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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)

#71

Post by cooper12 »

amyjess wrote: post #64
delinka wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I'd love to have, for this purpose, is a signet ring with a stylized version of my initials on it. If I need to sign something official, I'll pull out an stamp pad and a bottle of ink, soak the pad, press my ring into it, and then slam my hand down on the paper ring first.

That's the norm in Asian countries like Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia). They even have different types of seals that are used for just plain signatures and more important things like loans.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#72

Post by yodsanklai »

qsymmachus wrote: post #14
mattnewton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People who learned block letters first, and who rarely encounter cursive, undoubtedly find block letters easier to read. But you might imagine that if had learned cursive first and used it regularly, you would have no problem reading it. The point I'm trying to make is that the preference for block letters is an accident of how most of us were taught, and not intrinsic to the writing style itself.

I grew up in France where we were taught cursive exclusively. When people get older, their handwriting changes and can be very personal and hard to read (even for other cursive writers). Besides, apart from their own writing, most people read exclusively block characters from books and screens.

Actually, I wish I could write block letters more fluently as my (mixed/cursive) handwriting is quite embarrassing!

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#73

Post by wrycoder »

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…

The sample of author Ball's writing at the end of the article looks like Italic Cursive, which I use myself.

The whole idea of cursive is to allow ligatures in fast, personal writing, simply to make it fast. That became stylized in roundhand/copperplate script, later in Palmer.

I hadn't run across the use of "manuscript" for "printing" until this thread. Apparently this is being done to elevate what is now considered pejorative.

"Manuscript" is (was) a general term referring to a handwritten document, not its style, e.g. half uncial.

Judging from the posts here, I'd say handwriting is doomed.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#74

Post by aquadrop »

qsymmachus wrote: post #14
mattnewton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People who learned block letters first, and who rarely encounter cursive, undoubtedly find block letters easier to read. But you might imagine that if had learned cursive first and used it regularly, you would have no problem reading it. The point I'm trying to make is that the preference for block letters is an accident of how most of us were taught, and not intrinsic to the writing style itself.

I've been taught cursive since elementary school and I've seen plenty cases when people's cursive was almost unreadable for me. Which almost never happens with block letters. Cursive has only one advantage - maximum speed of writing. If you need to write down something fast especially in large quantity (like lectures in university). But readability is usually harmed in that case. Especially bad situation with doctors, I've never understood how they can produce such cryptic notes when people's life can depend on it. Anyway, I don't see a point in cursive today (even though that's the only way I write text in my native language, but that's rarely needed).

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#75

Post by gozur88 »

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...

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

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#76

Post by gozur88 »

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.

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.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#77

Post by yorwba »

ouid wrote: post #60
harshreality wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study I remember suggested that cursive increases comprehension and retention because it's slower. The theory was that because it's slower, you paraphrase, summarize, and elide more, which engages comprehension and interpretation subsystems, rather than only exercising the speech-to-text subsystem of your brain. It might also/alternatively be that the longer time necessary to write the information longhand keeps…

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 more words and more verbatim overlap with the lecture, compared to the notes that were written by hand. Overall, students who took more notes performed better, but so did those who had less verbatim overlap, suggesting that the benefit of having more content is canceled out by “mindless transcription.”

“It may be that longhand note takers engage in more processing than laptop note takers, thus selecting more important information to include in their notes, which enables them to study this content more efficiently,” the researchers write.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/take-notes...

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#78

Post by volkl48 »

ghaff wrote: post #5
vim_wannabe wrote: post #3

Does everything taught in schools need to have immediate applicability?

No. But I'd have a hard time making a case that cursive specifically (as opposed to handwriting more broadly) is some important life skill that warrants careful teaching in grade school. Personally my Palmer cursive skills (such as they were) probably peaked in about sixth grade to the point where they're effectively non-existent today.

I recall when taking the SAT in ~2009, that you were asked to copy a paragraph (honesty statement) in cursive.

That took most people 20 minutes because no one could remember cursive. I recall giving up and writing print with little attaching lines.

I don't know anyone under 30 who recall how to write in it. I'm sure there's a few, but for 95% of people it was forgotten before the age of 18.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#79

Post by khedoros1 »

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...

In 1993, I was taught D'Nealian cursive. It's a derivative of the Palmer cursive that the other commenter mentions.

Re: Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)

#80

Post by novalis78 »

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 and material. The ability to use basic materials to communicate and express knowledge and civilization should include a wide array of skills from cursive all the way to tool classes. When you finish high school the goal should have been to hand over the foundations of civilization and let you go from there. Rhetoric, grammar, broad knowledge of history and science, firm skills in math and your ability communicate seem to me the basics of an enlightened age. A touch typing course is really not that hard or difficult to add on. But there is something refined and cultivated in training your brain's neural net to become skillful as far as mastering the basics of self-education (reading with clear and deep understanding) and self-expression (communicating clear discursive thoughts) goes.
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