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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)

#141

Post by internetman55 »

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.

Do you know any undergrads? Writing notes in cursive was was essential to me taking a bunch of math and CS courses at once and doing well.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#142

Post by Broken_Hippo »

cordite wrote: post #136
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 slop…

I don’t see a reason for signatures to be legible, just identifiable.

Well, sure, for just a normal signature we use daily. Poster was talking about making the signature artful. It doesn't matter if it is legible or not at that point, but it still takes some control to pull off.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#143

Post by novalis78 »

7952 wrote: post #112
novalis78 wrote: post #80

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…

In a sense that's definitely true. In another it seems to also depend on the cursive system. I recently went to Freud's museum and was able to read his letters without problems. Over a hundred years of using the same cursive system. It's beautiful, elegant and to a degree a form of art - Western calligraphy, if you will. The synergy of fine motor skills, art, history, neatness, self-expression and cultural transmission in conjunction with expressing yourself seem to be worth something. It's perhaps not even the cursive itself, but the training, persistence and effort that goes into creating something useful through your own hands that teaches so many valuable lessons. Easy is not always better - especially patience with oneself and persistent effort in mastering a skill could perhaps be beneficial for the next generation.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#144

Post by ouid »

yorwba wrote: post #109
ouid wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry, I meant cursive versus print. I don't really care about laptop note takers.

All the comments in the thread above you were about handwriting vs. typing. If there is a difference between different styles of handwriting, it's likely in favor of the slowest method (if the theories on note-taking and retention are correct). That would be some kind of elaborate calligraphy where each letter is adorned with vines, or something.

what do you mean if there is a difference? My question was not to speculate on what causes the difference, but whether or not it actually exists.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#145

Post by open_bear »

craftyguy wrote: post #138
open_bear wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can jump around and make corrections in vim far quicker than I can flipping a pencil, erasing, flipping it again, writing correction. And that's for a simple edit that doesn't require moving block of text. Hand writing it slow and inefficient.

Because you don't write a lot of code on paper? Working with text (for notes or prose) is very different than working with code. You don't think "I need to correct that thing located 23 words forward so I use 23w or press w 23 times" - you position your hand and make a correction.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#146

Post by cafard »

The question for cursive should be, Can the intended audience--yourself next week, your friend when USPS delivers-- read it? Some of the older generation of my family wrote a cursive hand that was regular, even handsome, but very hard to read. My own is not so handsome, though I think about as legible as my non-cursive lettering, but I don't use it much.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#147

Post by groovy2shoes »

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.

I had a buddy who would always "sign" receipts by drawing little doodles on the line. A different doodle each time, ranging from simple to elaborate, from decent to obscene, but always comical.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#148

Post by notl4wy3r »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #134
notl4wy3r wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not, but some non-zero eventual utility is a desirable trait. There are a variety of actually beneficial things children could spend their time doing, which are currently being displaced by being forced to learn a useless handwriting style.

You are assuming that cursive is "useless" and lacks "some non-zero eventual utility". Practicing fine motor control seems like an excellent use of time to me.

I am not assuming. The article contains evidence that it is useless vis a vis block or custom handwriting.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#149

Post by groovy2shoes »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #139
tootie wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My reply was mostly for the "zero people" - contrasting it to "everyone" in other cultures. I think that cursive is hardly readable (mine certainly, other too - and we almost see only cursive here in France). Block letters (which I understand being separated letters, but still lower and upper case) is much better, but also much slower. Maybe that it is OK when someone is trained (where "OK" means " good enough for ev…

Here's some handwriting sample for you:

https://i.imgur.com/0Pdq8Ci.jpg

Sorry for the poor photo quality, but it's the best I could manage to do at the moment.

On the left is some writing that I did just now, just for you! On the right is a page of notes that I wrote a few weeks ago. It didn't occur to me to get anything in there for scale until just now, but the larger notebook (the one on the right) is roughly 13 cm across by 21 cm high. The smaller one 12.7 cm by 19.6 cm according to the cover.

You can see on the right that I've written some elaborate headings... I'd imagine I'm one of very few people, if not the only person, who writes headings in such a script. Below that, you can see that I employ cursive and block for different purposes: most writing is in cursive, but "foreign" language (Old English in this case) words are written in block. I do similar things in other sorts of notes; for example, I might write source code or command names in block to keep them visually distinct from the commentary.

In the US, it seems that most people these days "learn" cursive at some point, but abandon it the first chance they get. This wasn't always the case (my mom and my grandma write exclusively in cursive, for example). Personally, I tend to only write with block letters if the scribbles are intended for a recipient (or, as mentioned above, as a semantic device).

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#150

Post by bearbearbear »

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.

> I live in France where cursive is the norm.

I live in Silicon Valley where I don't care where people who live anywhere else do it because they don't matter.

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