Are we talking the same thing- just normal handwriting? As in running writing? I had no idea it was ever not being taught.
Yes, that is what we’re talking about. See my ‘long string of akas’ for additional clarification.
Well, here you’re apparently proposing something fairly radical: Changing how schools teach kids to write is likely to provoke one of those senseless backlashes the education world is known for. Going to a new script, let alone a new teaching method, probably isn’t worth it.
This is an assertion with no support, especially given that printing is more legible and shorthand is faster. Cursive falls in an unfortunate position of being both slower and less legible than the possible alternatives.
Why not communicate using a writing implement in a non-joined-up fashion?
Alternatively:
When I was a child, before being taught cursive (apparently, D’Nealian) in school, my sister and I would pretend we could write in cursive: what we would do is simply write in block letters as we were used to (aka, “print”) but connect the ends of each letter to each other (thus not lifting the pen from the paper too much). Would this be acceptable? No one would have to teach cursive specially; one could just say “Now, connect all your letters to each other” after having taught “print”.
Yes! He’s a lefty. I hadn’t thought of that aspect.
Nowadays we only use cursive to write our names. I take your son can sign his name?
Yes, teach him cursive. It’s not that hard. If nothing else, he will likely be called upon to be able to read it, especially if he leaves North America at some point in his life.
I grew up in the French school system. We were taught cursive first, then print. Way smarter way to do it, if you ask me. Way easier, too. But that’s just MHO.
Here’s the thing. In the real world, the infrequency where I actually need to write anything is not helped one iota if all the letters in the words were joined up or not. There’s no need to be faster, it’s no more readable (in fact it’s often less readable), and it’s unnecessarily fancy.
There is no point. Whatever people are perceiving as good reasons for learning it, are missing the real world practicality where it’s all completely unnecessary.
I’m a lefty as well, I’m 24, and I write in cursive. That said, by high school almost everyone I know had abandoned it.
I think it’s still a useful skill to have, though. In college, that’s how I took notes (I didn’t bring a laptop to class), and now that I’m a legal clerk, I quite frequently have to decipher the writing on some ancient document or the chicken scratchings of some older attorney, which are always in cursive.
You never know what your son might wind up doing. If he winds up working in any field in which he has to deal with any type of hand-written document on a regular basis, knowing how to at least read cursive will be essential.
Something about cursive still says “grown up” to me. I realize that it has no basis in logic, but I still have an adverse reaction to seeing an adult print something rather than use cursive (particularly if his handwriting is bad). I send emails and text like a madman, but I still think it’s a worthwhile skill to be able to create a nice, sophisticated-looking handwritten document.
In fact, I’m insecure about my cursive handwriting as well. My goal has always been to match the absolutely gorgeous handwriting of my grandmother, but I’ve never come close.
There was a movie about this recently, I think it was called “Idiocracy” or something similar. GuanoLad can’t understand why something is valuable and therefore dismisses it. Eventually, we’re all quite stupid.
I’m particularly disturbed by Manda JO’s perspective. I also teach high school, and find the decay in critical thinking skills, even among AP and Honors level students, to be very sad. They are driven almost exclusively by the standardized tests, and GPA considerations.
I can’t argue with the inevitability of a transformation in personal communication from hand written content to keyboard (and ultimately voice-transcribed) text, but today, right now, those individuals who can’t manipulate a pencil effectively are at a severe disadvantage whenever their disability comes to light. **GuanoLad ** may not realize it, but people do judge him by his penmanship just as surely as they do by his diction and pronunciation. It’s human nature.
Fuck 'em. If they can read my printing, and not my joined-up-writing, then who gives a shit if they’re casting judgement upon me? All that matters is that it’s legible.
What evidence do you have that critical thinking skills were once significantly higher among students than they are today?
I’m 32, went to school in California, and I was taught the D’Nealian cursive (didn’t know what it was called before though). I always thought it was ugly and hard to write, and stopped using it ASAFP, which was around 5th grade.
Now see, if I was taught that style of writing I would like cursive much better. But until recently I thought cursive = D’Nealian = fucking ugly.
Don’t do it! It would be a blatant waste of his time. Heck, I never used the cursive I used, and I wasn’t born in the computer age. If you have time to teach him stuff, why don’t you teach him something proper like history or maths?
Being plain about it, what use is history? I have never once used any of the knowledge that I gained in history class. It’s a complete waste of time. As are teaching foreign languages—I can remember about three words from French class—I know more Latin than French despite studying French for longer. Religious education? A load of bunk. English literature? Who cares about poems?
Clearly, as I have never used any of these, they should be removed from the curriculum.
Strange. It’s been a while since I was in high school (I am 32) and I don’t ever remember a high school teacher ever being interested in whether or not I had critical thinking skills. I did have a health teacher tell us that it wasn’t our fault we were so stupid–it was the fact that all (as in 100%) of our parents smoked pot before we were born. You can try that excuse–though I think pot use was more prevalent during the 70’s than the 90’s, so I’d actually expect these kids to be smarter than we were.
So this would mean that all the children in that particular class also missed out, right? So if they’ve all moved up together, perhaps their current teachers are seeing the lack and can be persuaded by the parents to include some remedial work during those times when the kids have some free time…or is it only your son who seems to be having problems?
He switched schools after that year so he’s no longer with those classmates.
Bah. Fifty years ago practically all teaching was based on rote memorization. If critical thinking skills have declined since then- an assertion that I find highly dubious, given that it wasn’t required - it has nothing to do with teaching methods.
My grandmother has been a teacher in India getting on for sixty years. Her lessons are still based on memorizing lists, dates, numbers, names, conjugations, and so on.
If you spoke to some of her students, I think you’d change your mind. Some of these kids are brilliant- it’s a school for the “gifted” children of truly poor people (miners, field hands, and so on)- and yet none of her students think at all.
It isn’t that they can’t, it’s that they aren’t taught to do so. They know and comprehend vast reams of information - her maths classes know pi to fifty places - but they have no idea of how to apply this knowledge. I suspect if you were a high school teacher in 1908 your students would be much the same. AFAIK, subjects like debate and speech, ie. the stuff that demands critical thinking, weren’t taught until college in those days.
I really dislike cursive calligraphy, most are just scribbles and I think it looks childish and unprofessional. Mine is the worst on both counts. I’m making an effort to move away from it. But it would be hopeless to write anything longer than a few sentences all in block characters. Between having to decipher hieroglyphs later on or taking 10 times longer, I’ll pick the first or use a keyboard.
There is a difference between a subject and a skill. The things you learned in these classes form a background of general knowledge that increases your ability to process new information and think critically about it.
But cursive is more like my high school ceramics class. Sure it was neat and maybe it built up some motor skills in a very generalized way, but honestly there are no other skills that build on top of it and in life there really isn’t much call to do it.
I say use the time for drawing classes. I’m always shocked at how many people can’t draw more than a stick figure. Drawing is something that comes up pretty often in daily life and is an important part of many professions. There is a skill that will serve you for years to come.