The Death Of Cursive

[Perrie Juran]

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

 

Good?  Bad?  Ugly?

[Perrie Juran]

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

 

Good?  Bad?  Ugly?

[HoppytheWanderer]

Good.

Cursive takes time to learn that could be spent learning something more useful (like how to touch type), and it's hard to read compared to block letters. Why use it at all then? It's faster to write by hand than block letters.

I for one won't be sad to see it go. I guess the question becomes then... what will signatures look like? Will they just become a certificate thumbprint from the ID chip embedded in your hand in the future?

[Czari Zenovka]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

 

Good?  Bad?  Ugly?

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Bad - as the poster above me demonstrated - the group who were born into the computer era don't want to "waste time" learning skills that were once upon a time an indication of being an educated person.  There were times in history when women and slaves were not permitted to learn to read nor write and, farther back in history, only those who had the luxury of time (the nobility vs the peasant class) could dedicate time to education and related skills.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

 

Good?  Bad?  Ugly?

---

Bad - as the poster above me demonstrated - the group who were born into the computer era don't want to "waste time" learning skills that were once upon a time an indication of being an educated person.  There were times in history when women and slaves were not permitted to learn to read nor write and, farther back in history, only those who had the luxury of time (the nobility vs the peasant class) could dedicate time to education and related skills.

 

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I do believe it was E.B. White who said, "That which is written with little thought is read with little pleasure."

 

Oh, and I do think it's a bad idea.  While I do personally lament my own lack of keyboard skills (I flunked typing in school), there is a joy to be found in putting the pen to the paper.

[Lynda Baran]

It's just one omore example of the dumbing down of students.  

[Czari Zenovka]

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Lynda Baran wrote:

It's just one omore example of the dumbing down of students.  

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Word!

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

 

Good?  Bad?  Ugly?

---

Bad - as the poster above me demonstrated - the group who were born into the computer era don't want to "waste time" learning skills that were once upon a time an indication of being an educated person.  There were times in history when women and slaves were not permitted to learn to read nor write and, farther back in history, only those who had the luxury of time (the nobility vs the peasant class) could dedicate time to education and related skills.

 

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I do believe it was E.B. White who said, "That which is written with little thought is read with little pleasure."

 

Oh, and I do think it's a bad idea.  While I do personally lament my own lack of keyboard skills (I flunked typing in school), there is a joy to be found in putting the pen to the paper.

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Personally, I've no use for cursive.

E.B. White's statement (with which I agree) may well have been typed on his favorite Underwood Standard Rhythm Touch

;-)

Mom and Dad were Palmer method kids and taught me the same. I have a CD autographed by John Hartford, who's got the most beautiful signature I've ever seen. Watching him sign it was a sight to behold.

Yet I rarely write anything by hand, and when I do, it's in block caps, so others (and I) can read it.

I am unconvinced by the research that claims cognitive benefits from handwriting. I don't doubt there are benefits, but that's compared to typing. Are there benefits to writing over drawing, painting, playing the violin? Is an hour freed from handwriting practice and applied to sketching of benefit to a mind? Those questions are not asked. It's always handwriting vs. typing.

I once thought that writing equations by hand helped me think more clearly. Well, I still think it. But I've a collegue who grew up with symbolic math programs like Maple and Mathematica. He runs circles around me, not only in expressing equations, but in grasping the underpinnings. He grew up turning the knobs and dials on the simulators, exploring what changing the elements of an equation would do.

I wonder if all the handwringing is really the perpetual noise of each generation giving way to the next...

I do not lament my lost Palmer skills, there is a joy to composing at the computer. ;-)

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Lynda Baran wrote:

It's just one more example of the dumbing down of students.  

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It's still being taught in my daughters school.

[Madeline Blackbart]

I use cursive mostly when I write. I personally used it a lot in order to take notes in college. It did enable me to take notes at a much faster speed then those using print. While yes computers are everywhere now htere is still a signifigant amount of note taking being done on paper with pen. You can't have your laptop everywhere and lets face it a tablet is not good for note taking. I still think that cursive is a useful tool for note taking (the only thing better is shorthand but that'sfairly dead and gone). For now it still has function but I think as computers get smaller and takeing note quickly by hand becomes less and less nessicary it will then fall by the way side the same way short hand has and be replaced by typing instead. So essetially is it bad? At this point I'd say yes but not for long.

 

EDIT: Also to the person saying this shows a dumbign down of students. This is FAR less indecitive of the dumbing down then the over all poor school programming. They essentially teach all students the same way regardless of how they learn. They allow students to fall through the cracks routinely (I admit I was one of them my math skils are poor I assure you I am not dumb however) and this is irregardless of intelligence. They do this because if you are difficult to teach (I had a mental desease which made motivation difficult for me) then they simply can not be bothered. There's also the lack of ability to reprimand children in anyway which leads to a hostile teachers vs parents atmosphere and allows bully to reign over the other students with an Iron fist (as teachers have no real way to stop that. They can't do any real punishment. When reported to the parents more often then not they simply do NOT care). Add in the fact that they rate how well your learning your materials based on how well you can regurgitate the information in a test and you have a education system that simply DOES NOT WORK. THAT is the cause of the dumbing down of america.

[Bree Giffen]

As much as I like cursive, I only use it for signatures now. It's been years and years since needing to use it in reading or writing. I think it's fallen out of standard usage so much and it should either be removed or less time should be spent teaching it.

[Kenbro Utu]

Cursive died years ago at my hands.  I can hardly read my own cursive.  I just hate to write by hand, even printing.  I came up by the old standards, and I guess a career typing has ruined it for me.  I don't see this as a benefit, and wished I had better handwriting, but just not enough to work at it.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Kenbro Utu wrote:

Cursive died years ago at my hands.

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So, it was you!

You're going to hell, Kenbro.

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." - Mark Twain

[Perrie Juran]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

 

Good?  Bad?  Ugly?

---

Bad - as the poster above me demonstrated - the group who were born into the computer era don't want to "waste time" learning skills that were once upon a time an indication of being an educated person.  There were times in history when women and slaves were not permitted to learn to read nor write and, farther back in history, only those who had the luxury of time (the nobility vs the peasant class) could dedicate time to education and related skills.

 

---

I do believe it was E.B. White who said, "That which is written with little thought is read with little pleasure."

 

Oh, and I do think it's a bad idea.  While I do personally lament my own lack of keyboard skills (I flunked typing in school), there is a joy to be found in putting the pen to the paper.

---

Personally, I've no use for cursive.

E.B. White's statement (with which I agree) may well have been typed on his favorite

Underwood Standard Rhythm Touch

 

---

 

You have reminded me of one of my favorite movies.  I could not find the entire scene in one You Tube so had to post two.

Of possible interest, at least when I was growing up, not everybody had a typewriter in the home.  Which makes me wonder if a greater percentage of homes today (at least in the U.S.) have a "keyboarding device" of some kind than the percentage of homes that had a typewriter when I was a kid?

 

But now to add a twist to this topic,

Does The Brain Like E-Books?

[Kenbro Utu]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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Kenbro Utu wrote:

Cursive died years ago at my hands.

---

So, it was you!

You're going to hell, Kenbro.

"Go to Heaven for the climate, 

Hell

 for the company." - 

Mark Twain

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In my defense, it was a mercy killing.  Nothing should look that hideous and have to live through it.

[AveryGriffin]

I'm still in school (college) so I remember fairly well being in third grade and DREADING going to class during the weeks we spent drilling cursive. I loved school. I loved learning. But I loathed learning how to write in cursive. My print was clean and neat at the time, and I took care in making it legible. I can still go back and read things I wrote before cursive ruined it all.

After I learned cursive, my hand was so used to connecting all the letters together and my print became slurred. It looked drunk and there was little I could do about it. I would start neat, and by the third line it would be back to the same slop. I was devastated.

My teacher instilled in us that :'You will only be able to write in cursive in High School!' and 'Teachers will not accept print!' and 'You'll need this in your professions!'

Meanwhile, when I get to High School and have long forgotten everything about cursive (but retained the drunken scribble), my teachers would hold up papers written in cursive and tell us all with a blank face 'If you must handwrite your work, please do not do so in cursive. I don't want to have to try read this while grading it.' then they would say 'I prefer work to be typed in MLA format. I will ask you to type your papers before I can give a final grade.'

And so it was that I found out my third grade teacher was a big fat liar.

I work in a print shop and we often get handwritten things to type up for people. It takes everyone in the office forever to get these typed. Not because we can't read cursive, but because in a long piece, it's nearly impossible to concentrate on and understand.

It's like trying to read a book written in a script font. There's a reason books are printed in PRINT.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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AveryGriffin wrote:

And so it was that I found out my third grade teacher was a big fat liar.

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I hear ya, Avery!

I was home schooled, and although my parents were neither big, nor fat, they were first degree liars and I proudly carry on the tradition. Twain would be proud of my family.

I dropped cursive about eleven minutes after learning it, because Dad bought a computer with two terminals and I could text him on it. I considered changing my signature to block caps, but I like signing things in a way that does not reveal my name.

As a fan of typography, I'm quite pleased that books are printed in PRINT!

(Yes, I used comic sans... shoot me!)

;-)

[Czari Zenovka]

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Madeline Blackbart wrote:

EDIT: Also to the person saying this shows a dumbign down of students. This is FAR less indecitive of the dumbing down then the over all poor school programming. They essentially teach all students the same way regardless of how they learn. They allow students to fall through the cracks

routinely

(I admit I was one of them my math skils are poor I assure you I am not dumb however) and this is irregardless of intelligence. They do this because if you are difficult to teach (I had a mental desease which made motivation difficult for me) then they simply can not be bothered. There's also the lack of ability to reprimand children in anyway which leads to a hostile teachers vs parents atmosphere and allows bully to reign over the other students with an Iron fist (as teachers have no real way to stop that. They can't do any real punishment. When reported to the parents more often then not they simply do NOT care). Add in the fact that they rate how well your learning your materials based on how well you can regurgitate the information in a test and you have a education system that simply DOES NOT WORK. THAT is the cause of the dumbing down of america.

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I agree that this whole new system the public schools now utilize is, imo, pathetic.  When I was in elementary school (granted that was *ahem*) some years ago, there were two separate classes for each grade level (First-Sixth Grades).  We apparently took some type of test to determine the class in which we were placed.  For lack of better terms, one group were the children who learned quickly and needed to be challenged.  The second group were children who needed to learn at a bit slower pace.  The teachers didn't have to "play to the middle" and risk having advanced students become bored and unmotivated nor leave the ones who learned at a slower pace behind.  Heaven forbid something like this would be in the school system now - I can just hear the outcry from various groups.  Interestingly, the system I just described worked well, as far as I can recall.  There was no stigma or name-calling or anything some might want to say existed between the two levels of each grade...there just wasn't.

During Jr. High-High School I was in a different state and in a MUCH larger population, both in numbers and culturally.  In high school there were levels of the core subjects.  For example, there was English, Honors English, and Advanced Placement English. (The same for math, science and perhaps a few others.)  Honors English was for those students who excelled in this subject based on grades from the past year and/or maybe the standardized testing.  The Advanced Placement group actually spent half of their day at high school and the other half at a Jr. College.  On a 4.0 being a "perfect A" grading system, these were the ones who scored even higher than that using some metrics (ie. the college level classes were weighted higher and one could get higher than a 4.0 with extra credit work, etc.).  Again, no parents assailing the school board with torches and pitchforks.

Suffice it to say I was never in Honors Math or Science. :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

[Maryanne Solo]

I could never do cursive much to the chargrin of the dear old penguins.

I came awfully close to the level they demanded, but detention after detention still didnt make me learn it properly.

I ended up with a sort of detached semi cursive print which is actually way cool according to my students.

I have to handwrite up to ten pages a day sometimes and I have to do it very quickly.

So unfortunately cursive was off the books years ago for me.

[Sommerland Starostin]

Lol this is actually a conversation. Schools are actually not teaching cursive handwriting? Wow like this is really hard to learn. What is is, like learning how to write in heiroglyphics or something lol. Crazy.

[Canoro Philipp]

cursive should be teach as an art form, not like a needed form of communication, is true that it was very common maybe because of its aesthetic shape or because it increased speed, but is hard to learn, and people need to communicate makes them stay with the easier form as long as they are able to communicate their thoughts. the lack of desire to learn how to write it also decreases their interest to learn how to read it, making cursive a beautiful but not very useful write style. schools must teach methods where students reach faster their goals and do it effectivly, and writing in print allows them to do that more effectivly than cursive.

[Madelaine McMasters]

I loved the Forrester snippets, Perrie!

There was always a keyboard in our house. I briefly used Mom's Smith Corona, but quickly moved to the computer when Dad got one for his office (PDP-11). I got (stole) my own Mac in 1984.

I read the e-reader article you linked, and as so often happens, I found a piece of poorly thought out writing. From Gloria Mark at UC-Irvine...

"More and more, studies are showing how adept young people are at multitasking. But the extent to which they can deeply engage with the online material is a question for further research."

I've read research that says teens are no better at multitasking than any other generation, unless you define multasking as "happily doing a bunch of things at the same time, all terribly". And Ms. Mark fairly questions the studies herself by wondering if multitaskers can deeply engage the material. If she believed the studies, she'd not wonder about their level of engagement. This sort of self contradiction annoys the hell out of me.

I don't know if it's possible to measure the value of reading/writing cursive, as learning is an n-dimensional thing and nobody controls all the other variables. I've heard that teaching music helps kids with math. What if you took the hours of music instruction and used it to teach more math? I'm not advocating we do that, we need musicians. Butt these studies are often flawed, drawing conclusions that are not supported by the evidence.

For me, reading a paper book is different than reading a book on my iPad. I can't separate my nostalgia from the paper experience. I love books, so much so that I've never wanted to annotate any of mine, leaving them pristine and devoid of that additional usefulness. Yet I'm quite happy to mark up my e-books with digital pastel highlighter and post-its, allowing me to quickly return to things I found interesting last year.

I could get used to this.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Sommerland Starostin wrote:

Lol this is actually a conversation. Schools are actually not teaching cursive handwriting? Wow like this is really hard to learn. What is is, like learning how to write in heiroglyphics or something lol. Crazy.

---

IKR?  There was a trial this summer held not too far from where I lived (in fact I attended the day of closing arguments...but anyway)....

...one of the state witnesses was asked to read a letter that (iirc) had been written to her and she responded that she could not read cursive. (She was 19 years old.)  This issue became a huge debate on the news talk shows, on several fronts, as well as being brought up AGAIN in closing arguments by both sides, basically both saying the same thing in different ways: "Don't judge her for her lack of education."  I'm pretty sure that was the word used.

So for those of you who can't read cursive, avoid being a witness in a trial.

[Panther Miklos]

::steps up to the front of the class::

Being of the readin - writin - rithmatic generation, I'm torn.  Cursive as it was taught during the stone age is not just antiquated, but totally irrelevant.  I don't remember one student capable of writing EXACTLY like those signs hanging on the chalkboards.  Lord, the hours and hours trying to get that curly on all those letters!  That was a waste of time.  However, to this day I still write letters to pen pals I've had since 3rd grade.  Cursive (legibly) is of high importance in regard to those letters.  I'm a heavy handed writer (started out ambidexterous - more lefty than right and after injury lost the fine motor skill of the left - right hand uses way too much pressure for some reason) and plain print takes me forever.

I'm a huge proponent of the long lost rote memorization and the fine art of what I call muscle memory (I can't think of the actual term right now).  Both of those skills now allow me to belt out all sorts of answers, spellings, auto answer most word problems without taking pen to paper, etc.  The auto answer is simply because we had to copy down the question from the chalkboard and then perform the operations.  After having done so for a few years, my brain automatically started writing those operations out on the blackboard of my mind.  These days, pen and paper are almost absent from classrooms.  Everything being computerized, children have lost out on these things I consider basics.  Just watch the next time you are at a store and their neat little computerized cash register locks up.  They panic!  They can't take pen to paper to figure your bill.  Hell, half of them can't make change in their heads... they have to have the computer tell them that you gave them a $20 and they owe you $14.30 in change.  Or, here's an experiment for everyone.  When their credit card machine goes down, just ask them to bring out the old style slip charger.  hahahahahahaha  Just watch their reaction when they look at it.  Priceless!

Thanks, but I'll keep my 'old school' waste of time skills and blow you modern kiddos away when they start rationing electricity (hey.. it can happen yanno!).  Ah, and the book thing?  I do have a kindle.  Neat little device.  But, um..... I do confess to having a rather LARGE hardcopy library that I gravitate toward more often than not.  I still purchase my paper style books more often than e-books.  What can I say, I'm a habitual 'fanner' of the pages while reading - this does not work well at all with the kindle. :smileyvery-happy:

 

 

[Sephina Frostbite]

I only write in cursive. I can type fast as well, up to 96 wpm. So actually its possible to learn both. Kids are just lazy.

Edit punctuation. Maybe I type too fast lol.