Stop teaching cursive writing in schools ?

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselfs without electricity or simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

I can't read the third word from the right on the second line or the last word on the first line of the last paragraph. Had to re-read the second and second-to-last words on the seventh line to tell what they were.

This is a problem for virtually all cursive handwriting for me. Unless you use "italic cursive" or cursive-style letters with more of a block-style arrangement, chances are I'll have difficulty reading at least a few words. This is enough for me to think of cursive as absolutely useless, since it leads to poor communication when it could be easily avoided by simply using manuscript instead.

I dont claim to have the most legible handwriting, but the message I was trying to convey is relevent. That is the cursive must not be allowed to fall by the wayside in the face of technology. It would be an irreversbile mistake that will plague future generations, especially after the fall of western civilization in 2012.

Originally posted by: astroidea

let's get a few hands of people who had difficulty reading a lot of that.

/raises hand

btw.. what's up with the snail mail letter in cursive to ask for the unbannage?

It was relevent last year, but Im back, and thats what matters.

wb! :beer:

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca


I do agree that writing longhand (as opposed to typing) can be useful for forming ideas (see my edited post above). However, I'm not so sure why cursive should make that easier. I'd be too concerned with writing things legibly (which is much more difficult than with printing) to be able to focus much on the writing itself. Longhand vs. typing is one thing, but manuscript vs. cursive is entirely another. There's little difference other than the level of frustration when using cursive instead of manuscript.

The mental process between writing cursive and writing print is very different. It is why they recommend cursive to dyslexics. If the process was the same as print they would continue to reverse letters.

1. The letters flow much easier and usually only one movement is necessary. Children often struggle with the many movements required in print. Remember, many of these children also have some type of visual-motor difficulties, therefore remembering where to put the 'circles and sticks' and remembering to cross t's and dot the i's coupled with then knowing which way to put each letter becomes very difficult. How often have you seen these children confuse b's and d's and put the circles on p's on the wrong side?

2. Only words are separate in cursive writing as opposed to each letter. Therefore phonetics are joined together and it's only words that are separated instead of spaces for letters and bigger spaces for words. The word becomes the beginning and the end, unlike the 3 letters to make the word. Many students deal with this concept much more easily.

3. Rarely will you see reversals in cursive writing, unlike printing. The child responds well to the flow of writing.

 

[InflatableBuddha]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
I don't get the obsession with cursive anyway.

"A" is a way of representing a letter.
"||\\|" - that shall now represent the same thing.
Is it any different? No, not really. When you write it, it's all just lines on paper. A cursive letter is not inherently better or worse than a printed one. Kind of like Roman numerals - I can write "7" or "VII." Both mean the same thing. We use Arabic numerals for nearly everything. Roman numerals seem to be used only for the dates in movies, for whatever reason. Did it severely impair humanity when Roman numerals fell out of style?

You can argue for the use of Wingdings vs printed text, and it'd make as much sense as arguing cursive vs printing. It's the Latin of writing; it's of limited use, and it's dying out. There's no need to romanticize the past so much, some things need to be laid to rest for the sake of progress.

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
It takes longer to write properly formed cursive than simply printing quickly across the page. You also have cleaner pen lines than printing, which often leaves faint ink trails between certain letters and words. Cursive is a cleaner presentation (it is art).

Because cursive is more time-consuming than even printing, you must have a clearer direction for your thoughts before you actually begin writing. Letting your thoughts and feelings flow through the pen and onto the page is a natural process which taps your emotions; typing on a keyboard does not engage you in the same way.

I guess it depends on your thought process. I can form a great many thoughts, but then they have to be translated to English from the realm of thought, and then considerably condensed down so that they can be conveyed with an acceptable level of brevity. If I'm writing, printing or cursive, it is painful in how slowly the process goes. I don't need time to sort out thoughts or "tap into emotions." The only emotion felt in writing is impatience, trying to dictate out War and Peace in binary, sent in Morse Code. Typing is slow enough; I may max out at around 60WPM before my hands start getting out of sync - the left will start typing the next word in the sequence before the right has finished with its queue of letters.

If a person talked at their writing speed, they'd likely qualify as clinically retarded. If I've got my thoughts quite together, I can easily speak 180-200WPM. If I need to slow down for clarity, or perhaps for public speaking, I'll have to drop down to 100WPM, which is still considered fairly rapid for such things.

That said, I don't have much of an artistic sense. Writing isn't about art for me, it's just another way of conveying information. Printing is a reasonably efficient means of doing that, when other options (typing or verbal communication) are unavailable. It is easily understood by many people, and is easily written. Seeing as how the goal of writing is to communicate, it would seem to me that ease of transcription from thought to paper, and the reading of the finished product, is something of some importance.
Like I mentioned before, I can start writing in Wingdings if I wanted to. I could simply say it's more artistic that way, and since it would take a much longer time to do this than even cursive, it therefore must be an even better option. Each symbol still represents a letter of the English language, so there should be no problem with it, right?

I guess I failed to mention that the purpose and audience for the writing is also important. I agree that printing is more effective for taking notes, and typing is more effective for writing business proposals, for example.

But as I mentioned earlier, writing a love letter to your partner in cursive is the right form for that type of communication, because it conveys art and emotion. I understand that transcription, for example, is about efficiency, and not emotion.

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca


I do agree that writing longhand (as opposed to typing) can be useful for forming ideas (see my edited post above). However, I'm not so sure why cursive should make that easier. I'd be too concerned with writing things legibly (which is much more difficult than with printing) to be able to focus much on the writing itself. Longhand vs. typing is one thing, but manuscript vs. cursive is entirely another. There's little difference other than the level of frustration when using cursive instead of manuscript.

The mental process between writing cursive and writing print is very different. It is why they recommend cursive to dyslexics. If the process was the same as print they would continue to reverse letters.

1. The letters flow much easier and usually only one movement is necessary. Children often struggle with the many movements required in print. Remember, many of these children also have some type of visual-motor difficulties, therefore remembering where to put the 'circles and sticks' and remembering to cross t's and dot the i's coupled with then knowing which way to put each letter becomes very difficult. How often have you seen these children confuse b's and d's and put the circles on p's on the wrong side?

2. Only words are separate in cursive writing as opposed to each letter. Therefore phonetics are joined together and it's only words that are separated instead of spaces for letters and bigger spaces for words. The word becomes the beginning and the end, unlike the 3 letters to make the word. Many students deal with this concept much more easily.

3. Rarely will you see reversals in cursive writing, unlike printing. The child responds well to the flow of writing.

This thread has taken a dramatic turn for the better and gives me hope. :heart:

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
I agree that printing is more effective for taking notes

Huh, see this confuses me. Wouldn't chicken-scratch cursive (as long as the writer can read it) be the best way to take notes, since it's faster? I was actually thinking that cursive should be relegated to a junior high/middle school level "study skills" class where kids learn not only fast writing methods (cursive and perhaps even stenography), but good note-taking skills as well. That's the one advantage I see with cursive - if you are good at it, it can be faster.

Oh, and love letters. :heart:

EDIT: Does the fact that I'm a proofreader/editor with an eye for spelling, grammar, and clarity and absolutely no creative writing sense have anything to do with the fact that I love printing and hate cursive? Signs point to yes. I wonder if my preference for printing vs. cursive helped me with my spelling (I was always one of the best in my class at spelling and grammar).

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Getting rid of it sounds good to me as long as they spend the time on something more useful for today.

Can't say I ever write anything in cursive now beyond my signature. I doubt I could even remember how. If it's anything of length for others to read, it's typed.

Thinking about it more, I bet cursive will vanish altogether from any regular use in the not too distant future.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
I guess I failed to mention that the purpose and audience for the writing is also important. I agree that printing is more effective for taking notes, and typing is more effective for writing business proposals, for example.

But as I mentioned earlier, writing a love letter to your partner in cursive is the right form for that type of communication, because it conveys art and emotion. I understand that transcription, for example, is about efficiency, and not emotion.

Wellsir, I've never had to write a love letter to anyone as yet, so I guess I don't know, and, well, I'm not an artsy person. I'd sooner let the words themselves convey the meaning, rather than the form in which the letters are written.

And depending on the notes being taken, typing is far quicker. World History: The notes were almost entirely text, there were no graphics, at least nothing that could be written down, and on top of that was the verbal lecture portion. I found that I was leaving out a lot of detail as I'd try to write out everything relevant. So I brought in my laptop and was quickly able to type in very nearly everything from the lecture which I felt was relevant. The notes became far more detailed and thorough.
Alas, all of my other classes required some sort of diagrams, graphs, or equations, for which a computer is simply not yet suited.

How often have you seen these children confuse b's and d's and put the circles on p's on the wrong side?

Hell, I get "t" and "f" screwed up sometimes - same letter, just vertically flipped. (I could read upside-down since sometime before second grade, at normal speed, if that matters.)

Maybe we need metric language: Speech and text created such that they are easy and intuitive, like that nice and nifty base-10 measurement system.

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: Perknose

:thumbsup:

I ended up thousands of miles from home at a time before cell phones, texting, or home computers of any kind. Even land-line long distance was a horribly expensive propostion.

So, I wrote long 6-7 page letters to my closest friends and my parents, and received the same in return, all in cursive.

And, because no one had 24/7 instant means to burp out their most casually inane half-thought, we all put our heart and soul and mind into those missives. It's amazing how people of all stripes stepped up to the plate and wrote really, really well.

When you wrote a letter, you did it with feeling and craft and forethought, and you did it in cursive, which flowed like the organized ideas that flowed from your adult brain. And what resulted was a beauty and depth you rarely see on this forum.

It is undoubtedly true that cursive will be more and more marginalized and fall by the wayside as the yip-yap mongoloids and their ty;dr three-word attention span take over.

And . . . it's not the loss of cursive itself that I will mourn. It is the more considered and disciplined culture of general literacy and deferred gratification and depth and structure of thought that goes part and parcel with it that I will miss.

Mark my words: You ARE what you do. Don't bullshit yourself, you are what you do. Accross all cultures and ages and disciplines and peoples, this eternal verity pertains.

When ALL you do is blurt out sentence fragments as your main means of communication, that seeps into your pattern of consciousness and soon becomes ALL you are freaking capable of doing.

Face it, ty;dr writers, you type this because it would actually hurt your little head to even try to read, say, three medium length paragraphs on one subject. Oh, sure, you may claim to yourself that this is not true, but try it next time, and notice how hard it has become for you, and wake the fusk up to who you now are.

Three word sentence fragment boy, you are like the oaf who never exercises but still thinks he can crank off 100 push-ups or run reasonably fast. Congratulations, you are the sedentary fat-ass of the world of adult communication, stuffing yourself on the fast food of tweets and texts, grown obese with your inability to concentrate.

And just like fat people disgust you for their basic lack of adult discipline, you disgust me.

I almost never write in sentence fragments, and actually use proper grammar and spelling in all forms of communication, even text messaging. I hate writing in cursive, I've never written in cursive unless forced, I don't see how you can possibly think writing in cursive makes something better or more thoughtful. So the letters are connected, and therefore it is flowing like thoughts from my brain?

Then again, people don't like digital forms of media (music/books) because they are egotistical assholes that like other people to see what they've read/listened to. Old people will resist change for no reason other than they can.

Oh, and for the record, I can crank off 100 push ups and run reasonably fast.

 

[flyboy84]

Originally posted by: polarmystery

Originally posted by: FleshLight
Cursive is used extensively in the engineering field. Our entire senior project (design a water reservoir) has to be written in cursive.

*looks around cubicle*

Nope, no cursive anywhere.

QFT

Is this guy kidding me?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Deeko
I almost never write in sentence fragments, and actually use proper grammar and spelling in all forms of communication, even text messaging. I hate writing in cursive, I've never written in cursive unless forced, I don't see how you can possibly think writing in cursive makes something better or more thoughtful. So the letters are connected, and therefore it is flowing like thoughts from my brain?

Then again, people don't like digital forms of media (music/books) because they are egotistical assholes that like other people to see what they've read/listened to. Old people will resist change for no reason other than they can.

Oh, and for the record, I can crank off 100 push ups and run reasonably fast.

Some old people.
The owner of the company I work for, he's got to be at least in his 50s, maybe later. Word is that his Blackberry must dispense heroin directly into his fingertips; he's addicted to it. He's an excellent businessman, and fully embraces technology, when the company can afford it.

 

[Synomenon]

Originally posted by: SnipeMasterJ13
I'm one of the few that does a majority of writing in cursive. It's a hybrid of cursive/print, depending on the letters. For example, I always print Q instead of cursive, but the rest of the word will be cursive. I can write a lot faster doing 95% cursive, and I'm the only one that can decode the chicken scratch that my handwriting is anyway (printing included).

I write mostly in cursive as well. At work, whenever they want something written up by hand they always have me do it because my cursive is pretty neat and easy to read and I write pretty quickly.

The only time I print is on forms that specifically ask to print my name or whatever the form is asking for.

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: flyboy84

Originally posted by: polarmystery

Originally posted by: FleshLight
Cursive is used extensively in the engineering field. Our entire senior project (design a water reservoir) has to be written in cursive.

*looks around cubicle*

Nope, no cursive anywhere.

QFT

Is this guy kidding me?

This had to be a joke, you would be failed by any professor I ever had for writing in cursive. and probably be fired from your job in the real world. Although you never really write anything anyways since it is all typewritten.

I cannot write cursive, I cannot read cursive, but I can't recall seeing anything written in cursive in the last few years so I don't really see where it matters. I actually had assumed they had already stopped teaching this long ago.

The real kicker is the fact that in kindergarden we were taught this "hybrid" cursive/normal writing style to make it easier for us to learn cursive later, but we never realyl went on and learned cursive, so now my writing is a 50/50 printed/cursive hybrid that 90% of the world cannot read (MYSELF INCLUDED) unless I slow way down and make sure to get rid of all the retarded flourishes and stuff.

 

[AmdEmAll]

Cursive is useless

/thread

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
Cursive is not faster at all when you first learn it. It takes years of practice for you to get better.

Agreed, anything perfected takes time. I think your issue with inability to read average cursive is... your issue.

We can't drop items from the curriculum just because it takes time. Otherwise, given the same argument about typing on keyboards, we might as well dump trig, algebra, and calculus, since the computers do that for us as well. Most people on here hardly use math at all, except for simple add, sub, div, and mult. That doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile to learn it in school. Most of what we learn, we never use directly in life. But it wrinkles our brain; makes us think more efficiently.

 

[Modelworks]

I've been reading more since I read that it is taught to dyslexic children because of the difference in how the brain processes cursive and print.

It seems when you write cursive the brain processes it as a complete word that has letters with the word having a beginning and end. When you print the brain processes it as letters that form a word and concentrates on each letter rather than the word. I realize that people don't see a need for it much in modern life. I am reading a lot that shows it is very important in the development of a childs brain. That is helps organize the flow of information through the neural pathways between the left and right sides and allows thoughts to flow instead of stop and start.

 

[Synomenon]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselves without electricity or in simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

Can you read this sample resignation letter I copied?

http://img17.imageshack.us/img.../sampleresignation.png


Did this in a minute on a plain white printer paper. Makes me feel good that I can do something (even as insignificant as this) that many people can't or have forgotten how to do.

 

[brandonbull]

Sounds like a bunch of Twitter babies. Boo hoo. I can't take time out of my busy to use cursive because I must get back to sitting in front of a computer 20 hours a day to play WoW.

 

[Zeeky Boogy Doog]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
Cursive is not faster at all when you first learn it. It takes years of practice for you to get better.

Agreed, anything perfected takes time. I think your issue with inability to read average cursive is... your issue.

We can't drop items from the curriculum just because it takes time. Otherwise, given the same argument about typing on keyboards, we might as well dump trig, algebra, and calculus, since the computers do that for us as well. Most people on here hardly use math at all, except for simple add, sub, div, and mult. That doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile to learn it in school. Most of what we learn, we never use directly in life. But it wrinkles our brain; makes us think more efficiently.

That's a horrible argument. What builds off of the ability to write in cursive? Reading cursive. What builds off of simple math? Everything else in math. Cursive script is exactly as useful as it's prevalence in society, which is quickly approaching 0.

Cursive is an incredibly useless skill, at best you might get hired over someone else with the exact same skill set minus the ability to write in cursive, but no one will ever hire you for knowing how to write well in cursive. The things math is teaching is analogous to grammar, not cursive, learning Roman Numerals would be an apt comparison, which has been almost completely phased out.

I was forced to write in cursive until 6th grade, the first day of 7th grade I found out we were no longer required to write in cursive and I immediately stopped. I can only imagine how much good knowledge could have been gained if we had not had to learn cursive and instead had focused more on grammar. I stopped reading the papers of fellow students during in class workshops in seventh grade, it was painful, there is literally no way to tell a person how poorly they write. You could immediately tell when a parent had checked over a paper before bringing it to class. Hell, that's almost exclusively how I learned to write, English class was a joke. Actually, scratch that, school was a joke. I did almost ZERO homework at home and quite literally no studying all the way through high school and graduated with a 3.9 something (4.0 with weighted AP classes, w00t?).

I want to emphasize this for those who have been out of school for some time, I opened a book at home to study twice throughout all of high school, once for a Spanish test, which amounted to me writing different verb tenses for 20 minutes and growing bored, and once for one of my AP World History tests, which actually meant I had the book open for 15 minutes while I watched TV (I got a 96% on that test, I remember this quite clearly because I almost couldn't believe it, other people in the class were studying for hours and barely got C's, I watched Seinfeld and got an A...). My AP World History class was also the only good class I really had through high school, it was the only one requiring any sort of critical thinking, which almost everyone in the class failed at miserably. THIS is what we need to be focusing on. School as a whole is failing, and it's not because we are or are not teaching cursive, our schools suck. We need to teach the things cursive teaches our brains to do without teaching cursive, it is, within itself, an incredibly worthless skill.

I have more to rant about, but I'll just get even more pissed so I won't... I'm 20 BTW.

 

[BlackTigers]

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselves without electricity or in simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

Can you read this sample resignation letter I copied?

http://img17.imageshack.us/img.../sampleresignation.png


Did this in a minute on a plain white printer paper. Makes me feel good that I can do something (even as insignificant as this) that many people can't or have forgotten how to do.

That would have taken me....10 minutes or more to write in cursive, a minute in print.

I learned cursive in second and third grade, and haven't touched it since then - with the exception of having to do my 6th grade Social Studies in cursive.

I can still read it, and can still write it, I'm just...slow.

 

[Babbles]

Originally posted by: Zeeky Boogy Doog

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
Cursive is not faster at all when you first learn it. It takes years of practice for you to get better.

Agreed, anything perfected takes time. I think your issue with inability to read average cursive is... your issue.

We can't drop items from the curriculum just because it takes time. Otherwise, given the same argument about typing on keyboards, we might as well dump trig, algebra, and calculus, since the computers do that for us as well. Most people on here hardly use math at all, except for simple add, sub, div, and mult. That doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile to learn it in school. Most of what we learn, we never use directly in life. But it wrinkles our brain; makes us think more efficiently.

That's a horrible argument. What builds off of the ability to write in cursive? Reading cursive. What builds off of simple math? Everything else in math. Cursive script is exactly as useful as it's prevalence in society, which is quickly approaching 0.

Cursive is an incredibly useless skill, at best you might get hired over someone else with the exact same skill set minus the ability to write in cursive, but no one will ever hire you for knowing how to write well in cursive. The things math is teaching is analogous to grammar, not cursive, learning Roman Numerals would be an apt comparison, which has been almost completely phased out.

I was forced to write in cursive until 6th grade, the first day of 7th grade I found out we were no longer required to write in cursive and I immediately stopped. I can only imagine how much good knowledge could have been gained if we had not had to learn cursive and instead had focused more on grammar. I stopped reading the papers of fellow students during in class workshops in seventh grade, it was painful, there is literally no way to tell a person how poorly they write. You could immediately tell when a parent had checked over a paper before bringing it to class. Hell, that's almost exclusively how I learned to write, English class was a joke. Actually, scratch that, school was a joke. I did almost ZERO homework at home and quite literally no studying all the way through high school and graduated with a 3.9 something (4.0 with weighted AP classes, w00t?).

I want to emphasize this for those who have been out of school for some time, I opened a book at home to study twice throughout all of high school, once for a Spanish test, which amounted to me writing different verb tenses for 20 minutes and growing bored, and once for one of my AP World History tests, which actually meant I had the book open for 15 minutes while I watched TV (I got a 96% on that test, I remember this quite clearly because I almost couldn't believe it, other people in the class were studying for hours and barely got C's, I watched Seinfeld and got an A...). My AP World History class was also the only good class I really had through high school, it was the only one requiring any sort of critical thinking, which almost everyone in the class failed at miserably. THIS is what we need to be focusing on. School as a whole is failing, and it's not because we are or are not teaching cursive, our schools suck. We need to teach the things cursive teaches our brains to do without teaching cursive, it is, within itself, an incredibly worthless skill.

I have more to rant about, but I'll just get even more pissed so I won't... I'm 20 BTW.

Studies show that learning cursive aids in the development of the brain; so in a sense learning cursive may assist you in learning math, which by your own admission can be used to build on other skills.

Your rambling post is indicative of somebody who lacks the ability to critically think about the impact and development of fundamental skill-sets and how those skills may translate into benefits outside of their original scope.

In regards to the remainder of your post - who knows that the hell you are rambling on and on about.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: brandonbull
Sounds like a bunch of Twitter babies. Boo hoo. I can't take time out of my busy to use cursive because I must get back to sitting in front of a computer 20 hours a day to play WoW.

Cool trolling bro. :thumbsup:

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Babbles

Your rambling post is indicative of somebody who lacks the ability to critically think about the impact and development of fundamental skill-sets and how those skills may translate into benefits outside of their original scope.

In regards to the remainder of your post - who knows that the hell you are rambling on and on about.

I was just going to post something similar. . It isn't just about the usage of cursive in later life, it is about the way it teaches people to think so that writing flows. That writing is not broken up into 3 letter text messages.


Technology was supposed to improve our lives, but it has not improved lots of areas where it could. Education and health are both starting to take a down turn due to our over dependence on tech.

I was even told by a girl that she didn't need to know how to spell, that was what MS Office was for.

 

[Zeeky Boogy Doog]

Originally posted by: Babbles

Originally posted by: Zeeky Boogy Doog

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
Cursive is not faster at all when you first learn it. It takes years of practice for you to get better.

Agreed, anything perfected takes time. I think your issue with inability to read average cursive is... your issue.

We can't drop items from the curriculum just because it takes time. Otherwise, given the same argument about typing on keyboards, we might as well dump trig, algebra, and calculus, since the computers do that for us as well. Most people on here hardly use math at all, except for simple add, sub, div, and mult. That doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile to learn it in school. Most of what we learn, we never use directly in life. But it wrinkles our brain; makes us think more efficiently.

That's a horrible argument. What builds off of the ability to write in cursive? Reading cursive. What builds off of simple math? Everything else in math. Cursive script is exactly as useful as it's prevalence in society, which is quickly approaching 0.

Cursive is an incredibly useless skill, at best you might get hired over someone else with the exact same skill set minus the ability to write in cursive, but no one will ever hire you for knowing how to write well in cursive. The things math is teaching is analogous to grammar, not cursive, learning Roman Numerals would be an apt comparison, which has been almost completely phased out.

I was forced to write in cursive until 6th grade, the first day of 7th grade I found out we were no longer required to write in cursive and I immediately stopped. I can only imagine how much good knowledge could have been gained if we had not had to learn cursive and instead had focused more on grammar. I stopped reading the papers of fellow students during in class workshops in seventh grade, it was painful, there is literally no way to tell a person how poorly they write. You could immediately tell when a parent had checked over a paper before bringing it to class. Hell, that's almost exclusively how I learned to write, English class was a joke. Actually, scratch that, school was a joke. I did almost ZERO homework at home and quite literally no studying all the way through high school and graduated with a 3.9 something (4.0 with weighted AP classes, w00t?).

I want to emphasize this for those who have been out of school for some time, I opened a book at home to study twice throughout all of high school, once for a Spanish test, which amounted to me writing different verb tenses for 20 minutes and growing bored, and once for one of my AP World History tests, which actually meant I had the book open for 15 minutes while I watched TV (I got a 96% on that test, I remember this quite clearly because I almost couldn't believe it, other people in the class were studying for hours and barely got C's, I watched Seinfeld and got an A...). My AP World History class was also the only good class I really had through high school, it was the only one requiring any sort of critical thinking, which almost everyone in the class failed at miserably. THIS is what we need to be focusing on. School as a whole is failing, and it's not because we are or are not teaching cursive, our schools suck. We need to teach the things cursive teaches our brains to do without teaching cursive, it is, within itself, an incredibly worthless skill.

I have more to rant about, but I'll just get even more pissed so I won't... I'm 20 BTW.

Studies show that learning cursive aids in the development of the brain; so in a sense learning cursive may assist you in learning math, which by your own admission can be used to build on other skills.

Your rambling post is indicative of somebody who lacks the ability to critically think about the impact and development of fundamental skill-sets and how those skills may translate into benefits outside of their original scope.

In regards to the remainder of your post - who knows that the hell you are rambling on and on about.

Reread the part I put in bold. Admittedly my writing is rusty, but let me provide you cliffs just incase:

-Cursive is a worthless skill
-The inability to communicate has nothing to do with cursive
-The things cursive teaches our brains can be taught other ways
-Our schools suck massive nuts

Edit: Reminder, my incoherent rambling was enough to graduate within the top 5% of my class of about 500, I'm not saying my rambling is good, just that it's better than 95% of my class was able to produce. Our schools suck, and no amount of pounding the same shit into different heads is going to fix it.

Edit 2: Also, just in case you didn't catch it, I stopped using cursive as a literal after the first paragraph, schools are pounding information into our heads (how to write an A in cursive), rather than how to interpret the meaning of the A in a sentence.

 

[Babbles]

Originally posted by: Zeeky Boogy Doog

Originally posted by: Babbles

Originally posted by: Zeeky Boogy Doog

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
Cursive is not faster at all when you first learn it. It takes years of practice for you to get better.

Agreed, anything perfected takes time. I think your issue with inability to read average cursive is... your issue.

We can't drop items from the curriculum just because it takes time. Otherwise, given the same argument about typing on keyboards, we might as well dump trig, algebra, and calculus, since the computers do that for us as well. Most people on here hardly use math at all, except for simple add, sub, div, and mult. That doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile to learn it in school. Most of what we learn, we never use directly in life. But it wrinkles our brain; makes us think more efficiently.

That's a horrible argument. What builds off of the ability to write in cursive? Reading cursive. What builds off of simple math? Everything else in math. Cursive script is exactly as useful as it's prevalence in society, which is quickly approaching 0.

Cursive is an incredibly useless skill, at best you might get hired over someone else with the exact same skill set minus the ability to write in cursive, but no one will ever hire you for knowing how to write well in cursive. The things math is teaching is analogous to grammar, not cursive, learning Roman Numerals would be an apt comparison, which has been almost completely phased out.

I was forced to write in cursive until 6th grade, the first day of 7th grade I found out we were no longer required to write in cursive and I immediately stopped. I can only imagine how much good knowledge could have been gained if we had not had to learn cursive and instead had focused more on grammar. I stopped reading the papers of fellow students during in class workshops in seventh grade, it was painful, there is literally no way to tell a person how poorly they write. You could immediately tell when a parent had checked over a paper before bringing it to class. Hell, that's almost exclusively how I learned to write, English class was a joke. Actually, scratch that, school was a joke. I did almost ZERO homework at home and quite literally no studying all the way through high school and graduated with a 3.9 something (4.0 with weighted AP classes, w00t?).

I want to emphasize this for those who have been out of school for some time, I opened a book at home to study twice throughout all of high school, once for a Spanish test, which amounted to me writing different verb tenses for 20 minutes and growing bored, and once for one of my AP World History tests, which actually meant I had the book open for 15 minutes while I watched TV (I got a 96% on that test, I remember this quite clearly because I almost couldn't believe it, other people in the class were studying for hours and barely got C's, I watched Seinfeld and got an A...). My AP World History class was also the only good class I really had through high school, it was the only one requiring any sort of critical thinking, which almost everyone in the class failed at miserably. THIS is what we need to be focusing on. School as a whole is failing, and it's not because we are or are not teaching cursive, our schools suck. We need to teach the things cursive teaches our brains to do without teaching cursive, it is, within itself, an incredibly worthless skill.

I have more to rant about, but I'll just get even more pissed so I won't... I'm 20 BTW.

Studies show that learning cursive aids in the development of the brain; so in a sense learning cursive may assist you in learning math, which by your own admission can be used to build on other skills.

Your rambling post is indicative of somebody who lacks the ability to critically think about the impact and development of fundamental skill-sets and how those skills may translate into benefits outside of their original scope.

In regards to the remainder of your post - who knows that the hell you are rambling on and on about.

Reread the part I put in bold. Admittedly my writing is rusty, but let me provide you cliffs just incase:

-Cursive is a worthless skill
-The inability to communicate has nothing to do with cursive
-The things cursive teaches our brains can be taught other ways
-Our schools suck massive nuts

Edit: Reminder, my incoherent rambling was enough to graduate within the top 5% of my class of about 500, I'm not saying my rambling is good, just that it's better than 95% of my class was able to produce. Our schools suck, and no amount of pounding the same shit into different heads is going to fix it.

Wow, great so a 20 year old kid bragging about high school . . . congratulations?

You are not displaying an iota of critical thinking or you would otherwise understand what I am saying.

Your premise that cursive is a worthless skill is, ironically itself worthless. You do not have the means to make that statement, and academic and medical researchers say otherwise. Then again you graduated in the top 5% of your high school so maybe you know more than professional scientists, who knows.

Additionally I am sure there may be other techniques to develop the brain in the same way as cursive handwriting practices, practically speaking it makes no logical sense to try new unproven methodologies to replace and established proven method. Especially when time and cost are significant factors.

 

[ja1484]

Cursive is useless.

I learned that shit in 3rd grade like everyone else, and then promptly forgot it in the intervening years because it was never used.

It resurfaced when I was taking my AP exams in high school - I had to copy a statement in cursive and then sign my name. Copying the statement in cursive took me almost as long as the exam. I couldn't remember for the life of me how to string some of the letters together.

I haven't seen cursive since then. It never resurfaced in college, graduate school, or the adult world. Let it die with all the other useless languages no one uses any more.