Kansas may halt cursive education

[Doclector]

Handwriting is important, and will continue to be important.

However, the notion that everyone must be taught to write in one specific way was always stupid. I remember how stupidly specific you're asked to be. It's absurd, I can't believe someone didn't realise how stupid it is earlier.

 

[Syzygy23]

Along with cursive, let's make sure the pendulum doesn't swing the other way at the same time. Prohibit and punish 1337 speak. It has no place in an academic setting.

Ugh. Yes, definitely agreed.

I was in high school 2002-2006. One of the English teachers really loved the idea of peer editing for research papers, so I got to see a lot of the things my classmates wrote. Multiple of them regularly used internet slang, abbreviations, and acronyms in their writing. The worst part is that even if I pointed these out as errors, the teacher wouldn't count them as long as she knew what was meant.

Ridiculous.

Man, your teacher was LAZY. Probably already had tenure.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I don't think cursive was EVER useful. "Let's waste time better spent on anything else, and teach you children the equivalent of an alternate FONT for PRINTED writing that no one has used seriously since probably before WW1."

Typing skills are definitely the way to go. I took typing in high school, as well as several times in earlier schooling it was instructed to me. I still can't type very well. I mean I can do it pretty fast and quite accurately, far quicker than I could write the equivalent. Though I am flicking my eyes from the keys to the screen equally the entire time and only using my left middle finger, right thumb, and right index/middle fingers to do it.

I could touch type, but it would involve me hitting backspace way more often. Hitting anything with my pinkies isn't happening. Mine are practically vestigial as I use them for nothing really and they have like no strength whatsoever in them.

I use cursive in my signature, which is sad as I was as a kid under the impression that was required. Nope, in fact its encouraged to not make your signature entirely legible/easily forgeable by having classically perfect and correct penmanship.

If I wanted to sign my name with a Ariel fingering Belle I'd be well within my rights.

Well probably not that, but if I did some random loops and a line or a dot over some of them maybe.

I liked the other universe on Fringe. No one used pens of paper because everyone had their own personal tablet device.

 

[Paflick]

I'm not sure if this was mentioned earlier in the thread, because I didn't read through all the posts, but I found something pretty amusing the other day. I was taking a test, and there was a section where you had to write out that you agreed to not cheat, stuff like that.

The weird part? You had to do it in cursive. Now, I haven't used cursive since fourth grade, so I had to wing it for the most part, just connect the letters. It was extremely annoying, and took me three times as long as it should have.

OT though, I see no problem with getting rid of cursive education. Just make sure the kids know how to sign their names and it should be fine.

 

[surg3n]

It's the whole world, except the place where that actual language originated.

Don't you people get tired of dumbing down everything?
Is it a good idea to encourage people to write like children?

Seriously, if someone can't write joint-up they are widely considered to be fucking stupid. The rest of the world is wrong. Also, joined up, adult handwriting is still popular in Ireland, Scotland, Wales as well as England - you know, those bits of countries that are nearby or stuck to England. How do you people actually write?, block capitals?, little curly letters like kids?, can someone please give me an example of how you guys are using pens these days.

We aren't talking about caligraphy here guys, we're talking about a skill that anyone over the age of 12 should be able to master.

 

[Anget Colslaw]

Just about every UK response here is honestly hilarious.

 

[Terminate421]

I think this is needed:

 

[sethisjimmy]

It's the whole world, except the place where that actual language originated.

Don't you people get tired of dumbing down everything?
Is it a good idea to encourage people to write like children?

Seriously, if someone can't write joint-up they are widely considered to be fucking stupid. The rest of the world is wrong. Also, joined up, adult handwriting is still popular in Ireland, Scotland, Wales as well as England - you know, those bits of countries that are nearby or stuck to England. How do you people actually write?, block capitals?, little curly letters like kids?, can someone please give me an example of how you guys are using pens these days.

We aren't talking about caligraphy here guys, we're talking about a skill that anyone over the age of 12 should be able to master.

But it's a useless skill. Anybody can write cursive, it's simple. The question is, does it provide any real advantage to writing? I don't think so. It's not "dumbing" handwriting down because it's debatable that there even was an advantage to start with. Printed lettering is far more widely used and recognized nowadays.

 

[surg3n]

In the UK, everybody uses cursive, or joined-up handwriting. It's not useless, it's a standard. I can write joined-up about twice as fast as I can write printed/block capitals.

I guess one other factor might be that it's not an actual class in the UK, it's part of English, like by the time we hit secondary school we're expected to write joined-up. If it's a standard in every class, it's a necessity, everyone uses it - then it is difficult to see how people can just abandon it in other countries . Hell, I'm still pissed at you guys dropping U's and switching Z's and S's!.

 

[Bestival]

Then laugh, for I am that exactly.
Seriously, I write like a 3 year old, even my signature is different EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

I recently actually tried to get back into writing cursive, to see if my handwriting was any better that way... It isn't, the only difference is that now it looks like a 3 year old wrote it, and it's unintelligible.

 

[DugMachine]

In the UK, everybody uses cursive, or joined-up handwriting. It's not useless, it's a standard. I can write joined-up about twice as fast as I can write printed/block capitals.

I guess one other factor might be that it's not an actual class in the UK, it's part of English, like by the time we hit secondary school we're expected to write joined-up. If it's a standard in every class, it's a necessity, everyone uses it - then it is difficult to see how people can just abandon it in other countries . Hell, I'm still pissed at you guys dropping U's and switching Z's and S's!.

Funny that a few people from the UK have said they hardly use "joined writing" or cursive as we call it in the states. Had no idea you spoke for the entirety of the UK. ALL HAIL THE KING

 

[Dense_Electric]

What's necessary is some basic, legible writing ability. If that's print, fine. If it's cursive, fine. But teaching one, then teaching the other on top of it is a complete waste of time. That time could be far better utilized learning to type, which is what I encounter 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time, I write much faster in simple print (I don't pick my pencil/pen up completely so I do get some joining lines, but it's not true cursive). Whatever works for you. But it's superfluous to require learning both, especially when once you reach adulthood, you're only ever going to use one or the other on the increasingly rare occasions that you do have to write something by hand.

 

[Ironside]

In the UK, everybody uses cursive, or joined-up handwriting. It's not useless, it's a standard. I can write joined-up about twice as fast as I can write printed/block capitals.

I guess one other factor might be that it's not an actual class in the UK, it's part of English, like by the time we hit secondary school we're expected to write joined-up. If it's a standard in every class, it's a necessity, everyone uses it - then it is difficult to see how people can just abandon it in other countries . Hell, I'm still pissed at you guys dropping U's and switching Z's and S's!.

Funny that a few people from the UK have said they hardly use "joined writing" or cursive as we call it in the states. Had no idea you spoke for the entirety of the UK. ALL HAIL THE KING

Well he damn well does speak for a large majority of the UK. Cursive writing as it is called in the States is just called writing here - virtually everyone writes like that and those who don't are either very young children or possibly have some kind of brain impairment. I must admit i didn't actually know until this thread that you guys across the atlantic have such a problem with joining your letters up - it must take you forever to make notes especially in lectures and whatnot where you have to get a lot down quickly.

 

[Dense_Electric]

I must admit i didn't actually know until this thread that you guys across the atlantic have such a problem with joining your letters up - it must take you forever to make notes especially in lectures and whatnot where you have to get a lot down quickly.

You know what's true for you isn't true for the whole world, right? You know how you've been writing your letters joined for your entire life, and so it would be much slower for you to write them separated? Well some of us have been writing our letters separate for our entire lives, and so it would be much slower for us to write them joined. I could find fast and slow writers of both styles of writing in virtually any country which uses the Latin alphabet. There is no "fast" or "slow" style of writing, it's the person. Perspective.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Man, your teacher was LAZY. Probably already had tenure.

Incredibly lazy. The sad thing is that most of my high school's teachers were pretty bad, because the school only hired ones that were fresh out of college since they didn't have to be paid as much.

There were some really good ones, sure. But most of them... ugh. From my understanding, my school's turn-over rate for teachers even today is sickening. Most only seem to stay for a year or so before they quit or are replaced. It's not really an environment that promotes anything beyond laziness and resentment from the teachers.

I actually wanted to be a teacher at one point, until I saw how my school district treated them. It completely killed all desire to follow that path.

 

[Whitbane]

Efficient enough at both, doesn't suck to be me!
But yeah, cursive is something that's not really necessary anymore. Maybe you can learn to write your name in that style, but anything else is not needed. Typing skills are more prevalent and much more important in today's society.

 

[SquidVicious]

Besides signing my name in cursive, I really don't use it for anything. In fact I can't even remember how the entire alphabet is suppose to look. In 4th grade my teacher was pretty draconian about it and made us write everything in cursive, but from 5th grade onwards it's been either print or typed.

 

[Ryotknife]

Meh, cursive takes a lot out of my hands. I cannot write in cursive for very long before they start to cramp up.

Although, as an engineer I SHOULD be using....I dunno what they call it....engineering writing? Not as popular as it used to be. Basically you write all your letters like capital letters, but the lower case letters are smaller. It is suppose to eliminate terrible hand writing.

 

[WanderingFool]

I will laugh at the day when people are so used to computer typing for written work that when in some strange situation, they are force to use cursive writing, their hand writing will be awful!

While I do agree that cursive are being less these days but I do feel they hold some important heritage wise.

Hell, my handwriting is horrible, and I had 3 years of learning cursive and 4 years of being forced to use it.

I dont even think typing is all the important now and days.

 

[DugMachine]

Well he damn well does speak for a large majority of the UK. Cursive writing as it is called in the States is just called writing here - virtually everyone writes like that and those who don't are either very young children or possibly have some kind of brain impairment. I must admit i didn't actually know until this thread that you guys across the atlantic have such a problem with joining your letters up - it must take you forever to make notes especially in lectures and whatnot where you have to get a lot down quickly.

I don't get how you're not seeing this.

-Write in joined lettering almost your whole life = fast at said joined letters

-Write in print almost your whole life = fast at print

And people claim the states are in their own little world and that the world revolves around them *eye roll*.