Author Topic: We're doomed.  (Read 21846 times)

mtnbkr

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #75 on: March 16, 2017, 03:24:50 PM »
Fistful, I haven't seen an example of cursive writing in the professional world ever.  Not saying it doesn't happen, but in 20 years and 3 companies, I haven't seen any correspondence or comms intended for professional consumption written in cursive.  Moving outside the professional realm, what few handwritten letters I've received, including greeting cards, have all been block writing, even from older folks whom you'd think were well versed in cursive.  I wouldn't say it's in "common use" outside signatures.  It's an artifact of a bygone era when most non-verbal communications were written by hand and the speed and flow of cursive were a benefit to rapid transcription. 

By all means, keep practicing and teach your kids in your own time, but let's replace it with more meaningful instruction in the schools.  Again, I point out a lack of useful instruction in basic life skills.  Kids get out of school not able to balance a checkbook, maintain an automobile, or understand interest rates and loans.

Chris

K Frame

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #76 on: March 16, 2017, 04:41:46 PM »
I don't tolerate that sort of thing in my Org and I insist on peer review of documents and presentations.  This is on top of having our own documentation and compliance team (something I spearheaded I might add).

Chris

You think we do? Everyone on that team went outside of established processes. And the LPM got his ass handed to him when the DCIO for State handed our program manager a bag of male genitalia and told him to eat them.

That, however, is really beside the point.

The point is, that numpty little <obscene gerund> boy genius couldn't conjugate his way out of a paper bag if he were given all of the parts of speech in correct order.

Somehow he got through elementary, middle, and high schools AND got a college degree without knowing that be is a verb. Tell him its an intransitive verb and I bet that he'd wet his pants.
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Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #77 on: March 16, 2017, 04:55:48 PM »
Fistful, I haven't seen an example of cursive writing in the professional world ever. 


I'll have to take that with a grain of salt. Would you even notice which script it was in? I couldn't tell you how often I've seen it. I wouldn't remember. I don't remember precisely because I can read one as well as the other. Because they cruelly beat it into me at school.  =)

I find it hard to believe it's that vanishingly rare in the workplace, considering how many people over the age of 30 are in the workforce, and the vast majority of them were taught cursive in school. You would expect it to crop up now and then. I wouldn't want to be walking around without knowing how to read it.


An interesting article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive
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Hawkmoon

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #78 on: March 16, 2017, 06:12:51 PM »
But you can READ cursive, correct?

The best way to be able to read it is to be able to produce it oneself. The problem is not only that they can't write it, but they can't read it, either.

True only to a point.

I'm already well into being a senior citizen, so my parents were depression-era. My father's cursive handwriting was extremely neat, consistent, and small, but difficult to read. My mother's cursive could not be read by anyone other than my mother.

My late wife was born and educated in South America, and she trained as a designer. Her cursive was obviously the product of someone who was very artistic and creative. It was also illegible.
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Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #79 on: March 16, 2017, 06:35:42 PM »
 I suppose if you stumbled across  a letter written in cursive, it might be unfortunate that you can't read it, but it would be the same as if that letter was written in Sanskrit.  That doesn't imply I should go out and learn Sanskrit, eh?

You're comparing a variation on the English alphabet to learning a new alphabet and language. And you seem to think it's OK for your kids to get an education that wouldn't even enable them to read a letter from Grandma to Grandpa. (I know you'll respond with something about your mom using a type-writer for her correspondence, and your dad using only block printing. Or that they wrote their letters in German. Whatever. It's a hypothetical.)


Kids get out of school not able to balance a checkbook, maintain an automobile, or understand interest rates and loans.

I'd rather my kids focus on the 3 Rs, or learn how to manage a budget, balance a checkbook, or even check the oil on their car before they worry about cursive writing.


If you want to suggest relevant skills that are not anachronistic, balancing a checkbook may not be the best example to use.  =)

It looks like you want primary and secondary education to be more vocational, especially with the talk of automotive maintenance. Do you also want to replace history, music, art, and literature classes with classes on how to maintain one's lawn, or patch a roof? That's not snark. I'm curious.
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mtnbkr

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #80 on: March 16, 2017, 08:30:50 PM »

I'll have to take that with a grain of salt. Would you even notice which script it was in? I couldn't tell you how often I've seen it. I wouldn't remember. I don't remember precisely because I can read one as well as the other. Because they cruelly beat it into me at school.  =)
Yes.  I learned it in elementary school and can still read it.  People just don't write much by hand where I work and when they do, it's stuff scribbled on a whiteboard or notes to themselves. 

I find it hard to believe it's that vanishingly rare in the workplace, considering how many people over the age of 30 are in the workforce, and the vast majority of them were taught cursive in school. You would expect it to crop up now and then. I wouldn't want to be walking around without knowing how to read it.
Most of the people in my office are older (40+).  We did hire a couple millennials last year though.  My previous job had similar demographics.

You're comparing a variation on the English alphabet to learning a new alphabet and language. And you seem to think it's OK for your kids to get an education that wouldn't even enable them to read a letter from Grandma to Grandpa. (I know you'll respond with something about your mom using a type-writer for her correspondence, and your dad using only block printing. Or that they wrote their letters in German. Whatever. It's a hypothetical.)
It's not even a variation on the alphabet since the letters are still the same, just scratched on paper differently.  It would be sad if my kids couldn't read their grandparents' letters, but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.  No, mom didn't use a typewriter and my dad's cursive is quite neat (or was when he was younger).

If you want to suggest relevant skills that are not anachronistic, balancing a checkbook may not be the best example to use.  =)
Whatever the mechanism, people need to learn how to manage their money and balance their accounts.  Mom used to work in a bank and I heard horror stories about young people who had no clue about finance and balancing their accounts. 

It looks like you want primary and secondary education to be more vocational, especially with the talk of automotive maintenance. Do you also want to replace history, music, art, and literature classes with classes on how to maintain one's lawn, or patch a roof? That's not snark. I'm curious.
Not necessarily more vocational, but let's not release students upon the world without basic life skills.  History, art, music, literature are all valuable and work to create a more well-rounded person.  I don't believe a particular style of handwriting meets the same standard.

FWIW, I haven't discounted handwriting in general, just the specific suggestion that cursive is somehow relevant and worthy of students' limited educational cycles where people are not writing most things by hand like they did in decades past.  I'd rather them take another art or music class or fit in an elective.

Chris


 

freakazoid

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #81 on: March 16, 2017, 08:54:07 PM »
There are times when I'll still sit down with a pen and legal pad and write a draft of something...

A story outline, a note to someone, whatever.

When I'm really paying attention to the ideas instead of the the writing, I end up with a very weird mix of cursive AND printed -- often with partial words in both... sometimes a single printed letter in the middle of a written word...



I do that exact thing too when trying to take quick notes.
"so I ended up getting the above because I didn't want to make a whole production of sticking something between my knees and cranking. To me, the cranking on mine is pretty effortless, at least on the coarse setting. Maybe if someone has arthritis or something, it would be more difficult for them." - Ben

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K Frame

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #82 on: March 16, 2017, 08:55:11 PM »
I've been in the workplace longer than Mtnbkr.

More importantly, I've been in the workplace where words are king -- newspapers, American Rifleman magazine, advertising, and for the last nearly 20 years, software, system, and process documentation.

I'm going to agree with him. I literally cannot remember the last time I saw cursive in the workplace, especially not where I've been for the last 18.5 years.

Many people take notes for themselves in notebooks during meetings, and many of those notes are, I would suspect, in cursive. I'd bet an equal number are printed.

But no one, and I mean no one, writes at a professional level in cursive where I work. We're a technical company. People are used to technology, and many of them are scientists, engineers and the like, and for them printing was probably more common than writing for sheer clarity on things like lab reports.

The last time I remember seeing cursive used regularly was when I was with Navy Federal Credit Union in the mid 1990s. We routed mockups in folders with routing lists, and several people almost always wrote notes in the circulation folder in cursive. They had absolutely gorgeous Palmer styles that was perfectly legible. They were also all older, having gone to school in probably the late 1940s/early 1950s. Everyone else printed.

Email and text have virtually replaced handwritten notes. Voice mails. A quick jot on a post it is probably the most people handwrite in a week.
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freakazoid

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #83 on: March 16, 2017, 09:11:32 PM »
By all means, keep practicing and teach your kids in your own time, but let's replace it with more meaningful instruction in the schools.  Again, I point out a lack of useful instruction in basic life skills.  Kids get out of school not able to balance a checkbook, maintain an automobile, or understand interest rates and loans.

Chris

You could, and people do, say that about a lot of things that are taught. I believe someone already mentioned that using grammar as an example. Do you really NEED to know the difference between to and too; you're and your; they're, there, and their; etc., when you can figure out what is meant by context?
You don't have to remove teaching cursive in order to teach those other things. Our school system is for the most part crap. Fix the way the schools teach and you will be able to start giving out an actual education on those basic life skills and other important things like reading an analog clock and cursive. Of course family life also has a big influence on those but I believe that fixing the school system will eventually have a trickle effect on family life, probably one of the reasons why the left is trying to destroy it.
"so I ended up getting the above because I didn't want to make a whole production of sticking something between my knees and cranking. To me, the cranking on mine is pretty effortless, at least on the coarse setting. Maybe if someone has arthritis or something, it would be more difficult for them." - Ben

"I see a rager at least once a week." - brimic

Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #84 on: March 16, 2017, 10:31:22 PM »
It's not even a variation on the alphabet since the letters are still the same, just scratched on paper differently.  It would be sad if my kids couldn't read their grandparents' letters, but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. No, mom didn't use a typewriter and my dad's cursive is quite neat (or was when he was younger).  


No one said it would be the worst thing in the world, but how literate would your children be if they couldn't read what their own grandfather (presumably writing in English) had written? Maybe it wouldn't keep them from succeeding in life, but an education is not just job training, or home economics or automotive maintenance.


Quote
History, art, music, literature are all valuable and work to create a more well-rounded person.  I don't believe a particular style of handwriting meets the same standard.

I disagree, partly because of the benefits of writing in cursive (see the articles that makattak and I have linked to on this), and partly because learning cursive is not just about helping the student learn to write. It is also about teaching them to read the written language of their culture. To deny that cursive is a significant part of that language seems very odd. Even if few are using it today (I've pointed out why that seems doubtful), the documents written in cursive over the past two hundred years shouldn't look like barely-intelligible scribbles to an educated person. (Though I recognize that some of them are barely legible, even if you do know cursive.)
 

The last time I remember seeing cursive used regularly was when I was with Navy Federal Credit Union in the mid 1990s. We routed mockups in folders with routing lists, and several people almost always wrote notes in the circulation folder in cursive.

And if we stopped teaching cursive to grade-school kids today, they'd scratch their heads at records like these - and written in their own language, just 20 years ago!
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mtnbkr

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #85 on: March 17, 2017, 07:08:19 AM »
No one said it would be the worst thing in the world, but how literate would your children be if they couldn't read what their own grandfather (presumably writing in English) had written? Maybe it wouldn't keep them from succeeding in life, but an education is not just job training, or home economics or automotive maintenance.
They would still be literate.  They read English just fine.  We're not talking about language, but script.  What if those letters were written in shorthand (real shorthand as it used to be taught...in schools)?  Also, one can find cursive charts and transcribe the letters.  The letters aren't lost.  If the idea of practical life skills for a modern life offends you, then fill the newly freed time with more math, literature, history, whatever.  Let's just use it for something more enriching than handwriting.  Do you know what they gloss over these days? Spelling.  That, even in today's world of spellcheck everywhere, really grinds my gears.  Why don't we use that time for additional spelling instruction...

I disagree, partly because of the benefits of writing in cursive (see the articles that makattak and I have linked to on this), and partly because learning cursive is not just about helping the student learn to write. It is also about teaching them to read the written language of their culture. To deny that cursive is a significant part of that language seems very odd. Even if few are using it today (I've pointed out why that seems doubtful), the documents written in cursive over the past two hundred years shouldn't look like barely-intelligible scribbles to an educated person. (Though I recognize that some of them are barely legible, even if you do know cursive.)
I read the article and the large point was not the benefits of cursive, but of handwriting in general.  Without using cursive, I can read the language of our culture just fine.  We're reading this, right? 

And if we stopped teaching cursive to grade-school kids today, they'd scratch their heads at records like these - and written in their own language, just 20 years ago!
You're assuming the records in question were written in a standard script, correctly, and still legible.  One of problems with cursive IMO is that people tend to develop their own style and not all letters are "to spec".  Even to someone who can read/write cursive, there's no guarantee someone's writing is legible.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be learned, but I'd leave it up to the student (student being loosely defined as someone who learns, not necessarily a child in school).  Plenty of folks self-teach or seek out learning on their own.  Let's use the educational cycles for other subjects that have greater relevance.

Chris

K Frame

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #86 on: March 17, 2017, 07:24:05 AM »
"And if we stopped teaching cursive to grade-school kids today, they'd scratch their heads at records like these - and written in their own language, just 20 years ago!"

Hardly records of importance. In fact, those "records" were trashed once the comments contained therein were addressed. There wasn't some huge room at Navy Federal were those notes were kept for posterity because someone thought that "I don't like the use of Pantone 130 U here..." was a vital business record requiring preservation.

Both Chris and I have provided concrete observations about the lack of use of cursive writing in today's workplace.

You've been able to provide no tangible examples where cursive writing is an ongoing and important part of the workforce, any job sector, any company, or any job other than the highly specialized role of a caligrapher creating specialized documents such as awards and wedding invitations. And even there the capabilities of today's computer programs are making calligraphy obsolete.

I think there are other, valid, and very important reasons for schools to teach cursive writing -- discipline, eye-hand coordination, precision, concentration -- but its manifest necessity and vitality in the smooth functioning of today's business world is NOT one of them, no matter what you theorize, and no matter how little to no evidence you provide to the contrary.
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Hawkmoon

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #87 on: March 17, 2017, 07:29:45 AM »

No one said it would be the worst thing in the world, but how literate would your children be if they couldn't read what their own grandfather (presumably writing in English) had written? Maybe it wouldn't keep them from succeeding in life, but an education is not just job training, or home economics or automotive maintenance.


In fairness, when my mother died my brother and I found in her closet a box of letters written by our great-grandfather. They were, of course, in cursive, but the cursive of more than 100 years in the then-past. We never found anyone who could decipher more than an occasional word in any of the letters.
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K Frame

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #88 on: March 17, 2017, 07:54:33 AM »
As part of my history degree at Dickinson, our one class was required to transcribe a number of letters held in the special collections room at the college library.

One of my letters was from John Dickinson, one of the lesser and a bit more reluctant Founding Fathers (and for whom the school is named), and another was by Andrew Curtain, governor of Pennsylvania during the Civil War.

Both letters were of a more personal nature, but talked about broader subjects -- in Dickinson's case it was a discussion of Britain's Declaratory Act. That turned out to be a damned important letter because it provided a LOT of insight into themes that Dickinson would later expand on in his Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer. But, not really germane to this discussion...

Both of those letters were gold-plated sons of bitches to read/decipher.

Because, as Chris noted, an individual's cursive writing, over time, moves farther and farther from the formalized, written script we're taught as children to a far more personal script that normally involves any number of shortcuts, sometimes to the point of becoming something damned close to a personal shorthand.
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cordex

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #89 on: March 17, 2017, 10:21:32 AM »



Seems like there might be some benefit in being able to at minimum read script.  I rarely write in it intentionally (as opposed to accidentally falling into it when writing quickly), but I'm glad I can read it.

As to "they shouldn't teach cursive, they should teach <something important>!"  I'm no stalwart defender of cursive instruction as a necessary component of education, but seriously?  Do you believe that teaching cursive takes really takes so much instruction time that it displaces other important educational opportunities?  Do you have faith that our public education system will in fact replace cursive instruction time with useful life skills?

mtnbkr

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #90 on: March 17, 2017, 10:35:56 AM »
http://i.imgur.com/V8qyAVz.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QjPETKr.jpg
I have copies of each as books, no need for script. :)

Seems like there might be some benefit in being able to at minimum read script.  I rarely write in it intentionally (as opposed to accidentally falling into it when writing quickly), but I'm glad I can read it.
Agree.

As to "they shouldn't teach cursive, they should teach <something important>!"  I'm no stalwart defender of cursive instruction as a necessary component of education, but seriously?  Do you believe that teaching cursive takes really takes so much instruction time that it displaces other important educational opportunities?  Do you have faith that our public education system will in fact replace cursive instruction time with useful life skills?
They don't spend a whole lot of time these days, but when I was in school, it was pretty extensive instruction.  No, I don't have faith in the public schools to teach anything else to a high standard, but one can hope.

Chris

cordex

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #91 on: March 17, 2017, 10:44:02 AM »
They don't spend a whole lot of time these days, but when I was in school, it was pretty extensive instruction.  No, I don't have faith in the public schools to teach anything else to a high standard, but one can hope.
I'm only a little younger than you and we only had significant cursive instruction in early elementary.  In later elementary and middle school we were graded on handwriting but it is not as though cursive took any significant instruction time.  Certainly not in later years where life skills might be more readily taught.

K Frame

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #92 on: March 17, 2017, 10:59:55 AM »
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are interesting, but really not all that applicable to this conversation as those examples aren't written in a true cursive, but in an engrossment script that is more akin to calligraphy, and which was done by specially trained engrossers.

Engrossers were either employed by, or were often themselves, printers.

The Continental Congress had a scribe, Charles Thompson, whose assistant, Timothy Matlack, was an engrosser. It's believe that it was Matlack who engrossed the Declaration for signature.

It's believed that Jacob Shallus engrossed the Constitution. He wasn't employed by Congress, but was hired independently.

If you look at both the Constitution and Declaration together, you see that the letter forms are similar, not exactly the same, but similar, in much the same way that families of fonts are similar. That's because engrossing focused on very specific, structured, word forms and didn't allow for the development of the personalized "shorthand" writing of the kind that Chris talks about.
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cordex

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #93 on: March 17, 2017, 11:27:46 AM »
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are interesting, but really not all that applicable to this conversation as those examples aren't written in a true cursive, but in an engrossment script that is more akin to calligraphy, and which was done by specially trained engrossers.
;/  We can read them because we learned how to read cursive script.

K Frame

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #94 on: March 17, 2017, 11:37:56 AM »
I suspect that anyone could read them, whether they learned cursive script or not, and that's credit to the precision of the word forms.

That said, just how many hundreds of cursive written documents do you expect a child or young adult to encounter in every day life these days?

How many do YOU encounter in everyday life? In a week, a month, a year?

I'm guessing that for virtually everyone here the numbers are going to be along the lines of 0, 0, 1.

Obviously, then, because today's children may, at some undefined and increasingly unlikely point in their lives may encounter a document written in script, we need to include cursive reading skills as one of the foundation core units of modern education.

It's a skill whose importance is right up there with the ability to estimate bushel yield per acre, how to shoe a horse, and how to fire a steam locomotive.
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MechAg94

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #95 on: March 17, 2017, 12:04:55 PM »
Our kids are in grade school for 12 years.  More than that if you count pre-school and college for some.  Is there really so much we have to teach our kids that we can't do it in 12 years?  IMO, there is a lot of BS we could drop such as social studies.  I would simply say that basic English and grammar are more important than what type of handwriting you use, but that should already be taught.  

I went to 12 years of grade school and was able to learn all that.  Some kids did poorly, some did better.  Most all of the kids who were college bound did decent at basic English.  Kids who make it through college without that either cheated or were given a pass at some point. 
« Last Edit: March 17, 2017, 12:17:37 PM by MechAg94 »
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MechAg94

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #96 on: March 17, 2017, 12:18:58 PM »
I had a English classes (including college English) where we had to write an essay in the class on paper and turn it in before we left.  I guess they do that on the computer now if they do it at all.
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K Frame

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #97 on: March 17, 2017, 01:08:07 PM »
I had a English classes (including college English) where we had to write an essay in the class on paper and turn it in before we left.  I guess they do that on the computer now if they do it at all.

I suspect that some of the students in your class printed their essays.

When I was in college we still had in class exams that required writing in blue books, while other exams were taken home essay/writing assignments that were normally done on typewriter or the PDP or VAX mainframe or, later in my college career, on the DEC Rainbow desktops that the college bought. The rainbows were crap, but they had FANTASTIC keyboards. I could type better than 120 words a minute on those things.
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Marnoot

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #98 on: March 17, 2017, 01:46:09 PM »
Similar to what Hawkmoon said, sometimes I spend some time volunteering to index names out of old 1800's census records, ship manifests, etc. and despite me being able read and write cursive, much of the time I can't make heads or tails of the script. Even much more recent records can be nigh-or-completely-illegible due to the style of script used. So learning cursive doesn't guarantee being able to read an old letter/whatever.

The only times I use cursive are the exceedingly-rare times I'm jotting down notes with pen and paper, rather than my work laptop. If I'm writing something down for someone else's consumption I use block letters because my particular style of impatient-cursive is illegible to anyone but myself. When the move to eliminate cursive in schools started a few years ago, I was against it. But the more I've thought on it the more I agree it's an outdated skill that while yes, may (very) occasionally still be useful, is less important than some other skills like those mtnbkr has listed.

Nothing stopping parents from teaching it to their kids if they wish, I may do so with my own kids specifically to enable them a bit more literacy in reading old records in genealogical endeavors, but how common is that need? I think time in school could be better spent learning things like basic financial literacy, etc., than in learning cursive.

RevDisk

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #99 on: March 17, 2017, 03:32:38 PM »

If cursive lapses into history, I'll count that as a win on many fronts. The biggest being while print can be not legible, cursive is RARELY legible to anyone other than the writer. Even then, it can be iffy. 
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