bluGill 4 days ago

It is a political thing as much as anything. Some old people feel they learned it so it must be good and therefore kids today must learn it. Same with "new math" - I didn't learn this way it must be wrong, go back to the way I was taught since I know math. At no point is anyone asking if the new way is better or not. Nor are we asking if maybe the skill is obsolete and not worth learning. Or maybe it is a niche skill that most won't need and we are better off spending time with something else (like going to the playground). There are probably other good points to debate as well, but generally it comes down to old people teaching what they learned.

I do come down against teaching it. But then I never could read my own writing and am mad about all the trouble I got into in school for it (I have to credit the one teacher who did realize I wasn't lazy and tried to get experts to help me - but dysgraphia wouldn't exist for several more years so nothing came of his attempt). However I'm not clear if manual writing is obsolete for everyone or just me. Right note typing is a useful skill, but text to speech is making progress so maybe in a few years nobody will type and so teaching that skill was wasted.

My school spent a lot of effort teaching me WordPerfect because that is what industry used. A complete waste of time that I never used again. Anyone care to guess what will be useful or not?

  • throw0101a 4 days ago

    > It is a political thing as much as anything. Some old people feel they learned it so it must be good and therefore kids today must learn it.

    Some evidence to indicate it is useful:

    * https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-athletes-way/202...

    • bluGill 3 days ago

      Maybe, or is that another thing that belongs to the replication crisis? Is it just cursive or is regular printing good enough? Is it hand writing or would learning to hunt with a sling also work? That article should bring a lot of questions of validity to mind and thus reasons to question if it is real or not. (of course the article is not the preponderance for scientific studies which I don't have access to)

  • tombert 3 days ago

    Oh. My. God.

    I had no idea that there was a term for my awful handwriting; I think I have dysgraphia, at least based on the Wikipedia-level reading I just did after reading your post. My handwriting isn't quite as inconsistent as the example on Wikipedia, but it's pretty close.

    In fourth grade, my teacher called me aside and told me that I need to improve my handwriting or it would really hurt my career prospects. She wasn't being mean, her heart was in the right place, but no matter how hard I tried I was never able to significantly improve my handwriting.

    Fortunately my fourth grade teacher was wrong, and I learned how to touch-type when I was fourteen, and I type pretty fast now, to a point where, outside of signing forms, I am not sure the last time I actually wrote something with a pen and paper...2021 I think?

    > My school spent a lot of effort teaching me WordPerfect because that is what industry used.

    I'm not sure which version of WordPerfect you used, but at least from the mid-90's and onward, a lot of those skills would transfer relatively well to Microsoft Word wouldn't they? I remembered WordPerfect being pretty similar to Office 2003.

  • bawolff 4 days ago

    > Same with "new math" - I didn't learn this way it must be wrong, go back to the way I was taught since I know math. At no point is anyone asking if the new way is better or not.

    I mean, i think feneyman did have something to say about if it was better or not, and why.

    • bluGill 4 days ago

      Lots of people weighed in. The vast majority knew nothing about how kids learn or what is valuable. (this is on both sides of the debate, and there of course has been a lot of advancement in education in the 50-60 years since)

  • pwillia7 4 days ago

    What is new math

    • Octoth0rpe 4 days ago

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math

      My 2 cents, valid criticisms of new math are _vastly_ outnumbered by ones more in the form of "I wasn't taught that way and so my kids shouldn't be either" / any change is bad change type thinking. There is a lot of overlap in these criticisms with common core ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core ) which isn't particularly related.

      • cyberax 3 days ago

        Interestingly enough, at least some computer pioneers credited a part of their success to the New Math.

        Apparently, learning to do arithmetic in other bases helps with computer programming. Who knew.

      • tombert 3 days ago

        My parents did New Math, and I always thought it sounded pretty cool.

        My elementary school math pretty much completely boiled down to doing arithmetic. A useful thing to know, obviously, but I always felt too much emphasis was placed on arithmetic when calculators are cheap and readily available.

        It always seemed like planting the seeds of some more advanced math concepts would make math a lot more approachable.

      • fullstop 4 days ago

        My kids learned it this way, and it was somewhat useful to show that we could arrive at the same solution using different methods.

bawolff 4 days ago

I dont think i have ever used cursive outside of the class teaching me cursive.

I think the problem is that modern ball point pens dont glide well, making it not a useful way to write.

  • beezlebroxxxxxx 4 days ago

    Aside from very occasional drops into printing, I exclusively write in cursive. Once you get proficient you can write very fast with cursive -- regardless of the pen/pencil. Can other people read my writing? Yes, if I slow down. But if it's notes for me, then I can go easily double the speed I have with printing and it feels as "seamless" as touch typing.

  • cyberax 3 days ago

    It's mostly an issue with English cursive. A lot of styles are just not great.

    In Eastern Slavic countries, you are expected to learn to write in cursive and use it in typical writing. Writing in block letters (outside of official forms) is considered to be a sign of illiteracy.

    And it really is faster, once you get some practice.

  • lawn 4 days ago

    I write cursive all the time and I've never had a problem with any pen, new or old.

  • graemep 4 days ago

    Some people like handwriting notes. I know some that do that on tablets rather than paper though.

    I have terrible handwriting so type whenever possible.

    The only thing my kids have needed handwriting for (i.e. they did not have the option of typing) has been exams.

    • watwut 4 days ago

      You do not have to use cursive for handwriting notes. What happens with young people (based on what teachers in my kids school said) is that they abandon cursive for handwriting the moment they can - and everyone basically invents own way of writing letters.

      End result is worst then if they were taught handwriting that is not cursive, looks more like printed text and is easier to read and write.

    • bawolff 4 days ago

      I feel like most of my peers took handwritten notes, but most of them didn't write them in cursive (some did)

      • graemep 3 days ago

        It did not even occur to me that people would take handwritten notes not in cursive.

  • J_McQuade 3 days ago

    I re-taught myself joined-up writing in my early-mid 20s, mainly because it looks nice. Get yourself a pack of Uni Jetstreams - they are not too expensive and glide about as well as any pen I've ever used.