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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)

#101

Post by BearOso »

Bromskloss wrote: post #96
brandonmenc wrote: post #63

I went to Catholic school in the 80s and 90s, and was forced to use cursive the entire time. Starting in 1st grade, I'd get straight As - except in "handwriting" - always a B there - and it kept me from ever getting "First Honors." It was arbitrary and unfair, and it made me hate school. And cursive.

> It was arbitrary and unfair Can you expand on why you think so?

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?

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#102

Post by Bromskloss »

BearOso wrote: post #101
Bromskloss wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was arbitrary and unfair Can you expand on why you think so?

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 that? Yes, those students get a low grade in mathematics. Can we motivate a difference in attitude between handwriting and mathematics by an appeal to usefulness, saying that it is useful to be good at mathematics, but not as useful to shape beautiful letters? Is it nevertheless a point in teaching it (and arts)? Is the teaching of those subjects motivated by other things than their usefulness? Should they, because of that, be graded differently, perhaps in such a way that effort, along with performance, can yield a high grade? (What happens then if someone relies on a grade to see how well someone else does music?)

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#103

Post by dvdkhlng »

kevin42 wrote: post #94
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…

Unless you are left handed, in which case none of these things are true. I quickly get hand fatigue when I (try to) write in cursive. I really struggled with cursive in grade school because very little of the mechanics of right handed writing work for left-handed kids, and the teachers didn't have anything to offer other than criticism of the writing I could do. Most lefty's I have talked to had the same experience.

Then just write right-to-left. And to keep things readible mirror letters top-down (i.e. resulting in non-mirrored but 180 deg rotated page) :)

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#104

Post by userbinator »

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 backward slant ("reverse italics") in that sample suggests the writer is left-handed, or was in an otherwise awkward position while writing that. It certainly stands out and makes for a weird effect...

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#105

Post by ouid »

yorwba wrote: post #77
ouid wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be a lot of theories about why there is an effect, but is there any data to demonstrate that there is one?

Let me just paste the same quote I used in a comment 22 days ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15506774 ) ------------------------------------------------------------ The results revealed that while the two types of note-takers performed equally well on questions that involved recalling facts, laptop note-takers performed significantly worse on the conceptual questions. The notes from laptop users contained…

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

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#107

Post by rlkf »

kevin42 wrote: post #94
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…

Unless you are left handed, in which case none of these things are true. I quickly get hand fatigue when I (try to) write in cursive. I really struggled with cursive in grade school because very little of the mechanics of right handed writing work for left-handed kids, and the teachers didn't have anything to offer other than criticism of the writing I could do. Most lefty's I have talked to had the same experience.

I know, and it's a shame, because it actually takes very little effort to do better teaching of left-handed:

http://handedness.org/action/leftwrite.html

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#108

Post by hudibras »

Bromskloss wrote: post #89
phaus wrote: post #34

The funny thing is that the grey quotes in the article look very close to Cursive Italic, which is faster than American Cursive(what we all know as regular cursive) and Manuscript + it is just as easy to read as Manuscript(print). If we actually cared about efficiency and effectiveness in handwriting we would have switched to this a long time ago. I do calligraphy as a hobby. I'm going to time myself but I'm already…

I never knew that there were all these names for different types of handwriting. I'm trying to sort them out. What is the difference between Cursive Italic and American Cursive? And what is Manuscript, except something written by hand?

I used this book (I see that it's now out-of-print, though) to improve my handwriting by using italic. You can see some examples inside the book.

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Now-Complete-Program-Handwritin...

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#109

Post by yorwba »

ouid wrote: post #105
yorwba wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me just paste the same quote I used in a comment 22 days ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15506774 ) ------------------------------------------------------------ The results revealed that while the two types of note-takers performed equally well on questions that involved recalling facts, laptop note-takers performed significantly worse on the conceptual questions. The notes from laptop users contained…

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.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#110

Post by dabbledash »

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.

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