Slashdot Mirror
Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing
mikejuk writes It seems incredible that in the 21st century schools are still teaching children to scratch marks on paper. Well in Finland they are taking a step in the direction of the future by giving up teaching handwriting. The Savon Sanomat newspaper reports that from autumn 2016 cursive handwriting will no longer be a compulsory part of the school curriculum. Instead the schools will teach keyboard skills and 'texting'. The idea of teaching proper keyboard skills to children is unquestionably a great idea, the idea of texting is a little more dubious and many will mourn the loss of a traditional skill like cursive writing. So what about a world where cursive writing is forgotten? What do you do when your computer is dead and you need to leave a note? The death of cursive script probably isn't the death of handwriting but the death of doing it quickly and with style. Some no doubt will want to master it just for the sake of it — like driving a stick shift. I know some U.S. schools have done the same; how proficient should kids be with cursive?
No more STEM or business ideas scribbled on the backs of napkins and other foolscap.
when i was in grade school, they taught cursive still but they were starting to also teach typing. we had apple ][ (on a computer bus... it traveled to each school in the district, was trippy) and we would spend 1 day a week for about an hour in there learning how to type. by the time i hit middle school we didnt even have to learn or use cursive anylonger. by high school I was bringing a laptop to school and doing all my work on the laptop instead of a notebook.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What a great idea! (insert sarcasm here)
All we need now is a country-wide electrical failure and the entire country, having grown up without learning to write and now unable to communicate using cell phones, effectively can be taken over in less time than it takes to make a meatball sandwich. Stroke of fucking genius. This brainwave must have come from a "teaching professional" or an "MBA". Written communication is the only thing that will keep working throughout history and they want to stop teaching it.
Brilliant.
Kids should be zero proficient with cursive writing. I stopped writing in cursive as soon as the schools stopped requiring me to do so, and haven't missed it. Even at that time, when laptops didn't exist and I didn't have access to a WYSIWYG document editor (Apple IIe at school, Commodore 64 at home) I preferred writing on a computer to writing in cursive.
They only people left on the planet that can read cursive are the third grade teachers who are tasked with teaching it.
I don't know about you, but I can jot-down quick notes on scraps of paper a hell of a lot faster than I can get out an electronic device, open a note-taking program, and attempt to use an on-screen keyboard to type the same notes with any degree of accuracy.
I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with several coworkers and an outside vendor, and it was a quite technical meeting. I had to be able to follow all of the jumps between topics and to keep my notes straight and organized. I later reorganized my notes when I typed them for e-mail, but what I took was stream-of-consciousness at best, and would not have been immediately sendable to others. Since I had to reorganize the notes anyway, using paper was a lot more practical than attempting to do it electronically.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They just don't teach cursive, not manual writing in general.
Sign on the dotted line ... ernnn, uh, well, you see, it's like this ...
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I remember learning cursive all throughout middle school. It never served any functional purpose afterward. Almost nobody used it and the few people who still insisted on it were the ones whose handwriting nobody wanted to have to read because it was so difficult to make out. In college, many professors will not accept a paper written in cursive for that same reason. I still think handwriting is important, but to hell with cursive. Why waste time teaching it when the vast majority will never use it?
I would hope that they're dropping the archaic cursive style of writing because it's just that: archaic. OTOH, ceasing to teach kids how to write in a legible block "font" would be mind-blowingly stupid. No matter what people need to be able to write, but they don't have to write "fancy".
(Not to mention I can't actually manage to *read* most people's cursive writing, no matter what era they were taught it in.)
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Even when we learned cursive, it was more about writing "pretty" with nice, flowing curves than writing efficiently. If they wanted that, they'd teach us stenography. Kind of the grade school version of learning Latin, high degree of sophistication but of little practical value anymore. Typing with ease on the other hand is valuable both to concentrate on the actual task instead of the typing and because good typing skills + auto complete lets you use long, sane names and verbose comments with very little extra effort. Second to the developers who code like they paid by the line I hate the ones who code like they get docked in pay per letter used almost equally much.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Good riddance. These children can be thought so much useful stuff in this time.
To waste the time of every single kid trying to teach it the completely useless skill of cursive writing borders insanity.
Block letters are far superior anyway.
And, a pen and notebook cost me $2.00 - unless you splurge on those Moleskin things. The pen lasts for weeks, doesn't need recharging, if I lose it - I don't lose hundreds of dollars, no one will steal it, and I retain more information than if I used a computer.
And there's a personal tactile thing about wrting with a pen and paper - yes, I prefer printed books over electronic ones, too.
Writing makes my hand hurt ever since one of my elementary school teachers (fuck you sideways, Mr. K, you lazy piece of shit) made me write "I WILL NOT DISRUPT THE CLASS" hundreds of times on multiple separate occasions after doing such disruptive things as looking at the other children after I finished long, long before them. Apparently, giving me more work to do was outside the scope of his job description. So I occasionally jot a note, and I sign things when necessary, but I far prefer to type. Even text input on a modern smartphone is less painful.
This doesn't seem to harm me in modern society in any way. Let cursive go. It's unnecessary to have two script systems. Also, cursive writing is stupid anyway. When normal roman characters are malformed you can still usually tell what they are. Words outright change meaning when people squash their cursive script too much. It's a bad invention.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is research that shows your neural pathways strengthen by handwriting notes. So it's pretty dumb to stop teaching this.
Basically your brain remembers stuff better because of the link between the parts that control your hand motions are linked with the part that remembers stuff.
Just my 2 cents
Next we'll hear that Holland is dumping walking in favor of typing....
How stupid of those otherwise sensible Finns. It's not like the two are mutually incompatible. Schools could easily do both. Heck, my school system did both.
I was born in the early 90's. Cursive handwriting was a compulsory part of the curriculum, that I clearly remember. I know none in my age (to my knowledge) that can write in cursive, and most I know have a hard time reading it too. Makes me wonder what use it is to teach something that doesn't seem all that relevant anyway? Not being able to write in cursive is not the same as not being able to write on paper; Most of those I know takes notes on paper in class etc..
/pol/acks have been pushing for a 'cracker rune' font option for some time.
On a more serious note, has anyone ever created anything non-trivial with just a keyboard?
In Finland texting means writing with - this type of letters, not writing text messages...
They are only going to drop cursive writing, not writing education altogether, as TFA makes it sound like. They will teach touch typing (you know, writing without looking and with all your fingers).
This article could be a complete misconception, based on a translation error. The article says that Finnish children will only be taught "texting". In English, texting usually means writing SMS messages and such. The article refers to a Finnish article, where they talk about "tekstaus". In Finnish, "tekstaus" means writing block letters (or print writing) separate letters by hand. That's different from cursive, where the letters are joined.
According to Wikipedia, in English-speaking countries, children also learn block writing first and MAY learn cursive. It doesn't mention how common it is.
If so, this article is nonsense.
The currently taught Finnish cursive is not very different from "tekstaus" anyhow. I personally nowadays mainly use the older cursive, for the exact reason that it has become rare.
It seems incredible that in the 21st century schools are still teaching children to scratch marks on paper.
It seems incredible? Hello, what sort of bizarro world does this come from? I know that handwriting is becoming less important, but WTF is this? Treating it as some sort of Amazon rainforest tribe barbarity?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ask anyone who drives a stick shift why they do and I doubt you will get even one answer saying it is just for nostalgic reasons.
Stick gives the driver much more control over the vehicle than automatic. In a stick shift, the driver decides when he needs torque vs. speed. The driver decides when to use downshift to slow the vehicle down vs. just hitting the brakes.
And most importantly, give two groups of drivers, one group in automatic vehicles and one in stick shifts a run-away accelerator and see which group can get the vehicle stopped without even thinking about how do do it (hint: it won't be the group that burns through the brake pads by panicking and frantically stomping on the brakes).
Cursive has several uses.. this is foolish. Aside many historical documents are written in cursive, how else they are to be read?
I moved to United Kingdom when I was 13. I was never taught cursive in school. I am doing fine. However I don't think it is a good idea to teach texting, because different kind of input method may come along and make texting obsolete, e.g. Swype.
Small metal cylinder with rechargeable battery and a head of little pins that prints one letter at a time as you move it across the paper.
Voice input, of course.
I always thought cursive was a terrible form of handwriting given its over-forgiving nature in allowing everyone to write illegible script.
There is a definite cognitive connection between writing by hand and brain function. For example, I am a better writer when I write by hand. Furthermore, I enjoy the task better because I can to make the cursive squiggles. I use a fountain pen which makes it even more enjoyable. But then I am a luddite. I write letters by hand and put them in the mail. I do it partially because I write prisoners but I also have regular correspondents. It's much better than e-mail.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
I have driven several cars with manual transmissions this year. I have not used cursive once unless you count my signature which my cursive writing instructor (from 3rd grade many decades ago) would have flunked for illegibility. As long as people can write in some legible manner with a pen or pencil there is no good argument to beat them up with cursive; just let them go from handwriting to typing.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
But personally, I'd think they should still hand write things up until a certain grade, like all through Grade school but once you hit High School or higher, use a computer, because hand writing is important, even if we rarely use it, at least being able to write with a pen should be a skill anyone should have, until we all get personal holographic paper on which we can type with our fingers.
The article is appears to be a mix of bad translation provided by google translate and a cultural misunderstanding.
Preface: I'm a Finn. I read OP, was very confused that I never heard about this happening, went to the original article and understood why I never heard about it.
Original article is here: http://www.savonsanomat.fi/uut...
What the article actually says is that teachers will now be allowed to not teach writing in cursive if they choose to do so. They will still be required to teach writing skills, they'll just drop the requirement to teach cursive. Specifically this is a part of update of legal requirements for schools which is a part of larger legislative package that's coming in 2015. Nothing has been decided yet apparently, this is just one of the main suggestions. The change suggested would require complete overhaul of school books, which is not a cheap or easy feat in a country with only 5 million people, meaning far less buyers of said books that pushes up the prices significantly. It would also require massive investments in hardware for poorer students who may not have access to necessary hardware. We are very big on "no child left behind" principle here. That means that some of the poorer regions would have to update their schools. Regions have wide reaching autonomy around here, and can have as few as a few thousand people, so schools for little children tend to be equally small and operate on tight budgets.
Considering that "most teachers are very confused by this requirement" and that teachers in this country are required to have master's degree in education by law and as a result get significant leeway in designing and implementing course work, something that is often considered to be of key importance to Finland's high PISA standings, I don't think we're looking at this change happening on large scale outside a few schools in larger cities any time soon. The article also notes that there are a lot of practical issues with the idea and the article is prefaced with a photograph text under which says that 4th grade student doesn't like this change because "writing in block letters is much slower than in cursive"
Overall this looks like your standard US citizen reading a story about a different country that has a completely different culture and ways of doing things, projecting their own culture upon it, and running away with insanity that results from this heap of misunderstandings. The actual change here is that the schools will likely have teaching of typing skills added to curriculum at much earlier date than before. Not dropping of cursive.
andnothingofvaluewaslost
Other countries have children learning three languages, but ours are allowed to learn only one poorly. Handwriting can be conducted in any part of the world, which cannot be said for "texting." Not to mention the loss of knowledge. I cannot read old Latin texts, so there is certainly some pearl of wisdom that I am denied. It will be worse for our children if they cannot read, and that will go away with not learning to write, cursive. "Don't worry Billy. I'll tell you what that old Declaration of Independence says. Here is an edited Ebook version."
Just emojis thanks
I haven't hand-written anything is a VERY long time. The only thing I ever write now is my signature which has degraded to a series of squiggles and about halfway through I dot an 'i' randomly in the squiggle. Its become something of a joke for myself now.
Only a complete idiot would want the children to learn cursive. It's useless. I'm glad they stopped teaching art as well.
"Texting" ("tekstaus" in Finnish) means writing in a different font, that is markedly different from classic cursive writing. It has nothing to do with computers or mobile phones as such. You can see the font here.
- Ismo
I don't know why....but it's universal.....I need a Rosseta stone to decode MD writting
So what about a world where cursive writing is forgotten? What do you do when your computer is dead and you need to leave a note?
What do you do? The same thing that I do now, you print it. No reason to put anyone, including myself, through trying to decipher my cursive writing. Idiotic question!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This is utterly ridiculous. Writing is a fundamental area of communication. I'm all for embracing and adapting to the future, but this just doesn't sit right.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The reason to learn and use cursive is because it's much more efficient in terms of writing large amounts. It's not the fault of cursive if people like you can't be bothered to use it correctly any more than it's the fault of the OS that people click on things they shouldn't be clicking on.
I've tried taking notice with regular printing and it just doesn't work out well. I can write far more with cursive before my hand starts to ache.
Before you bring up laptops for taking notes, I'd like to point out that I hate those assholes for making all that noise while I'm trying to concentrate on the class. Not to mention the fact that it's easy to have material wind up on the page that wasn't in the lecture because you're not really thinking about what you're typing.
Historical records in many countries are written in cursive, and not just English wring ones. Only a complete idiot would want to sever children from their past.
I spent years in grammar school trying to write cursive well, because everyone told me that when I got to middle school, cursive would be required! When I actually got there, cursive was forbidden because nobody can read anyone else's cursive handwriting. And besides, we were already typing everything. Every handwritten form I've ever seen says "Please print" on the top. Why did I spend all of that time learning cursive if everyone always tells me to print?
Of course no one actually uses cursive, but learning cursive writing as a child is an important exercise for stimulating cognitive development. It teaches fine motor control, which increases spatial awareness and abstract thinking skills; it teaches observation skills and attention to detail, it stimulates cross-functional thinking, forming connections between different functional areas of the brain; and it stimulates cross-hemisphere thinking, forming connections between the left brain and the right brain. You're right, no-one uses cursive writing except to sign their name. But we do use those cognitive faculties we developed when doing this "stupid" exercise.
I'll leave it to people to search for themselves, but there's been some interesting studies that show the process of writing by hand involves different aspects of the brain than typing on a computer (there's also differences between a typewriter and PC type keyboard).
There are still writers/authors who write by hand before having their work transcribed, feeling that their creative process is better (or different) when writing manually.
Anyway, it sounds like they're still teaching printing, not cursive yes? So that makes some more sense.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
How do you write without hand writing on a flip chart?
On a white board? How to sketch in the sand?
It seems incredible that in the 21st century schools are still teaching children to scratch marks on paper.
Incredible? Wow, without handwriting skills quite a lot of jobs are out of the question as is lots of fun stuff.
Want to sail a boat? Want to have a SRC/LRC (short/long range radio certification)? How do you think you put a received radio call into your log? How do you think to translate it, if you are in european waters and the call was in english?
I guess with a bit of thinking I find you 100 jobs you just can forget to apply for if you can not write with your hand, without a computer/pad.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I learned cursive writing in 3rd grade and stopped using it as soon as I could. I found it was quicker and more legible to use a kind of print/cursive hybrid. I have been doing that since middle school.
I think people need to know how to write and read cursive but it doesn't really seem like an essential life skill at this point.
I mean we no longer teach people how to shape a quill either.
I seem to be seeing a trend of technology making people dumber, lazier, and more unskilled than ever before, and it really disturbs me.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
1. All goes well until they get older.
2. They reach High School / University.
3. They fail all exams because they can't write.
4. They get picked on and called retards.
5. Finland gets criticism by UN for not giving children basic education.
6. As young adults they have been mentally torn apart in childhood/adolescence.
7. Whole generation dies(suicide, joblessness, homelessness, criminal violence) except for the ones who learned handwriting themselves/in the family.
8. Russia invades Finland and public opinion is the citizens will get better life under Russian legislation.
9. World gets angry and tries to protect "Finland".
10. Russia fights back, nuclear war.
11. Everyone dies.
We must stop Finland before it is too late!
A lot of historical documents are written in Olde English or Saxxon.. how far back do we go before we cut the cord on what is 'general' knowledge? Only a complete idiot would expect every child to be able to read Fraktur script in several languages for records that have minimal impact on their day to day lives.
If you can't write in cursive, you're pretty much a dumb ass. How are you going to sign your name, like Jacob J. Lew (just a series of loops)? Maybe you prefer an 'X' (historically the mark of an uneducated person)?
Your opinion may differ from mine, but since you're so dumb that you don't even know how to write your own freaking name, how can I take you seriously? Did you skip adding and subtracting, too? Can you be trusted with even the simplest of tasks?
Or are you trying to say that you're so busy and important that you just can't take the time to learn how to write? What a load of crap!
We already have that. So do they.
We older folks sit together and talk to each other. We smile, frown, roll our eyes, laugh, and more, all while undertaking integrated forays into spoken language and listening comprehension.
They sit there mute, heads folded halfway over, tapping madly on their smart-phones while occasionally sniggering to themselves. I've seen whole tables of them doing this, many times. It's like the others at the table don't even exist, except inasmuch as they might be connected via those same smart-phones.
And when you try to engage them in conversation, just watch how long it takes before they're head-back-in-smartphone.
It's a fascinating social development. But I'm not at all certain it is a positive one.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you cannot write with pen and paper you will not get a good job. Writing causes you to think better.
With common core drivel destroying education in this country I guess other countries want to dumb down their population as well. There are many sites online for teaching because the schools are doing a terrible job teaching the basics like writing let alone reading and math and history.
Cursive handwriting is disappearing from public schools
http://tinyurl.com/c9pwdsw
Snips from the article: Since 2010, 45 states — including Maryland — and the District have adopted the Common Core standards, which do not require cursive instruction
Snip: recently conducted a study that found that children with neater handwriting developed better reading and math skills than their chicken-scratch peers.
The scary thing is I can't tell whether you're being ironical or not.
Also, if actually done beautifully, cursive is not speedy at all. If you slop it out, sure. But then again, if speed is the goal, you can print shorthand and exceed the rate of typical speech -- and cogent thought.
The efficiency argument is fairly weak overall.
My affection for cursive is more related to the calligraphic aspect of it; I am under the fairly strong impression that for those who are artistically inclined, it's one of the first taught interactions where we can detect that.
I'm quite partial to copperplate. Wish my handwriting looked like that. But my aptitudes land more in the musical domain.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And riding a rocket-powered sled is faster than driving. But driving is sufficient to our needs.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Saying "not teaching cursive" is equal to "not teaching handwriting", is like saying "not teaching spoken poetry" is equal to "not teaching your child to speak".
Cursive is _a form of_ handwriting. You know, as in not all handwriting is cursive, but all cursive is handwriting (funky fonts notwithstanding).
Does anyone even edit this place anymore? Wait, don't answer that.
Nokia says: People at Microsoft don't outlaw pens.
Finland says: Pens are a very dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.
I say: People will get problems when throwing a cultural heritage over board. Especially that many neurological studies show a direct link between motion training, creativity and intelligence.
It's not the writing. It's the reformulation. Which you can do better with a normal text editor or word processor. Further, I suspect that retention is enhanced by the action of not only writing, but editing and reformulating what one is writing.
Don't think your argument takes into account what the alternatives do.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
>The death of cursive script probably isn't the death of handwriting but the death of doing it quickly and with style.
So I'm thinking over all the cursive I've seen in my life and, with the exception of a couple people with a calligraphy hobby, the only "styles" that spring to mind range from "bad" to "completely illegible". And where speed is concerned shorthand wins hands down, cursive typically only grants a 10% or so boost over printing, whereas with practice shorthand can double or more your writing speed.
Personally I suspect cursive was invented primarily as a "secret language" to separate the educated elite from the functionally literate. The only real advantage it has over block writing is "prettiness" when done well, and the fact that it's far more difficult to write legibly than to print.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I can't help being reminded of the scene in Wall-E which scrolls past the portraits of the ship's Captains. Their signatures becoming more and more illegible as the machine takes control.
Our family preserves letters, notes, cards and such that document over two hundred years of family history, They remain readable and expressive, exposing age and emotion in ways that print cannot --- in many ways tmore intimately than any photograph.
This Thanksgiving what I saw as a quest at a family dinner was a near total self-absorption in the gadget. The smartphone. the tablet, The need to text as over-powering as the need to drink, no matter how inappropriate the setting or that there was nothing left to say.
It's simple enough to learn to read cursive if you ever need it.
Cursive hand writing... not * Handwriting.
Cursive is something they teached me (in Finland) back in the 80's, which I've never used in my life.
Historical records in many countries are written in cursive, and not just English wring ones. Only a complete idiot would want to sever children from their past.
There's a difference between being able to read cursive (i.e. "joined up" in Commonwealth English) handwriting and actually being able to write it yourself. Besides which, even *my* joined-up handwriting isn't the same style as some of the more elaborate "copperplate" styles favoured in the past.
And while we're talking about it, the headline "Finland dumps handwriting"- which the original story used and Slashdot copied- is misleading anyway. From the article itself, it's joined-up writing that's being dumped, not writing altogether. The latter would be far more serious- IMHO kids should learn to write, but joined-up? Well, it makes me slightly uncomfortable to think of ditching it, but then *I* remember how little I actually write these days. (*) As long as they can at least write half-competently, that's the main thing.
FWIW, I certainly think that kids should be being taught basic typing skills, and if you're going to explicitly teach it anyway, it makes sense to go with touch typing. I'd been using computers for around 15 years before I learned to touch type in the late 90s, and that only happened because I explicitly learned to do so. I'd got pretty good at "hunt and peck" (**), but I would never have picked up touch typing skills from that alone.
I used Mavis Beacon, and to be honest, it didn't take *that* long to become good enough that I switched completely to touch-typing. I'm pretty sure that most kids could pick it up as fast, so it shouldn't waste too much schooltime anyway, even if typing (say) became obsolete in fifteen years time.
"Texting" skills, OTOH... stupid waste of time. Smacks of a slightly out-of-touch and conservative middle-aged person having belatedly caught up with this new "texting" fad and mistaking it for an important skill. Even if old-style (numeric keypad) texting needed a bit of practice to learn, it's not something that kids needed to be- or should have been- taught. More importantly, that typing style is being quickly rendered obsolete by the move to smartphones that use virtual QWERTY keyboards instead.
(*) And how rubbish it is often when I do- mainly because the speed of typing has made me impatient with writing speed- even though rushing it doesn't speed things up that much. If I actually make an effort to write, I'm still as neat as I ever was.
(**) My classmates were quite impressed with my typing speed, but this was back in the late 80s/early 90s when computers hadn't permeated everyday life as much, and most domestic use by non-geeks was for games or very basic use that didn't need much typing skill. (I was a geek, of course!)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Something has got lost in translation here.
Schools are NOT giving up on teaching WRITING, they're dumpin teaching calligraphy writing and teaching serif type writing instead. Since NO ONE writes in calligraphy.
Yours,
- Finnish anonymous
It's been two weeks and i still haven't received my GayWAD membership! What gives?
Historical records in many countries are written in cursive, and not just English wring ones. Only a complete idiot would want to sever children from their past.
It's not when they grow up that they won't be carrying around devices in their pockets that have camera's that can see the cursive documents and translate them. Plus, how many historical documents wouldn't have typed out versions sitting right next to them?
A lot of historical documents are written in Olde English or Saxxon
Wasn't that a popular diagonally-scrolling shooter in the Early Middle Ages?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
At my kids' K through 8 school, they had 1 hour a week of Spanish class just so the school could say they taught a second language. I'd just as soon they didn't have it. Not because I don't think a second language is valuable, but because I don't think one hour a week accomplishes much. Middle school kids had no recess. I think they'd be better off using that hour and lengthening the school day a bit to get some recess in there.
Further, the kids spend much less time on music, art, and gym than when I was a kid. Personally, given all the time that was devoted to practicing cursive, I'd say there are more important things that kids can be doing with their study time. It's not that I don't think it has any value, but to me it's less valuable than things that are already lacking.
I hope their parents can find a way.
... how many kids can operate a slide rule?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
.. it was done with ball pens and later maybe with ink pens but done the same as ball pens, and already it was quite not the same as writing in 1920 or 1883 was done. There was debate about this like two decades before I was born and frankly, people before learnt to write like they were the fucking US president or Duke of My Ass by varying letter thickness depending on pressure and direction.
Modern cursive is already a compromise for ease and fastness (and lower cost even)
You got : learning, education, "social power" (imagine contracts, banking crap, invitations, applying for welfare programs, whatever). It's like a 3D printer expect for 2D printing. You stick it to the man for 1/100th of the cost. And pen is mightier than the sword. Main danger though is losing your paper stashes (from burning, homelessness or whatever) though ironically a thin and dirt cheap scanner plus outdated hard drive would back it up nowadays for less than the price of a hostel stay (or is it hotel).
I say fuck you to iphone and android, because this is what you're condemning people to (people is children like ten years later), you require people to have like $100 tech (plus yearly $200 for cell data and SIM card cost) to empower yet depower them. And they aren't computer litterate even (ROM, RAM, file, file manager, they don't know shit about it).
And shit, Finland and neighbors, can't they get rid of their Angstrom and striked O lettters if they wish, before getting rid of cursive write. It will be a thorn in their ass.
This is a stupid idea, seriously.
I was pissed when they stopped teaching how to use the pen and quill.
I see most of the posters here have no idea what teaching cursive is all about.
Not just a communication medium, a method of children learning fine motor control and learning to think and organize thoughts before writing them down.
Very little thought goes on when texting.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, check out letters written by soldiers during civil, first and second world wars, not many finished high school yet their letters
were articulate and moving. Check out the posts on Facebook and here, not much content nor compelling writing.
I am in a metric country, wasn't always so, I was tough imperial and other measurement standards that are now deemed 'out of style', guess what? Today's graduates raised in the system on only metric units have trouble with them and old fashioned me can do metric and imperial and others.
This is another case of doing what's easy and popular rather than has been proven to be beneficial to learning.
Since the invention of the car and electric wheelchairs and scooters, why are we wasting time teaching children to walk? It's so old fashioned and slow in this modern world.
I've seen some people, that might be considered conspiracy theorists, that believe this is the intent. If it is possible to remove children from foundational documents like the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and Federalist Papers then it would be much easier to convince children to be quiet and obey Dear Leader.
I'm not saying it is a very convincing argument but I've seen it made many times now.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Cursive is an unreadable piece of garbage 90% of the time anyway, kill it off.
Writing and shorthand notation is the only things that should be standard education.
Shorthand is very useful for noting down simple concepts incredibly quickly, and it annoys me that it hasn't been standardized in some basic way and taught in schools. (even the foundations to making your own simple short hand notation by teaching them all the various kinds of notation people use in various businesses, from waiting staff to minutes keepers)
As an historian, I would dare you to try to read those. Most people cannot read any handwriting over 70 years old. Neither, incidentally, were people 70 years ago able to read things written 140 years ago. Handwriting is fundamentally fashionable, and it goes out of date awfully quickly.
Summer of 1994 (I can remember because it was just before I started grad school), I used Mavis Beacon to learn to touch type. I'd been using computers since I was 12 but just did the hunt and peck -- I think it took a couple weeks to become reasonably proficient, might even have been less. The thing is, once you learn to touch type, you only get better and better as time goes on. It was probably one of the best and most useful things I ever learned.
As for my cursive penmanship, that has always been beyond bad. And painful -- hand cramps and all that. I can print sort of legibly but hand writing belongs to the past for daily use. Quick notes of six or seven words, artistic calligraphy, scrawling something in the dirt on the back window of a car -- it's those sorts of occasional use cases for which writing by hand is reasonable.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Or difficult enough to require a pretty intense course. In the Netherlands, we have at least a dozen wildly different medieval writing styles, not counting the handwriting of different writers. Given the changes in how to write the letters of the alphabet, grammar drift, and various attempts over the centuries to "modernize" the language and make it "easier to understand", reading old handwriting is nigh impossible without a decent course.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Consider how many legal documents there are in our lives, every one of them signed in cursive, the idea being that it's extremely difficult to imitate another person's signature well enough to fool the handwriting experts employed in any non-trivial lawsuit hinging on a signature. Is a "printed" signature too easy to forge? One would think so.
Perhaps we're headed back to the days of "Put your 'X' here..."
A while back I was taking a college course and we were divided up into groups to discuss a topic. At the end a student from each group was to report a summary of what was discussed. The guy selected from our group asked if he could use my notes for reference when he gave our report. I said sure, and handed them over. He took one look and handed them back. "I don't do cursive." I was flabbergasted. He wasn't even bothered that he couldn't.
Of course I am often flabbergasted by the number of students that don't take notes in lectures. I can't imagen what they get out of a course by just listening to lectures. Maybe printing notes is just too distracting.
And while we're talking about it, the headline "Finland dumps handwriting"- which the original story used and Slashdot copied- is misleading anyway. From the article itself, it's joined-up writing that's being dumped, not writing altogether.
And while it's interesting that this is happening in Finland, it's been implemented for several years in The Netherlands already. And I'm sure, in Finland as well. Since the sky hasn't fallen down, I'm assuming impact on most children has been negligible. And the typing course my son received in exchange sure helps him a lot with his coursework on the computer. All of the children in his class leave school at age 12 with the ability to type blind with 10 fingers.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
The obvious counterexamples to such conspiracy theorist are implementations in countries where the legal system does not base itself on a handwritten document for the constitution, and where this would be nonsensical to begin with. It's just as silly in the USA where I suppose there are machine readable versions available of every relevant document.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
, I'd say there are more important things that kids can be doing with their study time. It's not that I don't think it has any value, but to me it's less valuable than things that are already lacking.
Indeed, this is the most common reason cited by the schools for not teaching cursive anymore (or making it an elective later on). Teaching cursive is taking time away from more important things like reading comprehension or even learning the ability to write something coherent in the first place.
So true - even the very clear and well-styled Sont toll registers are pretty hard to read nowadays. See http://dietrich.soundtoll.nl/s... for a nice example of handwriting from 1557, versus this one from 1712 (http://dietrich.soundtoll.nl/scans/toon.php?fnr=175&sid=10).
I can actually read the last one (it's about a boat from or to Harlingen, so a Dutch boat), but it's in Danish and that's not a language I can read easily even with modern type.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Or difficult enough to require a pretty intense course.
In the Information Age, this is less true than ever. Self-education is even easier than it was in the past. Very few things truly require courses.
It's usually lazy, unmotivated people that feel otherwise.
Texting here means writing text to paper using a font that is similar to one we use e.g. with computers and newspapers. Texting does not mean sending text messages via cell phone.
Heard the phrase 'Premature optimization is the root of all evil'?
Just teach kids how to write legibly, forming each letter individually, and allow them to naturally develop (if it is natural for the particular child) any speed ups or efficiencies in any linking strokes that appear. Or not. Continuing to print is just fine.
What benefit is there, trying to enforce a standard cursive form on a child that could write faster and more legibly printing most letters, using a few neat custom forms where it feels good to their hand to do so? And... trying to teach upper case letters cursive? What horror is this?
Like Sweden did in the 70s, inventing a horrible new handwriting ("SÖ-stilen"); people of that generation can't read the old handwriting, and the new handwriting is really, really ugly. 10 years after forcing that handwriting they let other styles be taught as well, again.
I'm surprised Finland still did cursive handwriting. I'm sure you can add it as extra credit still, and not all schools give it up.
I have a teacher that always tell us that we learn better if we write cursive. At least in my case, he is right.
I'd agree. That and not every job requires typing skills. Restaurant staff, flight attendant, several others don't require you to type . It would be funny of they get to college and have to write the old way.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Interestingly enough, I started with computers and piano at about the same time, which led to the interesting style of typing that's crossing the "middle line" used in touch typing (you do that when you play the piano). It frustrated my touch typing teacher quite a bit.
That said, in the 80s Swedish schools had touch typing and programming in 7th grade, as well as "advanced" math. I wonder what happened after that. Probably budget cuts.
Its fast, its compact, its as forgiving in its data format as the brain that wrote it and it will last hundreds (if not thousands) of years without maintenance. Not teaching kids to write make society much less robust... but google has a hard time indexing that note in your pocket so we had better replace it with something that cant survive exposure to our planets climate and requires batteries to work.
I'm ambivalent about keeping or dropping cursive writing, but what will we use to replace cursive signatures on hard-copy legal documents?
Driving with a stick shift is still the norm in Finland (and then rest of Europe).
And in 10 years teaching them typing skills will be useless too.
Voice recognition everywhere!
Sure, but that's not an argument for teaching kids cursive at school, since they still wouldn't be able to read those dozen wildly different writing styles.
Then teach it in ELEMENTARY school.
"Historical records in many countries are written in cursive, and not just English wring ones. Only a complete idiot would want to sever children from their past."
Are you implying that you can fluently read Chaucer on its original form?
What do the schools that the elite attend do? Do the current 1% still teach cursive? If the future business and world leaders are still being taught cursive, shouldn't the other 99%? Or, is it that in the future, only some will be taught how to read and write and the rest will have menial jobs?
Literacy is the ability to read and write.
I cannot read most cursive, as each persons is unique and hard to make out, and i cannot really write in cursive. i learned in 5th grade, possibly late, was exempt from penmanship class the second year i took 5th grade, then got my only unsatisfactory grade in cursive in 6th grade, with my handwriting going south ever since. i write in all capital block letters, very hard to read, and my hand cramps up after about 30 seconds of writing. i can compose at a keyboard, have reasonable typing speed, with no cramping. fuck cursive, i say. i never saw how it could save me time, due to my wiring. I dont plan on writing any letters to my "dearest Wilhelmina" that will appear in a Ken Burns documentary, so i dont need it at all. PS my signature is my initials, all caps, written separately, took me years to figure out i could do that, otherwise my signature is a line.
My view is that this will handicap kids taking notes in math classes. When you need to write sentences while writing equations and drawing graphs, cursive writing is essential. It is simply not feasible to switch back and forth between the keyboard and a pen/stylus when taking notes in class. On top of that, print handwriting is too slow in a lot of classes.
I just know from personal experience that even with cursive it's hard to keep up with some professors. Yet cursive is the fastest way to take notes when you need a "drawing device" for graphs and equations.
In my opinion this is a combination of politics (schools can be views as "forward thinking" by ditching it), and over-simplifying the problem. Clearly the uses for cursive have narrowed and keyboarding is far more important, but they've also overlooked where cursive can still serve and important purpose.
Why don't they ditch print writing in favor of keyboarding and keep cursive?
Historical records in many countries are written in cursive, and not just English wring ones. Only a complete idiot would want to sever children from their past.
Or a government wanting more control over information.
There's a pretty big history of the printing press and literacy fueling social change.
If you're into dumping skills without much practical economic value, why stop with handwriting? Why not dump Finnish, clearly little more than a cultural affectation and anachronism, and convert the entire country to English (or perhaps German or Russian)? Surely little Finnish workers would be a lot more productive if they didn't have to waste their time learning two languages.
My diary is written on paper and in longhand. It's the ultimate in keeping my innermost thoughts away from those who should not know them. It's immune from PRISM and the other NSA civil rights atrocities.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
This discussion is about cursive writing, not Middle English literature.
Anyone with an IQ above 110 will learn to use cursive.
Thankfully this will be yet another way to quickly cull wheat from chaff: moron illiterate block printers to the left and smart cursive writers to the right, please. Smart ones, please sign your name on the bottom line; for you block printers, your "X" goes in the square provided, along with a thumbprint alongside.
The problem with foregoing handwriting for typing, is that typing itself should already be a dying skill. It is known to cause a particularly difficult-to-treat injury (RSI) and there is already voice recognition software available for PCs and even mobile phones.
The more-modern solution would be to skip intensive typing instruction in favor of using systems that mostly work on voice recognition or touch screens. It is acceptable to have a keyboard present, but for desktop computing it shouldn't be the primary means of character/text input anymore.
Yes. Tapestries of that era depict serfs slowly pulling long parchment scrolls bearing the brightly colored playing field diagonally across a refectory table as knights took turns shooting.
Excellent! Up until 3rd grade, I couldn't read my mother's notes. Now I'll be the old dude who knows how to make this ancient writing that only the other old people can read. They'll take it to somebody down at the bingo hall for a decode. It'll be my buddy and he'll say, "Why do you want me to read this? What are you up to?". Then he'll kick the kid's ass. I can't wait.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
> So what about a world where cursive writing is forgotten?
There will never be a world where cursive writting is forgotten, there'll just be different classes of citizen. Your classification happens when someone sends you a note and you have to beg for translation.
Texting here means writing text to paper
Ah, yes. We call that "printing", which is clearly much less confusing.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
"just for the sake of it — like driving a stick shift" Wow, ok.
Swap cursive for proper usage of "than" & "then".
A lot of historical documents are written in Olde English or Saxxon
Wasn't that a popular diagonally-scrolling shooter in the Early Middle Ages?
Indeed. It was much like Trogdor the Buninator, but in isometric.
I guess we should stop learning to walk because we have cars now.
Oh wait - what happens when things change, like there is a war, or an economic depression - and the electric grid goes down - and we can't charge our laptops - or even buy one?
It's "you're being ironic", or "you're ironical", but never, "you're being ironical".
"Ironical" already means "being ironic", so you said "you're being being ironic".
Just because people can't write in fancy cursive script doesn't mean they can't write normally. If you don't teach kids that useless skill, then it won't suddenly mean that they can't jot things down in normal writing when they need to.
That's not a fair comparison.
Fair point but there is one type of writing where typing is really terrible: mathematical notation. It is far, far faster for me to do calculations on paper with a pen than it is to use a computer. If I want it to look neat then writing LaTeX is a clear winner but typing expressions into LaTeX is a lot slower than just jotting them down. So for working things out paper and pen is so far the best there is even in the 21st century.
After being forced to write papers in cursive as a child, you get to college... banned. Just straight out banned. You can hand print, or computer print.
Really? Wow. You do all your exams on computer? None of them are handwritten, not even the maths and physics exams?
Schools are going to waist time teaching typing? Do they find out the age a child teaches themselves how to type, and teach it to them before they can teach themselves? Just have it as an elective class for those that have trouble.
I assume "texting" is how to send a text using your phone. I wish I had a class to teach me that, or else I would have have learned out to text on my phone. Sure glad US isn't the only country that is stupid when comes to education.
Down up and around. All together now: down up and around.
Handwriting is something they should practice in the U.S., there is nothing worse than a grown-up man or woman who scribbles like a little baby. The weird thing about the U.S. is the older generation can still write reasonably well but the younger generation have trouble writing their name and address!
They don't even understand how much change they should have after shopping...
They always give you big currency just to make sure they cover the cost like a foreigner who doesn't understand the currency.
Reading and writing is very important.. Having nice handwriting can be accomplished by almost anybody with practice. Don't ever end up like the U.S...
When I first come up against U.S. people who spoke English and wrote English, I felt very nervous like a second-class citizen like an outsider and then I discovered most people in the U.S. are stupid and would ask me how to spell this or that.. Then when I went to England I was really worried.. And then I discovered there are lots of rundown places in England with English people who have trouble with childish handwriting.
In the U.S. their media like to betray stupid people as the backbone of the U.S. it's ok to be stupid like Forrest Gump.. it is not ok to be totally dependent on others! you need to be able to do things for yourself... automatic cars are shit try push starting one. in the U.S. that would be "bump-start" seriously.. they call the gearstick knob or a "Stick Shift" 1 2 3 4 5 R.. They are fat and lazy and cannot drive.
as they say in the U.S. please people just don't go there don't copy the U.S. just DO NOT!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Who needs to be smart with translatable skills?
Kids these days can't even hold a pen properly, you're thinking well who needs to? Well it's a good skill to have:
1) You can then use chopsticks properly
2) You can draw properly
3) You have better coordination with your hands (who needs that right? Let the robots do everything for us!)
4) You're not a useless human being when your battery runs out
Nah, you're right, let's have less education in our education, that'll work.
And so, once again, we are reminded that /. seems to consists of the blind leading the ignorant and opinionated.
Too bad there isn't some AI (or even NI) filter which wouldn't let people post articles unless they actually knew what they were talking about.
Elementary schools will teach children how to push buttons on a cell phone or smart phone? Cool.
They create nations of idiots all over the world, especially in Europe their motherland.
Putting them in gas chambers was not such a bad idea after all, considering the damage they create for the human race.
I'm saying people can take shorthand faster than we can form cogent thoughts and pop them out of our vocal apparatus, yes. No crack involved. No thinking, either, in the sense of forming words and sentences the way you do when you need to speak a new thought.
Ever watch a decent lead guitarist? Think you could say the notes as fast as they can play them? No, of course not. Neither can they. Ever watch a decent martial artist? Think you could name all the techniques they use as fast as they can use them? No need to worry about it, the answer is a resounding no. And again, neither can they.
Dedicated, trained classification-to-reaction operations are faster than high level cognition. Our minds go slower when reasoning, as compared to executing previously learned tasks. Human reaction time for a trained, non-thinking but specific response to a stimulus is about 30 ms. Verbalization... slower. Verbalization plus reasoning... even slower yet.
The numbers: courtroom shorthand: About 225 wpm to qualify for the job (NJ, USA standard.) Normal speech: About 150 wpm.
Remember learning to ride a bike? It was tough, eh? That's because you were trying to think, to reason your way through it. This happens, then that reaction implemented. Which is too slow to deal with the physics that are involved and must be dealt with.
But once you'd trained a non-verbal, non-thinking part of your brain to solve the problem directly -- inner ear input, body motion output, etc. -- you became amazingly stable, and you don't need to apply reason to the task at all. Dedicated networks form in response to learning particular repeated tasks, and once they do, that's where your speed and accuracy comes from.
Speaking, by the way, as a guitarist, martial artist, and AI researcher.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Only a complete idiot would want the children to learn cursive. It's useless. I'm glad they stopped teaching art as well.
Sign your name on the bottom line and we'll release this $4billion check to you.
Wait, what's that? You DON'T KNOW HOW TO SIGN YOUR NAME EVEN?
Sorry, no signature, no check - we'll give it to the runner up.
Obviously you don't understand how this "Progress" thingy works. It's of a piece with tricking people into thinking that one's commencement of life, gender, and sexual preference are all socially constructed, while racism is constant.
Teach both?
I think it's utterly stupid getting rid of cursive writing... electronic note taking isn't exactly as practical as many make it out to be.
How will people function in society if they are completely unable to write?
Filling out a form? Writing a note on a piece of paper? Or the hundreds of thousands of times in a lifetime where you needed to write something with a pen/pencil?
What happens if you forget your phone, or the power goes out, or.....for fuck sake, how can you function with such a disability?
I've hated cursive with a passion, ever since I was forced to learn it in public school. I could never manage legibility at anything remotely resembling a decent writing speed, so half the time I couldn't even decipher my own notes. I had absolutely no trouble picking up typing and at 12 years old, I could easily type faster than any of my classmates could write. The only problem was, this was still the dark ages and the school staff felt that allowing me to use a portable word processor would be an unfair advantage over other students and that I deserved bad grades due to my inferior handwriting ability.
We don't teach kids to chisel on stone tablets or write on slates, so I see absolutely no reason why cursive can't also be relegated to the past. Good riddance.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
we live in a world without cursive as a default, why teach cursive when most of what we see is printed, unlinked characters?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
In the xUSSR countries not being able to write cursive is considered a sign of illiteracy. Is English cursive really so horrible? I never learned it formally and I use a bastardized version of cursive and block letters when I need to jot something down quickly. As a result, I can write significantly faster than most native English speakers when they use block letters.
Perhaps the cursive script itself should be revised? Also, cursive writing really helps to develop fine motor skills which are linked with higher cognitive functions. I don't know if there's a causal relationship between two of them, but I won't be surprised.
I don't see it as a conspiracy, but unless someone can read cursive they wouldn't be able to read the originals of these documents, since they are written in cursive. Just like I cannot read any of Chekhov's plays in the original, until my Russian improves.
When I looked at the sheer amount of education that used to be possible for educated children to attain, when not everyone was expected to reach the same level of education, I began to wonder why anything is being cut from (as opposed to anyone being cut.)
I don't think it is a good idea, really, but I also don't think it will make much difference. There are certain skills and technologies that combine simplicity with major advantage: the wheel, fire, the knife. And writing, of course.
I can't see handwriting going away - it is too useful, being able to not only write, but also read handwriting, even if you mostly type. However, I think it is a very good idea to teach typing and texting (why not?) as a supplement to handwriting; my only worry is the progressive loss of skills that technology brings with it.
My favourite example of this: shaving. Something like 100 years ago, a man would use a straight razor - a simple knife of good, high carbon steel, kept extremely sharp, and he would probably only ever buy one in his life. The came the disposable razor blade, and now you had to buy a packet of those maybe every week or two. And now we are required to buy these ridiculous shaing heads with five blades in packet that cost £25 for 5 heads. Every weeks. So, do people get a better shave for the money? I got fed up with the whole thing, went and bought an old, straight razor for £1 in a car boot sale, learned to sharpen it (which was difficult in the beginning) and use it (very easy), and it is fully as good as the most expensive contraptions. All in all, we have, over the years, learned to throw away large amounts of money on things that give no added benefit. To me, the morale is: hold on to those simple, basic skills - they are worth it.
And when the great EMP/whatever apocalypse strikes and we've lost all our technology, what's the standby? Sometimes keeping a backup is a good idea when things fail and now we've reached the point of being cheap to ourselves and our children by guaranteeing a single point of failure. Aren't we humans so special?
Questions like this bring the dyslexics blasting out of their holes like a shot of tear gas.
Teach children to write in print style, and they will eventually develop a more or less joined personal style that is nonetheless legible when they want it to be. "Cursive" takes more time to draw and makes it harder to tell the letters apart from each other. It all becomes a jumble of loops. I'm still angry at my first grade teacher for making me draw stupid loops for hours, when I already knew how to type and handwrite before I even got into school. Teaching small children two distinct scripts is an abuse of their brain power.
Seems pretty straightforward.
It's funny that all the nerds here who can only write in horrible print want to ditch cursive writing so fast. Cursive is important not only because it looks prettier and is easier to read (have you ever read a EULA? I thought so. One of the reasons most EULAs are in capitals only is that that makes them very hard to read), but writing is a way to learn very fine motoric skills that you can only get by practicing and are hard to learn when your brain is fully formed. And those very fine motoric skills come in handy in all kinds of situations, like drawing, needlework, fumbling with modern electronics, repairing old watches or other small mechanical things, etc etc. so learning to write cursive is a means to many ends, only one of which is good writing.
-- Cheers!
Not everywhere is dumb enough to use the credits system.
> Teach cursive in art class, not in writing class.
> Seems pretty straightforward.
You left out teaching art in writing class. Seems straightforward.
The lack of (what was) a fundamental elementary skill, normally taught in the early grades, will end up biting, especially when those in the better schools will never stop learning it.
When was the last time you actually read a historical document yourself? Reading cursive and being able to write it are two different skills. Furthermore it is a skill not everyone will need, since there will be people who did learn it to transcribe whatever it is that is not transcribed. How come everybody knows the name Tutankhamen even though very very few people can actually read heiroglyphs? How is it possible that I know who Tutankhamen is, even though I don't read heiroglyphs very well at all.
Stop teaching art? What is the point in having designers anyway. Poppycock.
In an experiment in the 80's in Sweden cursive writing was banned in favor of writing blocky text. This caused my hand writing to look ugly as hell and I can't even read some cursive hand written texts since it's so far beyond what I was taught.
I think Finland is making one big mistake implementing this.
2 reasons:
1. They won't be able to read handwritten texts fluently since their little brains is not versed in recognizing hand scripts.
2. When the apocalypse comes, and electricity is just a fond memory, the then adults will find themselves having a spot of bother...
I learned to print, then to write. Then soon after I stopped writing and to this day I still print. Learned to type just by spending too much time on a computer. I don't text.
I graduated high school in 1990.
My printing is easy to read. Even bad printing is typically easier to decipher than a lot of handwriting.
Also that remark at the end of the summary about driving a manual transmission car being something people do for the sake of it- that's a rather US-centric attitude. Most cars in the UK are manual because automatics drink a siginificantly larger amount of petrol.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Parent was being sarcastic -- He/she actually meant the opposite :)
Cursive is a complete waste of time. At best, it is barely marginally faster than printing/block writing. Most of the time, cursive writing is significantly slower than printing (especially for those brain-dead connections containing o, a, c, g, h, j, k, u, v, and w) and much less legible.
In practice, the only time I ever write in cursive is when signing my name. In all other cases, it's faster and more legible to write in print. I was brainwashed with the necessity of cursive when I was a kid in the seventies and eighties. But it always seemed so bizarre to focus so heavily on something so less efficient than printing.
Unlikely, I love speech to text as much as the next geek but there are a lot of situations where silence is golden and voice recognition is unlikely to ever make inroads.
Perhaps to the average /. poster it does, but not to most reasonable people.
Now due to computer controlled transmission for the average driver automatic is more fuel efficient. Most people who drive stick tend to upshot late and downshift early.
Every job requires typing skills nowadays at least in Finland. But never mind work. Think what you do when you are not working. And think about school where these kids will spend a decade. It is a very important skill and not knowing it makes you look stupid the same way as not knowing the language. Besides the school also teaches biology, chemistry etc.
The ability to write legibly is a useful skill that will continue to be so, and that still needs to be taught (and, indeed, Finland will continue to do that). By contrast, the idea that everyone needs to be able to write in cursive, and should be taught to do so at school, is downright archaic - akin to insisting that every child learn to form "beautiful" Copperplate lettering (as used to be the case in Britain a century ago). As an exercise in self-discipline, it perhaps serves a purpose; but the, so could many other, more useful disciplines. As an exercise in better communication, though, it achieves absolutely nothing. In particular, research supports the (perhaps surprising) contention that printed writing is comparable in speed, when a need for quick writing exists*. And printed writing is a darn sight easier to read afterwards - especially if the someone doing the reading isn't the writer**. And If you want to teach children calligraphy and cursive as an art form, that's fine - but recognise that that's what's you're doing, and prioritise it accordingly alongside all the other niche skills that children may touch on in school.
*If we MUST teach kids to be able to write fast, teach them shorthand. or better yet, teach them to read and write Mandarin.
**I would challenge anyone to make sense of my own cursive notes when I've written them in a hurry - I often can't read them myself. And I have any number of well-educated, now-elderly relatives, from generations brought up on writing cursive, the reading of whose letters - even to close family members - is frankly an exercise in guesswork. Because handwriting changes, and the decades of writing letters to friends and family, with no teacher standing over them correcting them, have reduced their cursive script to a mere series of near-identical peaks, troughs and loops, from which successfully identifying one word in four is often an achievement. That's not something I've noticed happen with printed lettering.
The problem is not handwriting. The problem is that cursive is a completely unusable design that fails at all requirements except maybe style. I dropped it as soon as I was allowed to (starting university), as it proved completely worthless for taking notes in lectures, causing cramps and being illegible. Instead, I developed a modified discrete-letter based handwriting within two weeks and have used that without problems for more than 20 years now. Now, question, if I can fix this mess in two weeks, how long is the school system going to take? Probably a century or more is my guess...
Just another instance of school being completely out f touch with reality.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
As if the US isn't knee-deep in accurate printed versions of all of those documents.
It is also sad that kids these days no longer know how to use a quill to write. Sure this skill is no longer needed, but shouldn't we teach it to them anyways? What are they going to do if they don't have access to any pens (due to a pen famine?) and they only have feathers?
"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. Quills are fragile, easily broken, and will spatter unless used properly." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... Modern pens, obviously, suffer none of these drawbacks. The idea that writing in cursive is somehow quicker with modern pens is dubious at best. The real reason cursive stuck around so long more likely lies in our tendency for traditionalism. I would guess the generation of teachers who are eschewing the instruction of cursive in favor of typing skills had themselves been forced to learn cursive in their youth and likely thought "I will never need to use this outside of school." They would have been correct with that assertion.
I feel sorry for anyone that can't drive a stick shift.
dropped cursive a long time ago. (the suburbs of Seattle) I would guess it was ten years ago? It probably had to do with the advent of standardized testing. There's no "cursive writing" section in the standardized test, so why teach it?
In a few decades' time, this will look as wise as 8-track adoption. For one thing, handwriting recognition will return, and it will get to be pretty damned good.
For another, being able to write quickly and legibly is an actual, valuable skill. One doesn't always have a keyboard handy, but one (can) always have a pen and some scrap of paper nearby.
Finally, writing longhand produces a far better quality of work than does typing. In college, I switched from typing all my papers into Word or Nexus Writer to writing them longhand, then typesetting them with LaTeX; the papers I produced post-change were far superior to those pre-change. By writing longhand, I was forced to start with an outline, then flesh it out with more meat, then tweak and improve it: my papers were no longer stream-of-consciousness blather, but actual papers with introductions, conclusions and everything in between. Writing, rather than typing, forced me to think about each word, each letter. The pen allows the writer time for reflection, as the keyboard does not.
Only a complete idiot would want the children to learn cursive. It's useless. I'm glad they stopped teaching art as well.
They can learn cursive in art class, or maybe archaeology. For practical purposes, printing is superior - easier to read and nearly as fast to write, with some practice. It was sad to see quill pens go, no? But we got over it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I agree - you either can read it easily, or you need a course in reading cursive for specific purposes anyway. So teaching them at school is a bit overdone.
The only persons who will regret not writing cursive in school are jewellers, watchmakers and surgeons - the people who need highly evolved fine motor skills. That's difficult to (re-)gain when you're 18 or older, versus kids who have been writing cursive since age 6. But the question is: why subject the entire population to something only a few occupations will use.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
As your sources explain, the practice of writing is important for learning. Through writing we develop thoughts, compose them, as fyngyrz says below, reformulate them. Writing is a way of thinking.
The issue, however, is not writing: it is handwriting. Typing, printing and cursive (I hesitate to include texting, as I find even swype/swiftkey excruciatingly slow, and I'm pretty sure using my thumb would bring on early arthritis) are all methods of writing. The links you include speak only of writing, not handwriting. They are not about the importance of cursive.
I strongly suspect that the different technical affordances of handwriting compared to typing do indeed lead to different learning experiences. One enables editing, the other demands sentences be formulated before they are written, and that subsequent words be adapted to what has already put down. Are such differences educationally significant?
One study found handwriting enhanced student composition more than did typing, though the authors put this down more to fluency (speed) and point to the importance of teaching touch-typing. This might actually support the Finnish position. Another article theorizes that there might be benefits to manual writing. A study of university student essay examinations found no difference in performance. This study found grade 6 students could type faster than they could write by hand.
This is just the result of a quick search, but I don't see strong evidence one way or the other.
Personally, my handwriting is awful. My teachers didn't even teach me how to hold a pen correctly (I have been unable to correct by habit of using all 5 fingers). Through university I took notes in my own simplified printing (each letter one stroke with at most one reversal), a system I still use when speed matters. Recently I learned that movement should come from the arm, not the wrist; for the first time, my handwriting became legible. Learning to type, however, felt like it opened up the world to me. I wish I could write fluent cursive. Is Finland doing the right thing? Darned if I know.
Gets better mileage too.
In Hungary, Central Europe, there was significant debate some 25 years ago, whether to allow elementary school kids to learn cursive flowing handwriting using Biro pen (ball-point pen) or keep the cartridge-fed fountain pen mandatory? The "conservatives" claimed it is not important to keep the constant orientation of pen with the ballpoint system, thus kids will learn much less muscle-motoric skills (compared to the fountain pen, which tends to tear up paper, if rotated incorrectly). The "progressives" stated kids tend to make a mess of their wardrobe with ink flowing from the cartridges and fountain pens are quite costly to buy. Eventually the biro pen won and I never learned how to use the fountain properly.
To me this is a bit scary, especially for those kids that have trouble learning to read. Some people are able to learn to read with phonics, or using the letters of the alphabet to spell and recognise the word. That's probably how a lot of us learned.
Other kids are better at whole word reading, where you use other cues like the shape the word makes to guess/remember the word. This is more important in say, Chinese, but has is place in romance languages too.
If you teach a kid to type, they will be focusing on the sequence of letters only, so there will be a bias on phonic reading, which will be wrong for some of the kids.
When you learn hand writing, there is an understanding of the flow and shape of the word, so apple is not just A P P L E, it is also round,down,down,up, round, or whatever else makes sense to the reader. Whole word reading is the bit that is important in speed reading for understanding.
Hands are one of the most dexterous parts of the human body, so why keep them confined to the constraints of the keyboard or crouched around a plastic mouse? (An argument well articulated by John Underkoffler, who created the gestural language featured in The Minority Report.) Further, there is some research that suggests a link between handwriting and unique forms of cognition which is what led researchers at UIUC to offer a summer camp in cursive: http://www.library.illinois.ed...
driving stick shift is the norm throughout europe.
So curscursive? Just block capitals? What an idiotic idea. I agree everyone should have keyboard skills but not at the expense of clear and legible handwriting.
They aren't giving up teaching "handwriting". They are giving up teaching CURSIVE.
Half of the comments are from people who don't realize that.
That being clarified, teaching cursive in a school is no longer a good use of time, any more than teaching shorthand is a necessity. Schools can't (or at least shouldn't) choose their curriculum based on people's fear or tradition, they have a very limited amount of time to teach a huge number of skills, and many competing interests.
I think this decision is a good one - MANY U.S. schools have already removed cursive from their curriculum. It's simply not used anymore.
The fact that incredibly old history books are written in cursive has no bearing. Have you ever tried to read that crap? It's illegible - not because of bad handwriting, but because the way people spoke and wrote then was completely different.
"What do you do when your computer is dead and you need to leave a note?" quoth the summary.
Um, really obviously, not write in cursive? Just like I've done for the past 20 years. I've had to hand-write plenty of things, and in all the time since second grade, the only thing I have needed to write in cursive is my signature (which is only loosely related to "proper" cursive writing, as it's supposed to be, since it's, you know, a signature, it's supposed to be distinct).
I'm baffled as to why *anyone* would think that cursive would be a necessary skill. Cursive is harder to write and harder to read, so why do it?
What do you do when your electronic keyboard device fails? How do you write or communicate then? And yes it can happen. Google Carrington Event. What do you do then? Say it doesn't matter to you, because it'll be the end of the world as we know it? Except it will matter to you, and it probably won't be the end of the modern world in the long run. So, for God's sake, don't put all your eggs in one basket, because this basket it a lot more fragile than you think it is.
cursive- print- typewriting.. and now children's brains are loosing the chance to acquire hand to brain coordination. Their loss, and they will never get to enjoy their great grandparents epistles. An ability, a form of art and a cultural asset gone down the drain...
Putting aside the "we'll all miss cursive" idea, let's at least hope they get past the 19th century and teach Dvorak.
Having used it for nearly 30 years, and playing guitar, I can't imagine what shape my fingers would be without it...
Agreed. But here's an idea...
Maybe as a middle-school elective, a penmanship class. (9 weeks, 3 to 5 days per week).
It could be combined with reading classic documents, and perhaps "rewriting" them as practice.
Although, I do question how difficult it is to learn cursive when older.
HOWEVER, they should teach how to READ cursive in elementary school. It is still used, even as a font on occasion. I'm not saying whether that's right or wrong, but a quick lesson to recognize the letters would be helpful. Just like we should all at least learn the placement of all the states, the names of all the presidents, etc., ideally.
You are being silly, census forms in 20th century filled out in cursive, church records, licenses, etc.
Actually I can but that's not what I'm talking about. Go look at census records from first part of 20th century, or church birth/baptism records, or death certficates or marriage licenses.
Aside from letters from many of my older relatives being in cursive, have been doing genealogy searches through all the US citizen's census and other records from 1940 and before. Guess what form of handwriting almost all of them use?