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Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

nautil.us

111–120 of 150 posts

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#111
post #32
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)

That seriously takes some control over one's own handwriting before it is really possible. Artful lettering has its own learning curve. Plus I'm not sure this is going to have benefits over any other sort of art training.

Additionally, I think this bypasses the real goal of writing - you need writing to be both efficient and legible to others as a base function. This is why hand-written notes to myself often are sloppy and without sentence structure, notes shared with others generally meet the above, and sometimes my writing is pretty and nearly typeface, with the "a" and the "g" written as it appears here. I think folks really need just that middle level of writing. I mostly do the pretty stuff so I can occasionally use it in artwork if I so choose.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#112

Reading these comments makes me wonder if there is something wrong with US cursive or the way it was taught. I learned cursive in first grade GDR and continued school in Austria where we had to (and enjoyed) writing copious essays weekly over and over again. It's actually amazing to watch the penmanship shift over those years and develop into a idiosyncratic style or to see the speed and form impacted by topic, time…

I agree that it is good to learn skills for their own sake. But do you really think that cursive is actually good at communicating information? If people find it difficult to write legibly then it is not really achieving that goal. I found cursive a constant problem at school that made the teacher obsess about presentation rather than content. And as an adult I find it hard to read peoples idiosyncratic scrawl. Text should be easy to read, that is the most important thing.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#113

I'm surprised that I didn't see hand fatigue mentioned, which is probably the number one reason cursive is actually useful, not that it is fast or "aided in cognitive development". Business scripts (like Spencerian in the early 20th c) were developed if you were Clerk or someone who had to scribe stuff out for hours on end, and it had to be legible and consistent. The mechanics of it are quite simple. If you hold a p…

I had many teachers who insisted on cursive, and none of them were half as lucid as you were just now.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#116

I'm surprised that I didn't see hand fatigue mentioned, which is probably the number one reason cursive is actually useful, not that it is fast or "aided in cognitive development". Business scripts (like Spencerian in the early 20th c) were developed if you were Clerk or someone who had to scribe stuff out for hours on end, and it had to be legible and consistent. The mechanics of it are quite simple. If you hold a p…

I know zero people who write in cursive. I know very few people who even hand write anything.

I know few people who read anything worthwhile too, but that's not an argument.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#117
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a check rejected at the bank. My signature didn't match the card on file closely enough, so they sort of put me through the ringer before they cashed it. Wasn't even a lot of money.

You got lucky. Bank managers will have clerks randomly pick a stack of checks and reject them so their clients feel like there's some auditing going on.

That sounds like an old wives tale.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#118
post #17
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.

In China, your signature usually has to be legible. I've got funny looks in the bank for apparently scribbling all over the signature field.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#119

I'm surprised that I didn't see hand fatigue mentioned, which is probably the number one reason cursive is actually useful, not that it is fast or "aided in cognitive development". Business scripts (like Spencerian in the early 20th c) were developed if you were Clerk or someone who had to scribe stuff out for hours on end, and it had to be legible and consistent. The mechanics of it are quite simple. If you hold a p…

> you write by moving your whole arm

Which f*cking nobody properly teaches or bothers to mention (at least where I was studying). The problem with cursive is not the cursive itself but incompetent teachers who don't know how to write. Add to it mid 20 century style of teaching forcing students to write tens of pages of notes each lesson for 16 years, all the time doing it wrong, with fingers only, and you get a population of people who can only scrawl something unintelligible on paper. I'm forced to write in separate letters when doing notes because otherwise it is too embarrassing.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#120
post #75
post #7

Just yesterday the Illinois state senate overrode the governor's veto in order to mandate that all schools teach cursive before fifth grade. Major arguments I heard included "reading notes from grandma" and "preventing identity theft" (via cursive signatures). http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-cursive-required-illinois-2... http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinoi...

Real reason: "I had to learn cursive, damnit, so you do too!"

Also the reason for eV and mole units, and Fortran. Not to mention the whole imperial unit system. Adults can't be bothered changing their ways and since they have the power, they make the next generation do the hard work of keeping up instead of correcting their own mistakes.
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