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Nov. 10th, 2007 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magedragonfireOh noez, handwriting's disappearing in teaching!
Researchers are bemoaning the fact that teaching cursive is going the way of the dodo - it's been declining since the 70s, and most kids nowadays get about 14 minutes of letter formation teaching a day in class.
Y'know, I'm finding it incredibly difficult to shed a tear over it - seeing as how I read the handwriting of people (usually in their forties or fifties or sixties) for a living currently, and often, their handwriting and printing stinks. Absolutely stinks. Those purported forty-five minutes of teaching they used to get did absolutely fuckall, because their vowels, stick-like letters, and m/n/ws are all illegible. We end up calling five people per order with 'hey, uh, we can't read your writing - what's this actually supposed to say?'.
As long as kids can print legibly, and can read cursive, I don't really care whether or not they can write the damn stuff. It's not like it actually works in the way it's supposed to, anyways - that is, make writing faster and neater. Anyone with eyeballs know that it doesn't; you get one or the other, or neither. Never both.
Researchers are bemoaning the fact that teaching cursive is going the way of the dodo - it's been declining since the 70s, and most kids nowadays get about 14 minutes of letter formation teaching a day in class.
Y'know, I'm finding it incredibly difficult to shed a tear over it - seeing as how I read the handwriting of people (usually in their forties or fifties or sixties) for a living currently, and often, their handwriting and printing stinks. Absolutely stinks. Those purported forty-five minutes of teaching they used to get did absolutely fuckall, because their vowels, stick-like letters, and m/n/ws are all illegible. We end up calling five people per order with 'hey, uh, we can't read your writing - what's this actually supposed to say?'.
As long as kids can print legibly, and can read cursive, I don't really care whether or not they can write the damn stuff. It's not like it actually works in the way it's supposed to, anyways - that is, make writing faster and neater. Anyone with eyeballs know that it doesn't; you get one or the other, or neither. Never both.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-11 05:15 am (UTC)Seriously, I hated learning cursive in grade school. We had to use it EXCLUSIVELY in fourth grade and uh. I still don't remember how to draw any of my capital cursive letters.
It's not like it's A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LANGUAGE when you try to read it. If it's written neatly you can still tell wtf it says.
Personally I'd be more than happy to watch cursive die off.
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Date: 2007-11-11 05:39 am (UTC)You can still get the general gist of it even when it's kind of half-assed, but I swear, these old people who write stuff that I have to read at work, they seriously need penmanship classes again or something - especially since we have to be really careful, since it's all names, and people get really uppity at you when you spell their name wrong.
Learning to read it is still important, since there'll be things around that will be written like that for years yet, but... Learning how to write it? Not so important.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-11 05:42 am (UTC)But yeah. Learning to write it is not really so big a deal, and I honestly wish we'd just let it die.
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Date: 2007-11-11 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-11 05:48 am (UTC)