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Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

nautil.us

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Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#41

Post by delinka »

ghaff wrote: post #17
gruez wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"preventing identity theft" (via cursive signatures) lol. as if banks (and other institutions likely to get hit by fraud) do signature checks.

Surprisingly, institutions do at least sometimes check that there's something on the signature line. I had a car registration renewal returned recently because I forgot to sign it. Given that my signature is a totally illegible scrawl, I don't see what good it does but we still pretend that what might as well be just an "X" for a lot of people actually means something.

And it can indeed be just an X. It displays intent. You placed a scrawl on the line to signify your intent to agree to/abide by whatever's on the paper. Without that intent, they assume you made a mistake.

I think it's better than blindly taking any paperwork without "signatures" on them.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#42

Post by markshead »

grzm wrote: post #35
markshead wrote: post #31

There is probably some value in being able to read the original founding documents of your government. In the United States those are written in cursive.

Reading and writing are two different skills. I can read a variety of different calligraphy styles, for example, but would be hard-pressed to reproduce them well.

Normally the way people learn to read cursive is by having some exposure to writing it. Most kids who haven't learned to write cursive can't read it. But I agree with your overall point. Kids could probably learn to read cursive with significantly less effort than what is required to write it.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#43

Post by icebraining »

cordite wrote: post #32
gruez wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"preventing identity theft" (via cursive signatures) lol. as if banks (and other institutions likely to get hit by fraud) do signature checks.

What about teaching it (EDIT: making a signature) as an art form, for the soul purpose of creating something unique? (EDIT: not necessarily cursive)

But then why cursive, and not any other of the millions forms of art?

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#44

Post by takk309 »

I was taught manuscript print first and then cursive. I went through grade school in the 90's so keyboards and computers where not common. We did not have a keyboarding class until 6th grade. As far as handwriting went, I had very sloppy handwriting. If I really focused, I could make my handwriting legible but it caused me wrist pain from over gripping my pencil. Later in life I realized that a thicker pencil was the solution.

Now days I write almost exclusively in cursive. Through school I found that cursive characters were easier to differentiate from numbers in math (a five and lowercase "s" look very similar when I write them, for example). After that I just stayed in the habit of writing in cursive. I don't believe it is superior or inferior, it is just what I like.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#45

Post by ghaff »

delinka wrote: post #41
ghaff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly, institutions do at least sometimes check that there's something on the signature line. I had a car registration renewal returned recently because I forgot to sign it. Given that my signature is a totally illegible scrawl, I don't see what good it does but we still pretend that what might as well be just an "X" for a lot of people actually means something.

And it can indeed be just an X. It displays intent. You placed a scrawl on the line to signify your intent to agree to/abide by whatever's on the paper. Without that intent, they assume you made a mistake. I think it's better than blindly taking any paperwork without "signatures" on them.

That's fair. It is something of an indication that "Yep. This is final." It's a bit silly in the case of a check that you have mailed but it's not a completely unreasonable practice in general.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#46

Post by Pulcinella »

icebraining wrote: post #43
cordite wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about teaching it (EDIT: making a signature) as an art form, for the soul purpose of creating something unique? (EDIT: not necessarily cursive)

But then why cursive, and not any other of the millions forms of art?

Yes. Even in handwriting there are more forms than just D’Nealian or Palmer cursive. Why not Spencerian, Fraktur, or Carolingian?

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#47

Post by ghaff »

Symbiote wrote: post #36

Can an American give an example image showing a child's cursive handwriting, as is it taught there? The picture at the top of the article is only about 50% like the handwriting I was taught in the UK. I was taught something like this [1] (11 year old, England) except without the curly bits before the first letter of each word. [1] http://stanthonys.herts.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/hw...

The Palmer method was the standard system taught in the US when I learned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#48

Post by Angostura »

> But the teachers declared he wasn’t ready because he can’t yet write in cursive.

> To me this symbolizes all that is wrong with the strange obsession shared in many countries about how children learn to write.

That sounds like absolutely what happened. By all means write an article on the pros and cons of cursive, but don't the article with a ludicrous straw man.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#49

Post by ghaff »

crazygringo wrote: post #20

> So was cursive faster than manuscript? No, it was slower. But fastest of all was a personalized mixture of cursive and manuscript developed spontaneously by pupils around the fourth to fifth grade. Even in France, a quarter of the French pupils who were taught cursive exclusively and were still mostly using it in the fourth grade, had largely abandoned it for a mixed style by the fifth grade. I was shocked at how c…

Arguably, if you want people to be able to write quickly, you'd teach shorthand or at least some simplified version thereof. In general journalists, who still often take handwritten notes for various reasons, develop their own idiosyncratic sets of abbreviations and notations to let them take accurate notes/quotes quickly.
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