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I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time. I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursi
by cyocum 1y ago
I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time.
I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursive. After many months of this, my handwriting had not improved. The teachers finally relented and stopped punishing me because the punishment never actually improved my handwriting. My handwriting is now print only and is still horrible and has never improved. Additionally, I have only ever used cursive for signing my name to documents.
I find it baffling because I have an advanced degree in medieval Celtic Studies. I study manuscripts in depth and I have seen some of the worst handwriting that you could possibly imagine on the very expensive vellum manuscript page. In some cases worse than mine. Cursive is actually only a couple of hundred years old. Compared to the history of manuscript writing, cursive is very young so I am baffled that people are worried about it.
I find printing to be fine for almost all circumstances where I need to hand write something so I understand if we continue to teach that. Cursive, however, should only be done by those who want to use it. If you want to have an after school cursive club, great, have fun! Otherwise, leave the rest of us alone and let us have recess.
- spacechild1 1y ago> I find printing to be fine for almost all circumstances where I need to hand write something Agree 100%! I still regularly write things by hand, but I already stopped using cursive during high school, like most of my classmates. (I think cursive was only mandatory in elementary school and maybe also in junior high school.)
- giancarlostoro 1y agoLol I have a friend whose handwriting was so bad, his mom found the leading expert in teaching how to write correctly (at the time / wherever he lived at the time), that eventually broke him and he gave up. We are all very unique and different. What's funny is I gave up on cursive as long as I hit the internet in the mid 2000s because I instinctively knew it was fruitless.
- deadbabe 1y agoYou must know how to at least read cursive, otherwise you will see a word like minimum written in cursive and think it’s just a scribble.
- nancyminusone 1y agoThe point is that you almost never see text written in cursive anymore. For me, I encounter things written in Chinese way more often than I see cursive. I don't know how to read Chinese, but I don't really worry about not being able to.
- scotty79 1y agoMy eInk notepad recognizes my attempt at cursive surprisingly well. Maybe one could one day read cursive with something akin to Google lens.
- robocat 1y agoI could imagine a web page saying "you must be over 50." to enter this page. A capture saying Please read this cursive script and type in what it says...
- CRConrad 1y agoAh, seems you missed the glaring issue there: "Sure, it says <<whatever>>, clear as day, but damn, 'typing it in' on these tiny little buttons on this darn 'keyboard' thingy..."
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoThe fact that some people are totally unable to draw while others excel at it would alone imply that you should see similar variation in writing. And we do. > What's funny is I gave up on cursive as long as I hit the internet in the mid 2000s because I instinctively knew it was fruitless. Not exactly. Handwriting better reinforces information in our memories than typing or reading or listening alone. So, if we're going to be doing a lot of writing because we intend to do a lot of note taking (and reading of our scrawl later on), then effective writing is obviously useful, which is what cursive is supposed to be. Now, perhaps that doesn't necessarily mean you have to use cursive as you are familiar with it, but inevitably, all handwriting written quickly turns into some kind of cursive. Writing block letters is slow and tedious.
- noosphr 1y agoCursive as taught in schools today is useless at best and dangerous for your health at worst. The cursive that made the world run between 1850 and 1925 was called business penmanship and it lets you write at 40 words per minute for 14 hours every day for decades on end without pain or injury. If you're interested here's the best book about it: https://archive.org/details/tamblyns-home-instructor-in-penmanship/page/n4/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/tamblyns-home-instructor-in-penm... Note the advice given: >following lessons will make of you a good penman, if you follow instructions implicitly. The average time to acquire such a handwriting is from four to six months, practicing an hour or so a day. Practice regularly every day, if you want the best results. Two practice periods of thirty minutes each are better than one period of sixty minutes. After two months I can comfortably write at 20 words per minute for four hours without stopping.
- kqr 1y agoWhen going through the effort to re-learn how to write, why would one learn this rather than one of the more logical/easy shorthand systems? (To clarify, I mean in this day and age! I would understand if one needed to send 300 letters a day to a non-shorthand reader.)
- tdeck 1y agoThe shorthand systems are mostly designed to be transcribed by the writer or someone very familiar with the writer's particular style, preferably while the information is still fresh in someone's mind to resolve ambiguity. Shorthand is mostly not a great system for long term information storage and it's not easy to quickly skim documents written in shorthand.
- kqr 1y agoThis is a common myth, but from what I understand of people who write in the more logical shorthand systems (without abusing custom abbreviations etc.) it's eminently skimmable, even long after the information is no longer fresh in mind.
- XorNot 1y agoTeaching cursive seems like a weirdly American obsession, because during school in Australia it just...wasn't a thing. Like teachers did take you through what "running writing" was, but we were never required to actually master it the accomplishments level was just "can you write? Good let's move on to how sentences are structured".
- tdeck 1y agoIt's also fun because every few decades there's a new fad in school penmanship so each generation learns a different cuesive and it's all a mess. I had one teacher who wrote in cursive in University, and her penmanship seemed pretty good. But I always struggled to read it. We are just not used to seeing cursive writing on a daily basis.
- IAmBroom 1y agoFascinating! Can anyone from other countries chime in?
- 1718627440 1y agoI find the discussion very weird. I'm from Germany, cursive is taught in class two. There were people in class who never got it, but mostly one or two. I don't get how people can stand writing in printing letters, doesn't it take too much time to essentially stop writing after each letter?
- 1y ago
- UltraSane 1y agoReminds me of all the many hours I spent being forced to do long division of 3 digit numbers into 5 and 6 digit numbers. What a waste of time.
- IAmBroom 1y agoNot predicting the computer revolution, and specifically the calculator revolution, is not their fault. It's like complaining that you were taught how to ride a horse, but it's 1921 now and NOBODY in New York City rides horses!!! I absolutely have done long division, when a calc wasn't handy - back when that was possible.
- UltraSane 1y agoThis was in the 1990s so calculators were common. I was born at the worst time for math education, when calculators and Computer Algebra Systems were becoming common but math education hadn't adapted yet.
- IAmBroom 1y agoOK, valid point then. Teachers are reactive, and slowly so, to changes in societal needs.
- Loudergood 1y agoI had a similar experience with writing, in my case it included print exercises. It was very frustrating and it took me a long time to gain an appreciation for writing after they finally caved and found a cheap old DOS PC for me to do work on.
- close04 1y agoIsn't handwriting just the activity of writing by hand as opposed to typing a keyboard? Whether it's cursive or block/print, as long as it's written by hand it still has benefits. Many studies link handwriting to better brain connectivity and learning compared to typing. The act of writing is the one that brings the benefits, not the looks of the result. I don't see a drawback to learning to write by hand even if nobody will ever read it or if it doesn't look good.
- IAmBroom 1y agoTwo closely related but unalike things: Personal record storage, that may require translation for others to read (looking at you, Da Vinci). Communication.
- spudlyo 1y agoThis is one reason why I employ the Scriptorium language learning technique developed by Alexander Arguelles which focuses you on actively engaging with a text by reading it aloud, carefully writing it down while saying each word, and then rereading the written text aloud. I try my best to keep my my cursive consistent and looking nice, but despite my best efforts[0] it still gets a bit scraggly at times. [0]: https://muppetlabs.com/~mikeh/imperat.jpg https://muppetlabs.com/~mikeh/imperat.jpg
- Telemakhos 1y agoWriting by hand teaches fine motor skills that can bd transferred later to other tasks. When I was in school, we learned not only block print and cursive but also half-uncial script. Nobody expected us to get jobs copying medieval manuscripts: we learned better how to control our fingers and wrists. The same goes for playing recorders or simple musical instruments: you don't teach that to kids hoping that they'll get jobs playing the recorder, but so that they learn finger control and maybe, if you're lucky, something about music. People who think that early childhood education is job training probably don't have kids. Educating kids is not about direct utility but about cultivating muscles and thoughts and habits that lead to other development later. The word "cultivation" is an agricultural term that describes tilling the soil: that doesn't actually grow crops (it happens prior to planting), but it makes the growing season to come much more productive than simply casting seed on the unbroken earth. Education is the cultivation of human potential before adulthood, preparing the child for a richer adulthood in ways that are not obviously utilitarian.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nancyminusone 1y agoI'd argue that if cursive was useful, it wouldn't be dying. It did used to be useful, but there's plenty of other skills that were too, died long ago and rightly are not taught to everyone anymore.
- estimator7292 1y agoTyping at speed on a fully mechanical typewriter was an incredibly valuable skill that required a lot of physical and mental training. It disappeared in a single generation and nobody looked back except for old typists that refused to learn the new skill. They eventually died and now that skill is basically extinct. Nothing of value was lost.
- IAmBroom 1y agoI was sternly told by a nun that, with my handwriting, I would never get a job. The only thing in my entire career I've ever been asked to write something in cursive is my signature, which I reduced to a squiggle for efficiency reasons. (The history of signatures is fascinating, BTW. Illiterate Charlemagne "signed" documents with a single horizontal stroke of the pen, inside of a premade 99%-completed "signature".) I am employed, and she's long-dead.
- potato3732842 1y agoCharlemagne wasn't exactly please about that state of affairs though.
- IAmBroom 1y agoWhat state? His signature style? His illiteracy?
- gyomu 1y agoSignatures seem to be completely useless. Like you, my signature has devolved into a squiggle that is never the same, and it has never mattered. I remember experimenting as a bored young adult with my first credit card, before tap to pay, when you often had to sign with a stylus on a terminal (in the US) - I would sign something different every time, sometimes nonsense, sometimes a little drawing, sometimes writing “Obama” or “Einstein” to see if I’d get a call from my bank or something - never did. Maybe there was an era when actual matching signatures mattered, but it seems long gone. I guess if you’re a celebrity signing autographs then it matters.
- ACCount37 1y agoI've seen a suggestion that a signature is now nothing but a signal. An agreed-upon way of communicating "this is serious and binding". Being able to point out that a signature was faked in some cases is a rare side benefit at best. If papers were signed, then something was agreed upon. A trade performed, a commitment made. If no papers were signed, then it's just idle talk.
- lubujackson 1y agoWorth mentioning that English itself has only been around since the 1600s, basically when Chaucer was around.
- beardyw 1y agoI think you are confused. Chaucer died in 1400. I often read perfectly readable (though with wild spelling) English from the 17th century. English was firmly established, though some formal documents still used Latin.
- taeric 1y agoI don't remember being punished for bad handwriting, but I know I got chided for it a lot. And I know we spent a lot of time on it. It definitely sucked, at every level of the experience. I also find it odd that people have some off assertions on why we learn cursive. I'm sure there is a multitude of reasons, but I find it hard to think it has any strong advantage over other ways. I do get a kick out of my kids being baffled that I write in cursive. At this point, I think I get as much fun out of that as I do anything else.
- fluorinerocket 1y agoI was constantly chided as well, The teachers seem to have regarded my poor handwriting as moral failure,ike choosing to do something naughty, rather than as something that they needed to give me more tutoring on.
- hinkley 1y agoDisrespect from an authority figure is punishment unless you’re a sociopath.
- jamiek88 1y agoYou said it in a more challenging way than I would but yeah I thought as i read that comment ‘it sure felt like punishment to me’ as I had similar public ‘chiding’ over my inability to improve my handwriting like it was some moral failure.
- taeric 1y agoI get what both of you are saying. But "bad marks" on an assignment is more what I had in mind. And it isn't punishment to get a bad grade. It is disappointing, on many levels. But criticism is not punishment. Even if it can be punishing.
- garciansmith 1y agoThere are ancient (e.g., Roman) and medieval cursive scripts, so I'm not sure what you mean by it being a couple hundred years old. Unless you just mean the current script we use now? (As for whether it should still be taught or not I'm impartial.)
- musicale 1y agoI'm partial to cursive italic, which dates at least to the Renaissance. You don't have to learn two sets of letter forms (printed and cursive italic use the same forms), and the joins are simple. It is easy to learn, and works well for both everyday handwriting and calligraphy.
- lo_zamoyski 1y ago> Cursive is actually only a couple of hundred years old. You must mean modern cursive, which is definitionally true. The ancients used cursive writing of various forms, of course (for example, hieratic) But fret not! Reputedly, only a few scholars in the world are able to read the scrawl of Thomas Aquinas!
- metalman 1y agothe article links the decline of cursive writing and the rise of the AI cheat happening at the same time as a definitive moment, and suggests bieng locked in an exam room with blank(unlined) paper might be a good way to force peoples hand(accidental pun) and seperate the knowlegable from the rest. my personal feeling, that as you so well illustrate, is that a significant number of academics and hobbiests will want to study and experience past practices as to keep the undestanding of cursive alive into the forseeble future unlined, just for the extra test of focus
- hinkley 1y agoHave you ever tried a drawing or even a calligraphy class? I worry your teachers have ruined you by trying to make your writing more artistic when they should have perhaps made you more artistic and let you bring the fine motor control back on your own.
- ErigmolCt 1y agoThe idea that cursive is some kind of sacred civic skill feels more like cultural performance than pedagogy
- 31carmichael 1y agoI agree, and my handwriting also sucks. My brother could have been an architect; his handwriting is amazing without trying. Give me a keyboard and recess too. My grandmother wrote me letters in cursive. They got more and more unreadable as she got older. I should have bought her a typewriter.
- phoh 1y agoarchitects dont need good handwriting anymore either
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agoAlmost the same here. Could read everything fluently before school, or even kindergarden, which I've skipped, because 'too playful'. Whatever, I didn't learn it by reading cursive, but reading printed stuff. So that never really made sense to me, though depending on who is writing, it can look nice. So I do a few fast strokes of lines and/or curves or dots to form a letter, and hop to the next. I wasn't slower than the cursive writers. Which works better with ball pens, than fountain pens, btw. Cursive is a fountain pen thing, IMO. But my writing doesn't look bad at all. Just block letters leaning slightly to the right. I can even do "DIN-Schrift" like in technical drawings freehanded, slower though.
- Doxin 1y agoCursive is wildly easier with a fountain pen. You don't know how much pressure a ball point requires and how much friction it has until you try a fountain pen. My "regular" handwriting is mostly legible but rather ugly. If I do cursive with a ball point it's nearly indecipherable (even to me). If I do cursive with a fountain pen it's legible and decent looking. If I take my time it'll almost look like the examples in the school books I had as a child. It's a shame fountain pens are slightly too fiddly for every-day use since they still have some real advantages over more modern writing instruments. I've never had a fountain pen fail to produce a line unless out of ink. With ballpoints I feel like they don't work more often than they do.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agoI know that. I had to use fountain pens in early school. It just didn't make sense to me to write cursive with them, for my stated reasons. Regarding fiddlyness of FP vs. BP, I'm not sure. I had cheap GEHAs and Pelikans only, which I 'tuned' by exchanging the tip/feather, that helped with the fealing of 'scratching' when going over paper. Which may not be necessary at all with better FPs, and/or different paper. Never had a problem with leaking ink btw. OTH all of that just went away with using ball pens. OFC there are cheap ones, with the thin, brassy pen refills, which often show what you describe. For me that went away with using Parker and Lamy. I guess that would go for whatever fits into Rotring and Montblanc too. Or the endless options obsessively discussed in fora commited to stuff like this. I just couldn't be bothered so far. My stuff is good enough for me :-) Lamy Unic