The Death Of Cursive

[AveryGriffin]

---

Pie Serendipity wrote:

I ascribe a considerable element of my academic success to the fact that I could write quickly, clearly and in a manner pleasing to the eye for the three hours non-stop that used to be a comprehensive test of rational thinking ability in the days before the "equalisers" started using multiple-choice tick-the-box examinations to bolster the continuous assessment of parental competence.

ETA: Occasionally I wrote short sentences.

---

Whoa, I'd hate to be your teacher. o-o

Purple prose isn't all it's cracked up to be and teachers can smell BS from miles away.

And the 'multiple-choice tick-the-box examinations' are literally only there so the tests can get graded faster and more accurately (via machine). Idk how long it's been since you've been in school, but there are still in-class essays and short answers on tests.

[Pie Serendipity]

---

AveryGriffin wrote:

---

Whoa, I'd hate to be your teacher. o-o

Purple prose isn't all it's cracked up to be and teachers can smell BS from miles away.

---

What on earth makes you think that my style in these forums relates in any way to that which I used for 45-minute dissertations?

You're right about hating to be my teacher though; the smell of BS was principally emanating from their unthinking sausage-machine "listen and regurgitate - and don't you dare think for yourself" approach to exams, and I let them know I knew, diplomatically of course, by asking them questions they couldn't answer.

---

AveryGriffin wrote:

---

And the 'multiple-choice tick-the-box examinations' are literally only there so the tests can get graded faster and more accurately (via machine).

---

You don't say! Did you know that the most venerable examination board in the UK is called OCR, and that when I worked for them they didn't understand why some people (yes, I was one) laughed at their name when computerised marking was discussed.

 

 

(For those who may not understand:

the OCR organisation was created by a merger of the Oxford & Cambridge and the Royal Society of the Arts examining boards,

and OCR is also a standard IT abbreviation for Optical Character Recognition.)

---

AveryGriffin wrote:

 

 Idk how long it's been since you've been in school, but there are still in-class essays and short answers on tests.

---

Really? Like the ones they have in the International Baccalaureate where the teachers don't follow the guidelines in the hope that they will impress the Senior Management Team by getting good results and end up by screwing over the pupils who get downgraded because the IBO can see through transparent attempts at cheating by teachers better than they can more professional exploits by the students themselves.

 

 

It's at least half an hour since I was in school, by the way.

[Helium Loon]

I have to say I'm appalled at all the support for dropping cursive.  A few points to clarify why it's important:

 

1)  The cerebrum part of the brain is a pattern matching machine.  It's a BIG part of how our higher brain functions work....by recognizing and matching patterns.  Learning (and using) cursive helps train that part of our brains to be BETTER at pattern matching.  While there IS a standard for cursive, every single writer using it varies their writing of it in small (or sometimes large) ways.  By learning cursive, the brain learns not only to recognize the basic patterns, but also develops the flexibility to still match subtle differences.

 

2)  History and tradition.  As another noted, if you can't read cursive, reading many historical documents is closed to you.  Old letters your parents, grandparents, ancestors might have written?  Unreadable if you don't know cursive.  The US Constitution (for americans) is written in cursivve, as is the US Declaration of Independence.  Old records?  Filled with cursive notes and signatures.

 

I'm even more appalled by those who are pleased to see it being dropped because 'it was too hard' or 'I know print, why should I have to learn another writing style?'  Think cursive it hard?  Ask Japanese students about what THEY have to learn, writing-wise.  TWO basic sets (hiragana & katakana), and then over 2000 pictograms (kanji) just for basic literacy.  And they have to use those EVERY DAY.  And it's more complex than that, since each kanji can have anywhere from 2 to 10 different ways it can be read.....

 

Education in the US is rapidly becoming a joke.  The whole 'No Child Left Behind' movement, along with litiginous parents who don't bother doing much (if any) parenting is killing the educational system here.  Parents don't want to accept that BY DEFINITION, half of the kids (including theirs) are BELOW AVERAGE intelligence.  Let's face it.....as the late George Carlin so eloquently and accurately assessed:  "Kids are like any other group of people....a few winners, a whole lot of losers."

 

Every child is not a 'special snowflake.'  Every child is not smart, clever, cute, beautiful, witty, or any number of other superlatives.  Some are.  But most, again by definition, are average.  And, like any other bell-curve population, there are a few geniuses as well as some real idiots.  Accept it.  Teach them that with hard work and application, they can still achieve success.  We need to quit filling their heads with this nonsense so that when they do get out in the real world they aren't completely unprepared to deal with it.  Too many are already out there, with an entitlement attitude that is only made worse by this kind of nonsense.  Success is earned, not deserved......

 

Cursive was, and is, a pain to learn.  So was memorizing multiplication tables, learning fractions, and memorizing spelling.  Should we drop those too?  After all, we've got spell-checkers, calculators, and more now.......

 

Just becuase we have easier ways to do things thanks to technology doesn't mean a prior method loses value.

 

(Edited typos)

[Studio09]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

AveryGriffin wrote:

This actually reminds me a lot of a vid I saw recently! I can't embed it here (sadly) but if you guys have like, 15mins to watch something interesting about education -

check this out!

 

---

Avery, that was an interesting video, but left me feeling a li'l deja vu.

I was home schooled for 15 years (birth to college). My childhood classroom was very much like that fella predicted would arrive in the next 10 years.

...

So, while the future he's describing sounds very nice, I've already been there. I think others will enjoy it.

Here's another view into the future. ...

---

 Madelaine, both your and AveryGriffin's videos were very interesting.  I have also seen some of the teaching practices from Avery's video in a "hippy" style private school, a private school for students with learning differences and in a one room k-12 classroom in the Alaska bush.  In all of these situations the results were very positive due to a great extent to the dissolution of grade-level boundaries, the increased ratio of teachers/aides/student-tutors to students, the encouragement of independent study and projects and unconventional teaching techniques.  The only problem I have with the predictions of that video is the allocation of the money available.  Instead of paying few teachers a lot of money I think it should go to paying for more teachers.  But in either case I think the school facility infrastructure would need to be changed since much of the money is wasted on the current model.   I better stop now 'cause I could go on and on.

Being a tech person I found your video very interesting but I couldn't help getting flashes of Battlestar Galactica throughout the talk. :smileyhappy: 

I don't have such an optimistic view of the future unless mankind's spiritual development (I'm not saying religion, more ethics) is as fast our technological development.  Much of technology came about because of wars, military advancement or greed.  Who spends the money to advance technology?  The government to improve their military and companies to make more money.  Unless that changes I don't see technology filtering down to the really poor people.  So yes technology will advance providing utopia for some but dystopia for others.

 

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Helium Loon wrote:

I have to say I'm appalled at all the support for dropping cursive.  A few points to clarify why it's important:

 

1)  The cerebrum part of the brain is a pattern matching machine.  It's a BIG part of how our higher brain functions work....by recognizing and matching patterns.  Learning (and using) cursive helps train that part of our brains to be BETTER at pattern matching.  While there IS a standard for cursive, every single writer using it varies their writing of it in small (or sometimes large) ways.  By learning cursive, the brain learns not only to recognize the basic patterns, but also develops the flexibility to still match subtle differences.

 

2)  History and tradition.  As another noted, if you can't read cursive, reading many historical documents is closed to you.  Old letters your parents, grandparents, ancestors might have written?  Unreadable if you don't know cursive.  The US Constitution (for americans) is written in cursivve, as is the US Declaration of Independence.  Old records?  Filled with cursive notes and signatures.

 

I'm even more appalled by those who are pleased to see it being dropped because 'it was too hard' or 'I know print, why should I have to learn another writing style?'  Think cursive it hard?  Ask Japanese students about what THEY have to learn, writing-wise.  TWO basic sets (hiragana & katakana), and then over 2000 pictograms (kanji) just for basic literacy.  And they have to use those EVERY DAY.  And it's more complex than that, since each kanji can have anywhere from 2 to 10 different ways it can be read.....

 

Education in the US is rapidly becoming a joke.  The whole 'No Child Left Behind' movement, along with litiginous parents who don't bother doing much (if any) parenting is killing the educational system here.  Parents don't want to accept that BY DEFINITION, half of the kids (including theirs) are BELOW AVERAGE intelligence.  Let's face it.....as the late George Carlin so eloquently and accurately assessed:  "Kids are like any other group of people....a few winners, a whole lot of losers."

 

Every child is not a 'special snowflake.'  Every child is not smart, clever, cute, beautiful, witty, or any number of other superlatives.  Some are.  But most, again by definition, are average.  And, like any other bell-curve population, there are a few geniuses as well as some real idiots.  Accept it.  Teach them that with hard work and application, they can still achieve success.  We need to quit filling their heads with this nonsense so that when they do get out in the real world they aren't completely unprepared to deal with it.  Too many are already out there, with an entitlement attitude that is only made worse by this kind of nonsense.  Success is earned, not deserved......

 

Cursive was, and is, a pain to learn.  So was memorizing multiplication tables, learning fractions, and memorizing spelling.  Should we drop those too?  After all, we've got spell-checkers, calculators, and more now.......

 

Just becuase we have easier ways to do things thanks to technology doesn't mean a prior method loses value.

 

(Edited typos)

---

*Stands up and applauds*

I reaaaally wish there was a kudos button for this post!!

[Perrie Juran]

---

Pie Serendipity wrote:

I must admit, my experience of even supposedly well-educated Americans is that very few use "joined-up" wriing, and even those who print legibly find difficulty in distinguishing the correct use of lower and upper case letters.

---

I know that I sometimes use upper case letters in ways that are not normally considered "correct."  I take a little bit of Poetic License with it.  I do it deliberately.

My use of joined-up words is a little more random.

What I really do wish was that certain punctuation marks such as the Interrobang or Sarcmark were more widely used and accepted.  Their use could go a long way toward reducing misunderstandings on the reader's part.  That however would be a side discussion.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Helium Loon wrote:

 

Cursive was, and is, a pain to learn.  So was memorizing multiplication tables, learning fractions, and memorizing spelling.  Should we drop those too?  After all, we've got spell-checkers, calculators, and more now.......

 

---

When my daughter was in Elementary School, she was struggling a bit with the Multiplication Tables.

When I asked her Teacher for some suggestions on what I could do to help her with them she replied, "Don't worry about it.  Next year your daughter will be allowed to use a calculator."

Some of my response to that statement is not printable on this Forum.

 

 

[Madeline Blackbart]

---

AveryGriffin wrote:

---

Pie Serendipity wrote:

I ascribe a considerable element of my academic success to the fact that I could write quickly, clearly and in a manner pleasing to the eye for the three hours non-stop that used to be a comprehensive test of rational thinking ability in the days before the "equalisers" started using multiple-choice tick-the-box examinations to bolster the continuous assessment of parental competence.

ETA: Occasionally I wrote short sentences.

---

Whoa, I'd hate to be your teacher. o-o

Purple prose isn't all it's cracked up to be and teachers can smell BS from miles away.

And the 'multiple-choice tick-the-box examinations' are literally only there so the tests can get graded faster and more accurately (via machine). Idk how long it's been since you've been in school, but there are still in-class essays and short answers on tests.

---

If only I could have given you Kudos. As you can see of course none of pies responses really added much to the conversation other then to be insulting. Including his response to you. OCR oh how hilarous ;. That said from this pointon I would just ignore him. He's not going to say anything of real value to this conversation other then to be simply insulting to the members of this forum because as you can see he feels he is "above us".

[AveryGriffin]

---

Pie Serendipity wrote:

What on earth makes you think that my style in these forums relates in any way to that which I used for 45-minute dissertations?

---

People who use non-conversational language in a well...message board usually are the same ones who use superfluous words in essasys to make them look longer/make the writer look smarter is all I'm saying. :B

[AveryGriffin]

I'm gonna have to agree with your whole post, besides this point here:

---

Helium Loon wrote:

1)  The cerebrum part of the brain is a pattern matching machine.  It's a BIG part of how our higher brain functions work....by recognizing and matching patterns.  Learning (and using) cursive helps train that part of our brains to be BETTER at pattern matching.  While there IS a standard for cursive, every single writer using it varies their writing of it in small (or sometimes large) ways.  By learning cursive, the brain learns not only to recognize the basic patterns, but also develops the flexibility to still match subtle differences.

---

Don't you think children can be taught this exact same thing by taking art classes (drawing/illustration, not 3D things like clay or metal working, or painting and printmaking since those are different) rather than learning a different way to write? Art can accomplish all this and much more. Only most schools heavily under fund art programs because they 'aren't useful', which is a shame. All the art teachers I've ever had ended up providing most of the supplies out of pocket.

[Helium Loon]

---

AveryGriffin wrote:

I'm gonna have to agree with your whole post, besides this point here:

---

Helium Loon wrote:

1)  The cerebrum part of the brain is a pattern matching machine.  It's a BIG part of how our higher brain functions work....by recognizing and matching patterns.  Learning (and using) cursive helps train that part of our brains to be BETTER at pattern matching.  While there IS a standard for cursive, every single writer using it varies their writing of it in small (or sometimes large) ways.  By learning cursive, the brain learns not only to recognize the basic patterns, but also develops the flexibility to still match subtle differences.

---

Don't you think children can be taught this exact same thing by taking art classes (drawing/illustration, not 3D things like clay or metal working, or painting and printmaking since those are different) rather than learning a different way to write? Art can accomplish all this and much more. Only most schools heavily under fund art programs because they 'aren't useful', which is a shame.

All the art teachers I've ever had

ended up providing most of the supplies out of pocket.

 

 

---

Yes, but at different stages.  Developmental cognition passes through several stages.  Art is typically more a creative, rather than matching process, and while learning the technical aspects of various mediums DOES provide a similar type of training, it isn't usually something that is used nearly as heavily.  Artistic processes aren't rote, and many of the mediums used aren't well suited to very young children.  In addition, the content is not fixed (with limited variation) like with cursive writing.

 

They are both important.  And they both enhance cerebral development, but in different ways.  And while each will benefit the other to some extent, neither trains the other side as well as its own.

 

[Helium Loon]

Oh, and as an aside....

 

Typing on a keyboard doesn't train pattern matching nearly as well.  The complexity of training a motor response to a pattern (either seen or imagined internally) and either drawing it or pressing a single finger in one of 3 ways?  Drawing the characters is much more complex.  Learning cursive helps to train motor responses to be much more precise and fluid.  Many of the young students I see today can't even print well by hand.  They KNOW how the characters look, but they don't have the fine hand motor control that lots of practice writing can give.  Cursive and Print both help.  But learning and practicing only one helps less than both......

[AveryGriffin]

Okay you lost me a bit here. Little kids are the first to grab some crayons and go off scribbling something. If you were to give them a simple line drawing to reproduce set up exactly like those 'trace then write yourself' books with the letters and lines used to teach children how to write their alphabet, wouldn't that effectively be working the same areas of the brain, or am I completely off?

And, on that same route, is there anything else children can be taught (that they might actually retain and use later in life) that will teach them the same things you say learning cursive teaches them?

---

Helium Loon wrote:

Yes, but at different stages.  Developmental cognition passes through several stages.  Art is typically more a creative, rather than matching process, and while learning the technical aspects of various mediums DOES provide a similar type of training, it isn't usually something that is used nearly as heavily.  Artistic processes aren't rote, and many of the mediums used aren't well suited to very young children.  In addition, the content is not fixed (with limited variation) like with cursive writing.

 

They are both important.  And they both enhance cerebral development, but in different ways.  And while each will benefit the other to some extent, neither trains the other side as well as its own.

 

---

[Helium Loon]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

When my daughter was in Elementary School, she was struggling a bit with the Multiplication Tables.

When I asked her Teacher for some suggestions on what I could do to help her with them she replied, "Don't worry about it.  Next year your daughter will be allowed to use a calculator."

Some of my response to that statement is not printable on this Forum.

---

I can honestly say my response would have been:

"No, she won't.  Because she's going to learn her multiplication tables, so she doesn't NEED a calculator every time she has to solve a simple aritimetic problem.  Until she can, I won't let her use a calculator."

 

Though my own daughter probably won't have any problems learning them, as both me and her mother sit down and help her with her homework and such quite frequently.  We make time for it.  That's part of being a good parent.

 

And the teacher's statement doesn't surprise me in the slightest.  Just more evidence that the educational system here isn't interested in actually teaching kids who want to learn.  They just want to get as many kids and process them through like an assembly line and mark them 'sufficient' even if they aren't.......so they can get as much federal and state funding as possible.......

 

It truly saddens me that schools in this day and age have come to this.....

 

[Helium Loon]

---

AveryGriffin wrote:

Okay you lost me a bit here. Little kids are the first to grab some crayons and go off scribbling something. If you were to give them a simple line drawing to reproduce set up exactly like those 'trace then write yourself' books with the letters and lines used to teach children how to write their alphabet, wouldn't that effectively be working the same areas of the brain, or am I completely off?

And, on that same route, is there anything else children can be taught (that they might actually retain and use later in life) that will teach them the same things you say learning cursive teaches them?

---

That could work, if you had them repeatedly reproduce the same sets of artwork over and over.  But art isn't traditionally taught like that.  Repetition is a key part of conditioning responses to become near-reflexive.  And if the content isn't fixed, the patterns become to diffuse to work as well in training.  It works related areas of the brain, but in different manners.

 

Art is traditonally taught as a creative exercise.  While the motor-skill training involved in handling a pencil, a brush, or conte, or chalk, all utilize slightly different to wildly different motions, and those motions can vary considerably from artwork to artwork, the general purpose of art is to train the two hemispheres of the brain to communicate better, and thus enhance creativity even in typically non-creative tasks.

 

Penmanship is traditionally taught by rote practice.  The characters need to be repeated, consistently, accurately, and correctly connected each time.  This is a different mechanism of cognition.  Creativity isn't normally involved.  Almost strictly a logico-motor response pattern that is conditioned.

 

As I said, BOTH are important.

 

(ETA:  As for 'something else' that could train the same way......not much comes to mind.  The three 'R's have stood the test of time for a reason......First is reading, then writing, then arithmetic.  And they're usually taught in that order, since the child first has to learn the patterns, then learns to duplicate the patterns, then begins to ascribe value to the patterns.  Yes, technically "Comprehension" should be between writing and arithmetic.....but while it starts there, it continues on (hopefully) throughout life.......)

 

 

 

[Helium Loon]

Have you ever wondered why most people can't draw or paint worth much?  It's really simple.  They haven't PRACTICED with the tools in that fashion like artists do.  Try drawing a perfect circle freehand.  Or a box.  Or a triangle.  Or even a straight line.  Not real easy.  But artists practice for hours each day doing those.  Ovals, boxes, curves, triangles, shading, highlight, perspective, and more.

After a while, it becomes nigh-reflexive.  They don't have to think about how to do it.....they just do it, since the motor memory is there, and they know when to use them.  They train themselves to see the shapes and forms around them, and can duplicate them using various media.

 

It's similar.  But few schools teach art that way.  It's those who stick with art that do that to GAIN that same level of proficiency that would provide the same kind of training that cursive writing practice does.

 

(As an aside, I just pulled out a pencil and wrote a couple of sentences on paper in cursive.  Had to pause slightly on a couple of letters, and my precision is a little below what it was in college......but I can still do it pretty legibly at normal writing speed.  And reading it is easy as pie.....)

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Helium Loon wrote:

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

When my daughter was in Elementary School, she was struggling a bit with the Multiplication Tables.

When I asked her Teacher for some suggestions on what I could do to help her with them she replied, "Don't worry about it.  Next year your daughter will be allowed to use a calculator."

Some of my response to that statement is not printable on this Forum.

---

I can honestly say my response would have been:

"No, she won't.  Because she's going to learn her multiplication tables, so she doesn't NEED a calculator every time she has to solve a simple aritimetic problem.  Until she can, I won't let her use a calculator."

 

Though my own daughter probably won't have any problems learning them, as both me and her mother sit down and help her with her homework and such quite frequently.  We make time for it.  That's part of being a good parent.

 

And the teacher's statement doesn't surprise me in the slightest.  Just more evidence that the educational system here isn't interested in actually teaching kids who want to learn.  They just want to get as many kids and process them through like an assembly line and mark them 'sufficient' even if they aren't.......so they can get as much federal and state funding as possible.......

 

It truly saddens me that schools in this day and age have come to this.....

 

---

We stayed very involved in our children's education.

Different children can have different strengths and weaknesses.

For my son, math was a snap.  By the time he started kindergarten he could look at a column of three digit numbers and add them in his head and rattle off the total.  On the other end my daughter was the more prolific reader and writer.

And yes, by the time my daughter started the next grade, though she was still a little slow, she did have her multiplication tables down.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Helium Loon wrote:

Have you ever wondered why most people can't draw or paint worth much?  It's really simple.  They haven't PRACTICED with the tools in that fashion like artists do.  Try drawing a perfect circle freehand.  Or a box.  Or a triangle.  Or even a straight line.  Not real easy.  But artists practice for hours each day doing those.  Ovals, boxes, curves, triangles, shading, highlight, perspective, and more.

After a while, it becomes nigh-reflexive.  They don't have to think about how to do it.....they just do it, since the motor memory is there, and they know when to use them.  They train themselves to see the shapes and forms around them, and can duplicate them using various media.

 

It's similar.  But few schools teach art that way.  It's those who stick with art that do that to GAIN that same level of proficiency that would provide the same kind of training that cursive writing practice does.

 

(As an aside, I just pulled out a pencil and wrote a couple of sentences on paper in cursive.  Had to pause slightly on a couple of letters, and my precision is a little below what it was in college......but I can still do it pretty legibly at normal writing speed.  And reading it is easy as pie.....)

 

---

I have just started reading a book, "How Music Works," by John Powell.

He discusses the concept of people who have 'perfect pitch' and shows how it is a learned skill.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

20 Kudos !!!!!

I will add that while some may think this a useless skill with no relevance, it is one that everyone should learn.  Saying it is too hard is a cop out.  If your kids aren't learning cursive a grave disservice is being done to them.  Cursive is still used in many of the highest social and diplomatic circles and that is not likely to change in the foreseeable future.  It would be a shame if they were passed over for an important promotion or appointment because they didn't master a skill most people learned as small children.  You never know what a child may end up doing in life or what opportunities may present themself.  I believe it is a parents responsibility to prepare children for where ever life takes them if it is at all possible.

 

[Storm Clarence]

---

AveryGriffin wrote:

---

Pie Serendipity wrote:

What on earth makes you think that my style in these forums relates in any way to that which I used for 45-minute dissertations?

---

Avery wrote:

People who use non-conversational language in a well...message board usually are the same ones who use superfluous words in essasys to make them look longer/make the writer look smarter is all I'm saying. :B

---

I have no problems following Pie's written conversation; as a matter of fact, he is a fantastic written conversationalist.   This is a written format, is it not?  There are times when adults want to move away for their reality--perhaps there are ten children in his house--to on-line conversations written with intelligence, wit, sarcasm, and the like.  Because *you* consider the conversation casual doesn't mean other participants may not display their thoughts and opinions in a most eloquent way. 

Even casually I would terminate the conversation the moment I read "pls cn u tlk 2 me"  or l33t.  The conversation is casual right, so we all must write like our teenage kids? 

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

I have just started reading a book, "How Music Works," by John Powell.

He discusses the concept of people who have 'perfect pitch' and shows how it is a learned skill.

---

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=speaking-tonal-languages

[Dillon Levenque]

I hadn't thought about how the pattern recognition skills cursive requres could be a positive for brain development. Your arguments supporting the idea that teaching penmanship should still include cursive script, not just 'block' letters upper case and lower, have almost convinced me I was wrong in my initial response.

I really hate when that happens.

I said I'd check the history of cursive. I did, in a very unscholarly way. Wikipedia says this: "The origin of the cursive method is associated with practical advantages of writing speed and infrequent pen lifting to accommodate the limitations of the.quill."

The quill? Sorry, couldn't resist. There's no argument that writing with cursive is considerably faster than writing with individual letters. I suspect it's slower than typing even at the meager speeds I command.

I can't get past your pattern recognition argument. There's no question in my mind that reading cursive on a regular basis will tax the brain's pattern rec hardware and that's a good thing. Maybe there's another teachable way such as the example Avery gave. I don't know.

I am now undecided, so if I was on your School Board I'd vote to not remove cursive. Until we know more.

A couple of examples of diaries/journals. The first is an emigrant diary, not in my area of interest (1840-1850), just something I found on Google images. To me it is very nearly illegible. Try your luck with the image here. Hint: the second word (I thought: "hound? horns?") is point. The website gives a full translation, if anyone's interested: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/museum/teachers/material/trail/oregon/judson8.htm .

In rebuttal, this image I found on the same google page is as readable to me as newsprint. It's from the 1920's and has nothing to do with emigrant crossings but it met one of the words in my search criteria. If you need it, there's a translation on the web page that displayed it. http://escrapbooking.com/diary/

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Dillon Levenque wrote:

I hadn't thought about how the pattern recognition skills cursive requres could be a positive for brain development. Your arguments supporting the idea that teaching penmanship should still include cursive script, not just 'block' letters upper case and lower, have almost convinced me I was wrong in my initial response.

I really hate when that happens.

I said I'd check the history of cursive. I did, in a very unscholarly way. Wikipedia says this: "The origin of the cursive method is associated with practical advantages of writing speed and infrequent pen lifting to accommodate the limitations of the.quill."

The quill?

 Sorry, couldn't resist. There's no argument that writing with cursive is considerably faster than writing with individual letters. I suspect it's slower than typing even at the meager speeds I command.

I can't get past your pattern recognition argument. There's no question in my mind that reading cursive on a regular basis will tax the brain's pattern rec hardware and that's a good thing. Maybe there's another teachable way such as the example Avery gave. I don't know.

I am now undecided, so if I was on your School Board I'd vote to not remove cursive. Until we know more.

A couple of examples of diaries/journals. The first is an emigrant diary, not in my area of interest (1840-1850), just something I found on Google images. To me it is very nearly illegible. Try your luck with the image 

here

. Hint: the second word (I thought: "hound? horns?") is point. The website gives a full translation, if anyone's interested:

http://www.nebraskahistory.org/museum/teachers/material/trail/oregon/judson8.htm

 .

In rebuttal,

this image

 I found on the same google page is as readable to me as newsprint. It's from the 1920's and has nothing to do with emigrant crossings but it met one of the words in my search criteria. If you need it, there's a translation on the web page that displayed it.

http://escrapbooking.com/diary/

---

If you buy the argument that cursive handwriting, which was designed for a different purpose hundreds of years ago, helps us learn pattern recognition, imagine how much better off we'd be if we learned things expressely designed to hone our pattern recognition skills, knowing what we do about cognition and learning today.

I'd probably be kicked out of the board room before I could vote, which is more satisfying to me than abstaining.

;-)

[Solaria Goldshark]

[AveryGriffin]

Allow me to reply by scaring all of you off with my terrible bas tardchild (why is this word bleeped omg) of print and cursive!