value of modern times, modern ethics, civic or how well informed we are.
Cursive is going out of style; it's not needed.
Use the time to teach ethics and civics.

[Leopolds Ghost]

223. Because...? Because you feel writing on paper is obsolete? Or because everyone should write the same

You know, one size fits all.

[LanternWaste]

244. What are the objective, relevant and precise reasons that one form of handwriting (cursive) is out o

You state with emphasis that cursive is out of date. What are the objective, relevant and precise reasons that one form of handwriting (cursive) is out of date while another (grade school block print) isn't?

They both do precisely the same thing, in the same manner, and in the same medium... :shrug:

[yawnmaster]

255. objective, relevant and precise? I'll have to get back to you once I get the grant...

subjective, relevant, anecdotal?
I've got those.
I use very limited cursive as do those that I work with, as does my family.
I wish I could have the time spent learning it back or have different knowledge in its place.

And I do like your argument that the block printing and cursive do the same thing, in the same manner and medium...
One is redundant, so lets get rid of the rote cursive teaching.

[kentuck]

197. I hope not...

I admire fine handwriting.

[phleshdef]

198. Handwriting period is becoming obsolete.

I'll bet in the next 25-30 years, people will look at handwriting as a novelty or an artistic expression. Technology is just another aspect of human evolution.

[Leopolds Ghost]

210. So in this thread I've learned that books, handwriting, etc. are all obsolete thx to human evolution

Everything except tablets. Purchased and consumed from your local telecommunications monopoly.

[phleshdef]

225. The invention of paper and ink made previous ways of doing the same thing obsolete as well.

Why are you taking it so personal? When human beings figure out a more efficient utility that is accessible, they gravitate towards it. Its not that books and handwriting are losing relevance because its bad. We just have a better way to do it now.

And what the hell are you talking about with "monopoly". There are a shit load of companies that make tablet pcs, laptops, net books, cell phones with databases, etc. I think you need to lookup monopoly, it doesn't mean what you think it means.

[Leopolds Ghost]

292. You're the one advocating that we need handhelds to perform even the most basic tasks such as read+w

Humans as a whole gravitate to the most efficient utility, eh? So everything is a natural monopoly in your eyes, and there is only one approach that is teachable, and that is the most efficient approach? I agree with the person below who asked why there is this one-size-fits-all approach where DUers and others expect ALL Americans to adopt only the most efficient behavior that conforms to what consumer society expects them to BUY in order to EXIST.

[phleshdef]

349. Bullshit. I never advocated that we "need" anything one way or the other.

I'm just predicting what I think will happen. And I never said anyone would expect anyone to conform to anything. People didn't conform to paper and ink because they were expected to. People just did it because it was practical. Obviously, you are so emotionally involved in the discussion that you can't handle a casual prediction or an opinion of what practical application means.

[Hippo_Tron]

215. I wouldn't count on that

20 years ago they were saying that in 20 years typing would be replaced by voice recognition and yet we're still typing. Technology will evolve greatly over the next 25-30 years but often it happens in both ways we can fathom and ways we can't.

[Leopolds Ghost]

217. What I was taught as a kid is that in 40 years we would all do everything, speak learn etc.on our TV

And that the Internet, all knowledge etc. would be based on the TV. Books, and all other means of communication would be obsolete.

Just like on the Jetsons.

And lo and behold, it's an actual prospect that the telecom giants are trying to make happen.

[phleshdef]

231. They aren't trying to make it happen. Its already happening and its not because of the telecoms.

The telecomms are profiting off of something that people are gravitating towards regardless. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend big telecommunications at all. But you can't pretend there aren't a lot of willing customers. There are those of us that see a lot of good in technocratic applications, I'm one of those people.

[phleshdef]

226. They were also saying that type writers would be replaced by computers.

Which has turned out to be completely true. Actually 20-30 years ago, they said computers were going to replace a LOT of things, and they were write about a great deal of that. You just picked a really bad example.

[Hippo_Tron]

236. No, I said that technology changes in ways we CAN and CAN'T predict

It's entirely possible that 25-30 years from now handwriting will be obsolete and it's entirely possible it won't be. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't bet my life savings on it being obsolete.

[Enrique]

204. here's how to do the capital Q

[Hippo_Tron]

211. I think as a practical skill it has limited utility, but it may have other benefits

As an adult I generally use a calculator to add and subtract large numbers. However, I am very glad that I had math teachers not allowing me to use one when I was in elementary school. Their rationale was that you might not have a calculator some day. And while that is a good explanation for an elementary school kid, that's not the real reason. The fact is that you have to be able to count in order to do arithmetic and you have to be able to do arithmetic before you can do algebra and you have to be able to do algebra before you can do calculus, etc., etc. That of course isn't something that kids can understand very well.

Quite frankly I haven't used cursive in a very long time and yes I do use a computer to type just about everything. But perhaps learning it was a pre-requisite to doing other things. I do remember learning in Arabic class that the Arabic alphabet has a cursive version. If I had never learned cursive in English that might've been a difficult concept to get my head around, just as trying to learn pluperfect subjunctive in French was difficult because I had never formally been taught pluperfect subjunctive in English or at least not using the words "pluperfect subjunctive".

Honestly I don't think it will make or break a child's education one way or another. I think most people in this thread are hysterical about the fact that too many kids are not getting a decent education in this country and they think this is a major part of it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

216. It is a major part of it. You can't exempt stuff like this and say "oh, but that's ok"

And whether or not one of us doesn't write longhand much is irrelevant to encouraging the retention of said skill.

[Hippo_Tron]

221. Do you have any evidence to suggest it's a major part of it?

Curriculum does evolve with time and circumstances, which is why we don't have courses in agriculture in high schools anymore except in very rural communities where it might be useful.

I'm not saying it's time to phase out cursive, but I'm not convinced it would be detrimental if we did. If you have some evidence to suggest it would, please provide it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

222. Someone upthread mentioned they don't read DU in cursive. Try it, it's a good exercise.

Instructions for Posting in Cursive on DU

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1085298

The problem with America today is that we are taught the Ayn Randian notion that one size fits all, that the fittest and easiest solution is always the best solution, that there can only be one fittest in evolution, which is not how nature works. But it is how the elite want us to think.

American kids are taught that certain things that they have "no longer any use for" are to be "phased out" and that they should not lament the loss of knowledge.

In the 1950s, such things as handcrafting furniture and vernacular building design were similarly deemed obsolete.

[Hippo_Tron]

230. If schools want to offer handcrafting furniture or cursive for that matter, I'm fine with it

But neither are vital skills to succeed in today's society. If you are suggesting that everyone ought to learn them then that seems pretty one size fits all to me.

[Leopolds Ghost]

233. It is a vital skill to learn how to read cursive.

People who can't write in cursive can't read this site properly in cursive. It's easy for me.

Although admittedly Lucida font sucks.

[Hippo_Tron]

238. Reading this site isn't a vital life skill, let alone reading it in cursive

If one elects to read this site in cursive they can certainly choose to learn how to do so as an adult.

[Leopolds Ghost]

265. One doesn't need to learn how to do so. nt

[road2000]

229. Less usage? Yes. Obsolete? No.

The OP asked if cursive is obsolete. I've always enjoyed sending and receiving personalized, hand-written notes in Christmas or birthday cards, thank-you notes... even wedding invitations generally require the invitee to be able to read a script style. As someone who likes to uphold those conventions, I rue the potential loss of cursive usage. I was a newspaper reporter for many years, and was thankful for the rapidity of cursive, while envying my mother's generation for its knowledge of shorthand. (Now, there's a skill that has passed into oblivion.) But there will always be some need, at some point, for an ability to make quick notes. So I give the nod to retaining cursive.

Another point: some posters are confusing the definitions of "printing" and "handwriting" or "lettering." It's a common mistake in terminology, and it took a draftsman to explain the difference to me.

From thefreedictionary.com:

"Depending on the reproduction technique used, a distinction is made between handwriting, which is produced with a pen or other implement on a soft material, such as papyrus, parchment, or paper; lettering applied by hand with a brush or other implement on signs, vases, fabric samples, original bookbindings, book covers, title pages, and other elements of publications; engraved lettering, which is cut or stamped in wood, metal, stone, or some other hard material and used for inscriptions on monuments, architectural structures, or engravings; and print, which consists of individual letters and other elements and which is designed for the manual or mechanized composition of texts to be reproduced by printing, chiefly on paper."

Link: <http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Print+and+Lettering>

The warning before the article is a hoot!

[Leopolds Ghost]

264. Warning! The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or

ideologically biased.

[TorchTheWitch]

234. I never understood the point of it - makes reading too difficult

Cursive just isn't easy read even with practice. I'm not sure what the point is to writing in such a way as to cause difficulty in reading what you write. My mom always writes everything in cursive and it's a struggle to read it though her penmanship is very nearly perfect.

I hope it does become obselete.

[road2000]

298. Apparently, you apply the same standard to spelling. n/t

[LanternWaste]

247. Big band music is obsolete. Music departments should stop teaching it

Big band music is obsolete. So is classical... and most jazz. Music departments should stop teaching them.

Shakespeare? Obsolete too. Get him out of the English & Lit departments.

:sarcasm:

[Leopolds Ghost]

266. Music Departments? Lit Departments? What era are you living in? :-)

We have more important things to teach kids than Music and Lit.

You think those Chinese uberminds are learning Voltaire or pentatonic scales? NO!

:hi:

[jp11]

249. Nope, and if anything kids should spend more time in school learning more things

not less and not cutting out things because they don't seem to be useful because of technology.

[CreekDog]

250. yes.

That is all.

Thread over. :D

[senseandsensibility]

253. I teach cursive writing to third graders

They love it, and are motivated to learn it. I can even use it as a reward to encourage more effort in other subjects. To them, it is a sophisticated skill that shows they're growing up. After three or four months of instruction, they now write everything in cursive, and their cursive looks beautiful Anyone who sees their writing on my classroom walls just stops and sighs as they read it.

[Shandris]

259. The common rejoinder in this thread: 'to succeed'.

"Kids need to skip cursive to succeed." "They should only be taught what is essential for them to succeed." "If we want our kids to succeed, then this stuff has to go."

Back the train up. No one has defined what it means 'to succeed'. An awful lot of people seem to be heavily invested in removing an 'obstacle' from education because they want their kids to succeed, yet as a generic whole, the definition of success on DU is hardly what it is in the mainstream of society. Or have we tacitly agreed that 'to succeed' means that we have accepted the corporate definition of success (read: money and materialistic acquisitions) and hence are eliminating anything that might stand in our child's way to procure as much money as possible?

The byword of education has become 'efficiency', but whose efficiency are we slanting for? Do we want to consider the possibility that one freak cosmic occurrence can wipe out the combined sum of human knowledge because it wasn't 'efficient' to keep hard records, and to know how to access those records?

The Fukushima reactor -- a reactor in a country with a gazillion reactors, a country that -- more than most -- had justifiable cause to fear the dangers of nuclear exposure -- was wiped out by some water (!). Are you really so confident that we know everything there is to know about what can or could bring down what we are promulgating as the central repository for the combined sum of human knowledge that you would toss other means of learning to the side for the sake of monetary convenience?

No, I'm not in my 50's, I'm not even in my 40's yet. I'm a 100+ word/minute typer, read and write fluent, coherent cursive and block lettering. I learned all of this by the time I finished 7th grade. I also had enough time on my hands to take Algebra, Algebra II, Geometry, Geometry II, Chemistry, Chemistry II, Trigonometry, and Intro to Calculus ~while~ playing a full sport and taking Advanced Literature (World) and Advanced English, Spanish I, Spanish II, and French I-III. I'm not bragging -- I wasn't even in the top 5 of my very small graduating class. What I ~am~ doing is pointing out that there is ~nothing~ difficult about learning cursive along the way to a well-rounded education that also includes Computer Lab (I and II), Programming (Pascal), and even leaving room for electives like Meteorology -- or, in my case, Genetics. There isn't more than a couple of things at most on that entire list that every student shouldn't be required to learn, and there is no reason that a well-made curriculum can't include all of them ~and then some~.

Edit: In hindsight, though, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that taking multiple languages in the same year -- especially when they are from the same lingual family -- is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. :)

[Leopolds Ghost]

306. This is my favorite post.

It frightens me to think folks assume they can write better/faster when they type, than when they put pen to paper. It just ain't so...

Sturgeon's Law applies when any activity is perceived to be easier. Just look at Youtube comments...

[Throd]

262. Only for slack-jawed nitwits.

[Leopolds Ghost]

268. While you were learning how to SPELL YOUR NAME I was being TRAINED to CONQUER GALAXIES!

IMDB.com...Battlefield-earth-quotes

[Codeine]

270. Best response in this whole thread. nt

[patrice]

267. Not as long as a good medium nib pen on paper feels as good as it does.

[Owl]

269. Heck no, it's distinctive, elegant, and fast.

[Leopolds Ghost]

271. As a protest against this, we should all start posting in Edwardian Script.

(font face="Edwardian Script ITC" size="5")

Because Everyone & their Brother should be exposed to the Wonders of Flowery Cursive Script!

[Leopolds Ghost]

278. Curses! I can set my browser to display in Edwardian Script ITC, but the font size is too small!

Foiled again!

[fishwax]

274. I generally use a blend of cursive and print

it's faster for me than either print or cursive.

I teach undergraduates, and plenty of them still write in cursive.

[CrispyQ]

279. When I was in 5th grade there was a penmanship contest & a girl in my class

won regional finals.

Talk of cursive always reminds me of my Big Chief tablet & ovals, circles & loops. :o

[BobTheSubgenius]

281. It never really caught on with me. My cursive script is the

handwriting analog of a monkey with a typewriter trying to write Shakespeare.

[Zanzoobar]

282. Cursive writing has no utilility.

It had very little utility other tha. speed. It has been supplanted.

Yes, yes, of course it will survive. Almost everything has a legacy.

People collect baseball cards.

[Leopolds Ghost]

300. By what?

[Zanzoobar]

303. By what, what?

[Leopolds Ghost]

305. It has been replaced by what?

I heard tree frogs have been replaced, too. And pets.

[Zanzoobar]

307. Oh.

By everything else.

[salin]

285. Sort of wild to live through an era where something that has been common for centuries

to become obsolete.

Guessing this is the trend and those that pursue advanced studies that require reading documents written in the past - will have to take a course in cursive (as in reading it - like reading a foreign language). I find the whole shift interesting - and indicative of how rapidly reality is changing due to exponentially fast changing technologies. Interesting times...

[Leopolds Ghost]

290. I would call it depressing that we are living through both a Geological Extinction Event...

And an extinction event in culture and learning, thanks to technology. All human knowledge and culture will be reduced to digits on the "cloud", owned by large telecommunications corporations.

[Kaleva]

301. I have a hard time reading my step kids handwriting but they sure can text fast.

[pinniped]

304. Somehow, all that cursive stuff and other subjects were fit in our....

daily schedule. My cursive is pretty good.

Are they teaching Texting Basics 102 and Email 103 now?

[white_wolf]

313. I type everything.

My professors won't even accept handwritten papers so I really don't see the need for cursive anymore. Even one of my English professors commented that cursive writing is really not needed anymore since most people can type far faster and more clearly than they can write.

[Leopolds Ghost]

314. Your English professors, sound pretty closed minded. But thanx for the anecdote

I'm not surprised they would want a whole paper typewritten. That's always been the case.

Why professors and publications would judge a book by its cover is a mystery, isn't it? Not a good sign for the future of liberal discourse.

I myself had a Marxist professor of African history who asserted that the actual history of African kingdoms was irrelevant as it was pre-industrial and had nothing to do with socioeconomic struggle.

Which is to say, when a professor tells you something is not worth knowing about, STUDY it.

[white_wolf]

318. That sames like a bad attitude for a professor of history to take.

I can maybe understand what he is saying from Marxist perspective, that the history of the ancient African Kingdoms really don't have much to do with class struggle in Africa today, but for a history professor to ignore history like that is sad.

[Leopolds Ghost]

325. Yeah, that's what I thought.

I asked her what she thought about The Scramble For Africa even as a layman's history of the subject (great book, BTW) and prof really wasn't interested. We learned a lot about African kingdoms that no one learns about in school, but the focus was always on peoples and their means of production, with the assumption that the so-called "tribal entities" involved were of little interest in and of themselves... not very confrontational to what the average American thinks about Africa, really.

According to WaPo, they recently discovered a cache of ancient bronzes from an Igbo (I think) kingdom in Nigeria that was in the backyard of the royal mansion of the former city-state -- right where the tribal chief's heirs said it would be.

They had argued that the city-state was older than many European cities, and indeed the bronzes are of that age (meaning the palace has been there the whole time) and of higher quality than many European classical bronzes of the same antiquity. My question is, will letting go of basic hand skills make way for kids to learn about such things?

[Lucinda]

317. I rarely ever print. All cursive, all the time. I LIKE it.

:)

[Bonobo]

321. Reminds me of that old Microsoft joke.

QUESTION: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

ANSWER: None. They just declare darkness to be the new standard.

[Leopolds Ghost]

327. Oh, man, I am fighting the urge to make a "One Ring" joke.

They just declare darkness to be the new standard.

The Origin of the Tolkien Ring Network

It began with the forging of the Token Rings.
Three were given to the Salesmen,
Cleverest and most persuasive of all beings.
Seven were given to the Engineers,
Great designers and craftsmen of the academic halls.
And nine were gifted to the profession of Managers,
Who above all else desire power.

For within these rings was bound
The strength and will to govern each profession.
But they were, all of them, deceived
For another Ring was made.

In the land of New York, in the office towers of Armonk,
The Dark Lords of IBM forged in secret a Master Ring
To control all others.
And into this ring they scripted their greed,
Their malice
And their will to dominate all users.

The Ring bears an inscription
In the language of Hexidecimal,
In the tongue of Engineers,
Which must never be uttered aloud.
Three bytes, which in the common tongue of English, mean:

One ring to serve them all.
One ring to find them.
One ring to link them all,
And to the Sysop bind them.
In the land of Armonk
Where the servers lie.

One by one, the free computers fell to the power of the Tolkien Ring.
But there were some who resisted.
A last alliance of Users and Developers
Marched against the Industry Lobbyists
And on the slopes of Capitol Hill,
They fought for the freedom of the Ethernets.

IBM,
The enemy of the free computers of the Earth,
Was defeated.

The Ring passed to Bill Gates,
Who had this one chance to destroy Evil forever.
But the hearts of Managers are easily corrupted
And the Ring has a will of its own.

The Ring betrayed Bill Gates to his greed.
Microsoft was created
And some software that should not have been forgotten
Was lost.

[tiny elvis]

328. this should not become illegible

my reasons are not sentimental
our raison d'etre is concrete in cursive georgian english
and all citizens are liable to reify it through fluency in that style

[NuttyFluffers]

329. hand eye coordination, spatial reasoning, interpretation, artistic expression...

as a child of the liberal arts (even though i suffered terribly in handwriting class) i can find quite a few benefits to handwriting classes. i hated it when i was young, but after non-latin script language study, and many years of musical study, i have come to realize those skills were a lot more important than i thought they were. the training is not just for its own purpose, it is for establishing foundational skills that give us greater comprehension and capacity to wield other future skills more adeptly.

skills in life build upon each other, often in ways that seem oblique. life is not always direct. but it's the little things that often count.

my inner 3rd grader hates myself for saying it, but yes, my adult self recognizes (albeit somewhat begrudgingly) there is a valuable lesson in handwriting and it should be kept.

[Blue_Tires]

336. I had it from grades 1-6

And there were those fun days during the summer when my dad would make me re-write a newspaper story in cursive...

Ironic, because being a doctor, my dad's penmanship was notoriously bad...

[octothorpe]

346. I rarely write in cursive myself and I lean toward the "obsolete" camp.

On the other hand, I already know cursive and I can read it. I don't think I would be comfortable if I didn't know how to read cursive, as I do come across cursive writing every so often. Seems a bit messed up to lock people out being able to understand a lot of written material out there. Of course people could always learn it on their own as an adult, but aren't most skills like that more easily learned at a younger age?

I suppose a good middle ground would be teaching the students how to read it, but not focusing as much on the writing it.

[aikoaiko]

348. How else would we write handwritten thank you notes?

You can tell I've been living in the south for a while.

[MrsBrady]

355. my husband prints only because

he has a learning disability and could never get it down.
but he can read it.


I can write in cursive just fine.

my grandmother had perfect, beautiful, textbook handwriting.

[Posteritatis]

356. BREAKING: Kids These Days Not Alright, Still On My Lawn (nt)

[thelordofhell]

357. When you ask for a signature and you see block letters

Do you think the person is little dumb?

[thelordofhell]

358. When you ask for a signature and you see block letters

Do you think the person is little dumb?

[themadstork]

359. I write in cursive all the time.

Block letters would make my arm fall off eventually.