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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?
That's not a fair comparison. If you're counting the time to open the memo app on your phone, you should also count the time to find a pen or pencil and a scrap of paper. For me the time which the former takes is fairly consistent, but the latter varies considerably because I don't usually carry a pen in my trouser pocket.
As an aside, you seem to be making more of an argument for teaching shorthand than for teaching writing.
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!
Written communication is the only thing that will keep working throughout history and they want to stop teaching it.
They aren't going to stop teaching printing. They are going to stop teaching cursive.
In highschool my cursive was illegible enough that I switched back to printing for notes, assignments, and exams.
I would be with you 100% if if they were going to stop teaching printing, and if all note taking and draft writing, math homehork, spelling tests, and everything else was going to be done on a keyboard. But they aren't doing that. Nobody is suggesting that.
They're getting rid of cursive. It's not a big deal.
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.
Finland is also dropping the handwritten long division algorithm in 2016.
Now that's just stupid. People will need to use their smartphone's calculator to figure out everything from restaurant tips to spacing between items to make them look equally spaced to adjusting the ingredients for a recipe.
It seems that the smarter our devices get, the dumber we get.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.