Kansas may halt cursive education

[DaWaffledude]

I (unlike may people it seems) never actually reverted to print once I started writing in cursive. By the time it stopped being enforced on me I was kinda just used to it. Huh.

 

[mysecondlife]

I always write lowercase s in cursive whenever its the last letter of word. Little habit that I picked up.

I had fond memory of learning cursive. My teacher would pour foamy shavingcream or some sort on our desk, tell us to gently lather it across the table and tell us to practice using our index finger. Good times.

proper handwritting is an art! Silly America

Dude, its Kansas. Its a state that Americans forget it exists.

 

[scorptatious]

Meh. I don't really use cursive writing much beyond signatures. So...

 

[Plinglebob]

UK here.

Cursive or 'joined up writing' as we call it here is definitely the norm, so much so that I can't actually recall reading anything hand written recently that was not.

It's so engrained to me that I actually struggle printing my name on documents, I simply don't naturally write like that and it's an effort to do so.

I'm exactly the same. I learned "joined up" handwriting when I was about 6 or 7 and have always used it ever since. I have known a few people who write in print (all in capitals as well oddly enough) but I just found that slow and tedious compared to cursive which was just tedious. The only kids who wrote in print all the way up to when I left finished A levels in 2003 were those considered "Special". For everyone else, it had to be cursive or typed

Also you people from the UK, so condescending.

National past-time.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

some of theses people are gonna meet a harsh reality when they hit that university professor who only accepts work written in cursive and who only writes in it, there always is one...

Holy crap, a time traveler from the past! How are you sir and what decade do you hail from?

I kid, I kid, but really, in America anyways this is *never* going to be an issue. Teachers usually like written assignments to be typed, and if they do allow handwritten stuff they sure as hell don't care about the handwriting style.

Besides, if an American university Professor ever required this, then they would have to teach it because I promise most of their students wouldn't be able to. I highly doubt they would even be allowed to make that a requirement.

 

[Loonyyy]

Actually, I do look at the keys when I type. Not because I can't type without doing so, but because I just do it faster this way.

ie, from what you're saying I can surmise that you could "Touch-type", though you prefer to look at the keys, which is not what I was saying (As I elaborated with the hide-and-seek referral).

I'm talking about the people who have to look at the keyboard and find letters individually, and can't type easily. You've probably seen them "Now where's the s key gone." It's almost an inevitability if you're helping parents or grandparents with computers. They can barely type at all, really.

Personally I prefer to see the output of what I'm typing, but whatever floats your boat.

 

[kanyewhite]

My problem is, typing classes don't really work. Kids are stubborn. I cheated my way through typing while the teacher wasn't looking. Sure, I started to type on my own when a couple of years later, but teaching kids to type and write in cursive is a waste of time. MAke them lear more math and science. America is falling behind fast, and learning how to type won't fix it.

 

[kanyewhite]

My problem is, typing classes don't really work. Kids are stubborn. I cheated my way through typing while the teacher wasn't looking. Sure, I started to type on my own when a couple of years later, but teaching kids to type and write in cursive is a waste of time. MAke them lear more math and science. America is falling behind fast, and learning how to type won't fix it.

 

[kanyewhite]

My problem is, typing classes don't really work. Kids are stubborn. I cheated my way through typing while the teacher wasn't looking. Sure, I started to type on my own when a couple of years later, but teaching kids to type and write in cursive is a waste of time. MAke them lear more math and science. America is falling behind fast, and learning how to type won't fix it.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

The only thing I have ever had to do is sign my name in cursive and even that you can pretty much write whatever the fuck you want as long as your consistent about it.

Take cursive out and get kids typing. We have kids born AFTER the internet boom who still type with their indexes at 35 wpm. Its sad.

You seem to be forgetting that the keyboards have been around a lot less than mass writing has, and that kids who were born after the internet born are just shy of being in puberty/ slightly over right now.

I use cursive mostly, although I don't join up all the words, I write in my own style really which has just evolved from everyone acknowledging that English classes were mostly bullshit, hell, I learnt more about paragraph structure and writing good answers from History GCSE than I did English.

 

[Locke_Cole]

The only thing I have ever had to do is sign my name in cursive and even that you can pretty much write whatever the fuck you want as long as your consistent about it.

Take cursive out and get kids typing. We have kids born AFTER the internet boom who still type with their indexes at 35 wpm. Its sad.

You seem to be forgetting that the keyboards have been around a lot less than mass writing has, and that kids who were born after the internet born are just shy of being in puberty/ slightly over right now.

I use cursive mostly, although I don't join up all the words, I write in my own style really which has just evolved from everyone acknowledging that English classes were mostly bullshit, hell, I learnt more about paragraph structure and writing good answers from History GCSE than I did English.

The web took off publicly in the early 90s, making "kids who were born after the internet" around 20...Not being shy of puberty.

 

[Olrod]

In school we were taught to write with joined-up letters as standard. Writing each letter individually is considered to be something only small children do.

Only in America can they regard something as ordinary as writing without needing to stop-start all the time as something "special" and call it cursive.

 

[J Tyran]

Just a thought I had, some people have mentioned that it will only ever be useful for signatures. Even that will be dead soon, documents will need biometric signatures like a thumbprint or maybe all documents will be digital and devices will have retina scans for signatures.

Imagine it you fill out your document on a phone, tablet or PC, use the built in camera to take a retina scan and it attaches to the document. Then you use either NFC to hand it over to someone there and then (if you didn't use their device to fill it in) or perhaps there will be cheap disposable data transfer formats like a microSD of a few KB with built in RF features so no need to plug anything in, just swipe it over a reader. Although why you wouldn't just send it over the internet I don't know, little disposable data chips could come in handy though.

Fuck it, writing and paper will die in developed countries soon enough.

 

[Locke_Cole]

In school we were taught to write with joined-up letters as standard. Writing each letter individually is considered to be something only small children do.

Only in America can they regard something as ordinary as writing without needing to stop-start all the time as something "special" and call it cursive.

It's not ordinary though as most languages do not connect entire words into one long swirly line. And again, as mentioned over and over in this thread...It's not just America, it's the majority of the world with the exception of England and parts (yes, only parts) of Australia.

Also cursive is a word in the Oxford dictionary, it's not something Americans arbitrarily made up.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

The only thing I have ever had to do is sign my name in cursive and even that you can pretty much write whatever the fuck you want as long as your consistent about it.

Take cursive out and get kids typing. We have kids born AFTER the internet boom who still type with their indexes at 35 wpm. Its sad.

You seem to be forgetting that the keyboards have been around a lot less than mass writing has, and that kids who were born after the internet born are just shy of being in puberty/ slightly over right now.

I use cursive mostly, although I don't join up all the words, I write in my own style really which has just evolved from everyone acknowledging that English classes were mostly bullshit, hell, I learnt more about paragraph structure and writing good answers from History GCSE than I did English.

The web took off publicly in the early 90s, making "kids who were born after the internet" around 20...Not being shy of puberty.

Even if they were just hitting puberty I was typing 80wpm at 14. Granted I did embrace computers like they were my religion, but still kids still take computer classes I assume?

 

[Kargathia]

Cursive is still a thing?

I remember being told that I had to 'graduate' to joined writing in year 3 & 4, but after that I went straight back to print. Its 1000% more legible [And whilst normally this would be an exaggeration, for me its not], and for me faster too; I don't have to worry about where each letter joins to, whether I can read what I just wrote, or any other number of things. I just write one word, slightly lift my pencil, and move it to the starting position of the next word.

At the same time, I think typing classes are pointless too.

My school tried to teach me touch typing one time with the fastest typing teacher in the school. I never listened to her, and just typed the way I always have. When she called me up on it, I told her I didn't need to place my fingers in certain positions to know where all the keys are, I knew from experience. To try and prove to me I was wrong, she challenged me to type out some sentence faster than she could. I did. Touch typing may help some people, but IMO a subconscious knowledge of the keyboard not tied to certain positions of your hands is more important.
I normally rest all my fingers on the spacebar as its a nice, relaxed position, and I have no need to place my fingers in certain positions to know where the keys are - if anything trying to do so slows me down. I just move my hands to wherever they need to be. If I'm typing predominantly on one side of the keyboard, my hands will both be more over that side, but thanks to the QWERTY layout they're generally pretty evenly distributed. I never look at the keyboard, and make no mistakes whilst typing unless I let my brain get ahead of my fingers, and start typing 3-4 letters ahead by accident. Typing lessons, IMO, should just be getting people to constantly type at a keyboard and write up large blocks of text, or play lots of keyboard intensive games so that they subconsciously learn the layout of the keyboard, 'cause that's a useful skill to have sometimes.

A suggestion which would have roughly the same result as the current method, but be much, much more labour intensive. The current method teaches the same proficiency (blind typing) faster to one unaccustomed to doing so, and is therefore the better pedagogic method.

 

[Calibanbutcher]

I think cursive should carry on (wayward son). Writing in cursive is faster and more efficient than printing when it comes to expressing what's on your mind, and it looks fine so long as you don't have wacky spaz hands. Many a magnum opus has been penned in cursive, and it was used to answer many questions of my childhood without any real problems. Cursive is one of those miracles out of nowhere, and it should be preserved.

Carry on my friend, for you are truly a stellar example of humour and cleverness. Everyone else's opinion is but dust in the wind.
And about cursive:
Can I tell you that bringing it back will only lead to mysteries and mayhem down the road, so we should stop chasing shadows and accept the change, because face it, the past is a lonely street lined by broken windows and what seems like diamonds and pearls to us in the rear view mirror is but the remainder of desperate times and the warm glow that tints our memories might stem from a house on fire.
So we should all remember that we're not alone anymore on this world, for globalisation has brought closer many cultures and civilizations and we all live under one big sky. So let's forget the ghosts of the past and realize that we can't cry anymore.
Because change happens and not accepting that will have us left behind, down the road in a lonely street.

Ok, that was a true tour de force, so have fun.