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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.
who needs napkins to do calculations when you have slide rules?
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!
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.
You haven't spent much time scribling on napkins. Cursive will tear the napkin and cause it to totally fall apart. You have to stick to print so when it tears it is in an isolated spot. Cursive, the napkin will be weakened continuously where you've written, and once a tear starts it keeps tearing - right through the writing!
As long as the kids are learning to print by hand, they will be fine. Cursive is now a specialized skill for caligraphers.
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.
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.
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.