Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 150 posts

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#121

Post by pavement »

pjscott wrote: post #113
autocorr wrote: post #81

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.

That’s how the cargo cult works. You’re teachers couldn’t explain why cursive was “better” but forced its use anyway.

Similarly, forcing left handed students to write with their right hand finds a rationalized basis in superstition, although it’s been explained that when a cultural custom forces a bias toward a specific dominant handedness by default, it benefits safety optimizations in aggregate.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#122

Post by Qwertious »

vim_wannabe wrote: post #3

Does everything taught in schools need to have immediate applicability?

>immediate applicability

That's a strawman, nobody ever claimed it needed to have immediate applicability.

As for having eventual applicability? Children have finite learning time, and teaching something with zero eventual applicability means not teaching something that will eventually be useful.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#123

Post by ghaff »

dabbledash wrote: post #110

It's as if a large chunk of people have values the author can't process at all. "Sure it's beautiful and traditional and ties us to a shared past and culture, but what's the POINT of it?" Maybe I'm overreaching here, but it feels like the kind of lack of understanding that underlies some of our political difficulties in the US.

I actually favor a classical Western core curriculum in the US. But I don't really see simplified cursive handwriting as a particularly important part of that relative to the amount of time and effort it takes.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#124

Post by open_bear »

mattnewton wrote: post #12
qsymmachus wrote: post #10

Russian Cyrillic is hand-written exclusively in cursive. Children are never even taught how to write block letters. The author may be right to argue that cursive has no decisive advantage over block letters, "so why teach it?", a more fundamental question to my mind is why bother teaching _both_ forms of hand-writing? If we have to pick one, why privilege block letters over cursive, if both are equally effective? Edi…

Keyboards eliminated the advantages cursive had for input speed in most cases, and I find block characters easier to read. Definitely don’t feel cursive has advantages when handwriting speed is less relevant.

It's not just raw input speed - writing on paper allows you to quickly jump around the text, making small corrections, adding notes/symbols/drawings, etc.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#125

Post by BrandoElFollito »

bearbearbear wrote: post #87
autocorr wrote: post #81

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 do not know anyone who writes in non-cursive. I live in France where cursive is the norm.

Everyone I know hand writes on a whiteboard of a piece of paper. Or when they make a note to the teacher. Or when they use a post-it.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#126

Post by BrandoElFollito »

gozur88 wrote: post #76
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.

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.

Same in Poland where they ask you to "sign legibly". Which makes completely no sense, my name is already printed somewhere else on the form.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#127

Post by BrandoElFollito »

Bromskloss wrote: post #102
BearOso wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you measure handwriting? Is the teacher grading by taking a caliper and measuring the exact form of each letter mechanically, or is he/she just comparing based on what “looks good” to the eye. Some people might not have very steady hands. Are you going to penalize them for that?

I see your point, and can sympathise. Nevertheless, let's dig further and see if we can get to some fundamental principle: > is he/she just comparing based on what “looks good” to the eye. How are art subjects in school graded? I actually don't know. > Some people might not have very steady hands. Are you going to penalize them for that? Some are bad at something else, like mathematics. Are we to penalise them for th…

Math, history, geography, the technical part of a language (grammar, spelling,...) can be learned. It is simply a matter of effort. Some are better, some are more interested, but ultimately you can learn. I had Spanish at school (France) and had a hard time just because I did not like it. Then I started to like it and, miracle, my marks sky-rocketed.

If you do not have steady hands you will never be good at drawing because you will not be able to learn it. Salle if you have asthma and want to sing (I guess). You should not be marked dusk because of that. Same if you are in a wheelchair and cannot run a 100m.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#128

Post by specialist »

gruez wrote: post #16
3JPLW wrote: 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...

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

FWIW: Postal ballots require signatures. Election administrators often use software to assist and sometimes automate this task. The "challenge" rate varies, depending on competency, but can be as high as 1 per 1000. Which has definitely had an impact in close races.

Said as a recovering election integrity activist: the automated signature recognition systems I studied, some 10 years back, should be utterly rejected. The error rate (both false positive and negative) is unacceptable for elections. And much of this cannot be fixed with better algorithms. Signatures change as you age, you injured your wrist, and so forth.

Just as onerous, the election vendor businesses where pushing a "per voter" fee structure. So instead of just selling you the gear, they'd also charge 10 cents for every signature compared. On top of every ballot printed, mailed, tracked, etc.

In short, the push to postal balloting is basically a rent seeking exercise, to make up for the loss of revenue post-touchscreen debacle, and much more expensive overall.

Oh, I almost forgot a tidbit. Our State Patrol, who investigate check fraud, were employed to train our election signature verifiers. At the time, both they and the banks would only use the software to flag signatures, never to fully automate the task.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#129

Post by specialist »

plytheman wrote: post #23

Personally I (30 years old now) went to Catholic school (K-12) and learned cursive somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade and was forced to write in cursive until I graduated 8th grade. Most of the time as a kid I hated it and wished I could write in block letters and once I hit freshman year of high school I never looked back. Fast forward through four years of high school and three gap years when as a freshman in colleg…

Nice story, thanks.

Studying cursive, calligraphy, lettering, graffiti, cuneiform, emoji and so forth should all be standard units.

Call it "writing systems and visual languages". Incorporate (adapt) Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" and Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach".

Compare and contrast different systems thru the ages. Have kids invent their own alphabets and fonts.

And then offer elective classes, perhaps under the humanities and arts curriculum.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#130

Post by tootie »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #125
bearbearbear wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I do not know anyone who writes in non-cursive. I live in France where cursive is the norm. Everyone I know hand writes on a whiteboard of a piece of paper. Or when they make a note to the teacher. Or when they use a post-it.

In the US it's a dead art. I learned it as a kid and never use it. My kids are actually not learning it. It's been removed from the curriculum in New York and I'm pleased.
Post reply on HN