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?
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.
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.
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!)
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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.
"Given that cursive writing doesn't make any smarter, increase their work ethic, or provide them with useful skills I don't think that this trend is all that disturbing."
Except, of course, that it makes you smarter, increases your work ethic and provides a quite useful skill.
Hand writing instills in young minds the need of work hard to reach the desired results and while doing so, exercises the brain and conects abstract thinking with fine-grain motions. On top on that, once mastered, it allows to effortlessly take notes which helps fixating concepts and have a look at them at a glance for deeper understandment.
The fact all of you American saying that you left cursive as soon as you could just shows how ill-fitted your education system has become, not that cursive is of no use.
In Mexico City, at the end of the primary school, ~1988, we did learn how to extract square roots (and covered the basis for "higher" roots). Of course, it was not something we used since; in secondary school we went on with algebra, and didn't do much more pure arithmetics since. But square roots are useful to at least estimate without computers.
I use to be like you and believed that cursive is faster than printing, but that all changed one day half a lifetime ago when I was reading tips on how to take better notes in college, and one tip was to print your notes because printing is faster and neater than cursive.
"Bullshit!" I said, "Everyone knows that cursive is faster than print. Who do they think they are kidding?". On top of this heresy they also stated that writing with a pencil is neater than with a pen. Their tips were changing from heresy to blasphemy! "Little kids print with pencils." I smugly muttered, "and adults write in cursive with pens, where the letters are joined beautifully together in flowing strokes in order to save time and be neater.". Although I knew cursive would best printing in speed and neatness, I must have had some doubts, for at that moment I grabbed my best pen, some crappy dog-chewed pencil, a few sheets of foolscap, and picked out a couple paragraphs in a book to copy to prove them wrong. I should have left well enough alone.
After numerous iterations of writing and printing with pencil and pen, I could not believe the results but had to accept them:printing, with pencil or pen, was about 30% faster than writing, and clearly more legible. My fastest writing was nothing better than the worst chicken-scratches and would be unreadable by another person, whereas my quickest print was still legible and neat.
"Oh my god!" I exclaimed just as the dizziness hit me. As I fell to my knees, then to the floor, as my belief system crumbled around me, the last thing I remember before I lost consciousness is muttering "Printing IS faster than writing!"
Seriously. Write,then print a few paragraphs as fast as you can. The fastest printing is faster and much more legible than the fastest writing. I shit you not.
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.
Isaac Asimov, "The Feeling of Power", 1958. People have completely forgotten how to do math, and rediscovering how to do it is a military research project.