SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday November 02 2016, @08:33AM
from the heading-for-a-new-dark-age dept.
from the heading-for-a-new-dark-age dept.
The New Yorker wonders:
My children know how to print their letters. And they type frighteningly well. Still, I can't escape the conviction that cursive—writing it and knowing how to read it—represents some universal value. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Every year, there are worried articles about the decline of cursive and its omission from school curricula. And there's a backlash, one that I secretly cheer for. When I read that Washington state is now considering Senate Bill 6469, "an act related to requiring that cursive writing be taught in common schools," I gave a little fist pump in the air.
Cursive and handwriting are dead. Communication of the future will be done with pure emoticons.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.
-- Isaiah 56:12, New Standard Version
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Wednesday November 02 2016, @09:55AM
If you care about learning and the effectiveness of learning, then taking manual notes is still a lot better than using a computer and typing. There are many studies that show the relation very clearly. Pupils and students typing on their computer retain less of the subject matter and at lower understanding levels than those who take manual notes.
The second problem is that computers in the classroom are a severe distraction. Many cannot control themselves and do a lot of other stuff on the computer in the classroom, from playing games to social media and whatnot. The attention span has been diminishing with the increased use of computers.
The skill-set is diminishing with too many computers. Many of my pupils are not even able to make a sketch on paper anymore. They haven't the faintest clue how a napkin with a few lines on it can change the course of history. They are neither able to do it on their computer, nor are they able to take a pen and put something on paper. The real problem is that the nobody has taught them that the computer is a _tool_ and not the goal. The computer is an _extremely_useful_tool_. But it must be used as such. Once you know the backgrounds, then you can use the tool to increase both knowledge and productivity. That is what we call a win-win. Currently, it is a lose-lose situation.
Or maybe we are only here to be educating fools who have fewer skills and less knowledge, such that they can be controlled more easily... It is our choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02 2016, @12:02PM
Actually, that depends a lot on the individual. That it applies to everyone is a myth propagated by those who do learn better taking manual notes. Tests that show it to be true are tests performed on people who are already taking hand-written notes. If you were to test a bunch of students who never wrote hand-written notes, you'll see them struggling to keep up.
And some of us can't take notes and learn at the same time. All the way through school I took notes in one class (I honestly don't know why I did that). That was the one class that I learned absolutely nothing. Except, as a test, I tried not taking notes one lesson. I still remember what we learned that day.
(Score: 4, Informative) by BsAtHome on Wednesday November 02 2016, @12:26PM
No not everyone is impacted in the same way. That is why we have statistics and the result is a nice bell-curve. There are always extremes, examples and anecdotes that indicate the opposite. The spread from low-to-high has always been the case, also before the era of computers.
The point is that, on average, there is a very significant negative impact. That should be enough cause for concern. Let the teachers deal with the exceptions to the rule in the classroom. That is what the teachers are supposed to do anyway, regardless which tools are utilized.
(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Wednesday November 02 2016, @01:39PM
This is like saying "people who learnt music theory and an instrument do much better on music tests". Of course they do. The point is that until quite recently everyone was given both printing and cursive lessons when a child. Even recently people were at the least given printing lessons. They are not at a major disadvantage to cursive students when it comes to "learning through writing". Both forms work quite well and better than typing.
You argument might be valid for a generation who had learnt neither printing nor cursive, but holds no weight with the current generation who have had access to teaching for at least one of these, and often both.
Remember, the studies on learning and memory based on hand-writing were performed on university level students - and they definitely had both cursive and print writing lessons, as well as typing (most likely).
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 02 2016, @02:50PM
And some of us can't take notes and learn at the same time. All the way through school I took notes in one class (I honestly don't know why I did that). That was the one class that I learned absolutely nothing. Except, as a test, I tried not taking notes one lesson. I still remember what we learned that day.
So what you're saying is you did a rigorous experiment :P A sample size of one, nice.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:03AM
Proving that every sheep is white requires checking every sheep in the world.
Disproving that every sheep is white only takes a single black sheep.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02 2016, @03:08PM
Here's a test you can try on yourself: grab or borrow a Schaum's outlines (about $20) and work through a chapter (which is usually only a few pages, each book has dozens of chapters) using pen and line paper.
Then study a different topic in the same curriculum using a reputable online source such as Khan Academy.
Then go about your life, and check back a week later and see what you've retained.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02 2016, @10:29PM
Even if you believe that these social science studies are valid in some way, you realize that it would be utterly absurd to literally claim that this applies to 100% of all people, right? That rarely happens.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday November 02 2016, @01:39PM
I agree there's much to be said for taking manual notes, and it increases dramatically anytime diagrams or any other non-linear information layout are relevant (math springs aggressively to mind). I'm anxiously awaiting the day someone makes a digital pen and tablet that will allow me to write and diagram as nicely as I can on paper, alongside all the wonderful tools computing makes possible.
But what does that have to do with cursive? Even if you're good at it, cursive is only nominally faster than block printing, and generally worse in terms of legibility. If your goal is note taking, why not spend all that time teaching shorthand, which is much faster and more legible, or efficient note-taking strategies? Things that will actually help them learn to take notes more effectively.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:48AM
cursive is only nominally faster than block printing
I write in cursive. It is much, much faster than any printing. And easier on the hand as well - cursive is optimizing the movements, replacing stop-and-go segments of block font with continuous curves. I have several lab books full of my notes, sketches, drawings, raw data. If you have a pen, you can create any drawing. If you have a computer... it depends on what tools you have, what you know how to use, and how well they behave, and how many hours you can afford to spend on capturing in a computer a freehand sketch that is done with a pen. My lab books are non-volatile, consume zero power, and can be stored for hundreds of years. Who can beat that while making notes in Word, OneNote, or in whatever thingy that the Surface comes with? The most likely scenario is that their notes will be lost forever when that PC crashes and is reimaged. Too few people make backups; even fewer make backups that can be restored; and only a small fraction of those tests their backups.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 07 2016, @02:56PM
Eh, I've lost notebooks to water damage and pets before, so they're hardly inviolable, and far more difficult to back up. And with the growing popularity of Dropbox and other online sync services, backups are far more common than they once were.
I agree though that current note-taking software is severely lacking in comparison to pen and paper. I'm actually working on an alternative that combines the best of both worlds, might get serious about it once I can get a tablet that offers decent parity in terms of physical detail and precision.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday November 02 2016, @01:56PM
If you care about learning and the effectiveness of learning, then taking manual notes is still a lot better than using a computer and typing
I agree with that but I still so no need for cursive.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 02 2016, @02:22PM
If you care about learning and the effectiveness of learning,
That's what block print and short hand is for.
(Score: 2) by BK on Wednesday November 02 2016, @02:51PM
I care about learning...
No True Scotsman, eh?
There was a story on SN just yesterday about a study (funded) by the sugar-beverage industry saying that sugar beverages were great(!).
I'm not sure how cursive would fix that. There are lots of other things that correlate - the decline (and collapse) of corporal punishment in the home and at school for example. The rise of the helicopter parent. The lengthening of the school day. The expansion of the school mandate and curriculum. The rise of blatantly awful clowns. All of these are cumulative of course.
Here is a study for you - test the retention and learning of two groups. Group A - focused doodlers with illegible handwriting (even to themselves) (me in 9th grade) and Group B - relentless players of [insert webgame here]. To make it fair, choose a nice dry topic like the Second Partition of Poland with careful study of each of the participants to make sure that your students gain and maintain the correct focus.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02 2016, @10:45PM
Many cannot control themselves and do a lot of other stuff on the computer in the classroom, from playing games to social media and whatnot. The attention span has been diminishing...
I'm not sure how cursive would fix that. There are lots of other things that correlate - the decline (and collapse) of corporal punishment in the home and at school for example. The rise of the helicopter parent. The lengthening of the school day. The expansion of the school mandate and curriculum. The rise of blatantly awful clowns. All of these are cumulative of course.
Back in the day, the lack of attention span often resulted in doodling, with a pen, often cursive doodling.
We used to punish the corporals in our unit on a regular basis.
Blatantly awful killer clowns, luring you into the forest with offers of goodies? Those clowns? Back in my day, the clowns would make us practice cursive handwriting, while we were running with full packs on, in the rain, while being chased by the running dog lackeys of capitalists! With full descenders and ligature! And we liked it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02 2016, @10:48PM
the decline (and collapse) of corporal punishment in the home and at school for example.
That's a good observation. People used to be able to smack around their wives a little, which is fine as long as it doesn't leave a bruise or do significant damage. Violence can be used as a tool to make others do what you say, and that's what I want parents and spouses doing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 02 2016, @03:32PM
This is total BS.
Look, I'm all in favor of manual note-taking. I'm an engineer; I take lots of notes on notepads, green engineering paper, etc. I take notes, I draw diagrams, etc.
None of this requires cursive writing.
In fact, cursive is the worst thing to use, because it's so unreadable. All the engineers I remember meeting in school and in work write in block letters. It's simple, neat, and easy for anyone to read. I stopped writing in cursive as soon as I was able to get away with it in school, because it's such a horrible way of writing. People have long claimed benefits of it, but those benefits are as real as the claimed benefits of smoking back in the 1950s: i.e., they're all lies and mass delusion.
Being able to write legibly on paper is still a good skill to have, I won't disagree. However, "legibly" is the keyword here, and cursive is not legible. Just read any doctor's handwriting from the last 100 years. If you want to teach kids how to handwrite, fine: teach them how to write in proper print and block letters. Fuck cursive.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday November 02 2016, @06:06PM
I stopped writing in cursive as soon as I was able to get away with it in school, because it's such a horrible way of writing.
Wow, it's like you and I are clones. I wonder how many other people here identify with everything you just said.
The only alleged benefit of cursive I ever heard was that it was easier on your hand because you don't pick up your pencil; that was never the case for me.
I do use cursive for writing elegant notes to my wife, because she likes it. And for a few years I used to use cursive letters for variables in algebra because it looked a little more "italic" and made them stand out on the paper to me, but that habit disappeared and I went back to print.
I don't care if my kids learn cursive or not; I think they will probably want to learn it, but I doubt they will want to use it much. I'm for everybody making their own decisions on this.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 02 2016, @09:36PM
The only alleged benefit of cursive I ever heard was that it was easier on your hand because you don't pick up your pencil; that was never the case for me.
That was never the case for me either.
There's only two benefits of cursive I've heard that have any ring of truth to them at all:
1) it's faster. This is debateable, but the physics seem to favor it, but only slightly. Writing neat, legible (sorta) cursive takes more time and effort, just as it does with print. But as someone else here said, print degrades more gracefully: it's easier to read messy print than messy scrawled cursive. So this benefit is dubious at best.
2) This one is likely totally true: cursive is better when you're using an ink pen with a quill (bird feather) or nib which is highly prone to leaking big drops of ink. Since it keeps the tip on the paper most of the time, you're less likely to have ink blobs. This benefit is, of course, completely useless now that no one sane uses a bird feather for writing. Even the nice nibbed pens for fine writing are designed and manufactured so this isn't a big problem, and only people into calligraphy care about those things anyway. With ball-point and felt-tip pens and pencils, this concern is now completely obsolete.
So basically, cursive writing is about as relevant to modern society as having a metal scraper next to your house's front door to scrape the horse crap from the streets off your riding boots. (They still have these things in old cities, but they're completely decorative and historic at this point of course.) It's something that was invented to solve a problem that no longer exists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @12:14AM
You had it wrong. Variables should not be cursive. You should reserve cursive for things like trigonometric functions. How else are you to know if "cos" is the multiplication of three variables or an abbreviation for the cosine? Cursive ties the letters together.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Thursday November 03 2016, @10:57PM
In fact, cursive is the worst thing to use, because it's so unreadable.
<sarcasm>So your cursive handwriting is shit?</sarcasm>
Joking aside, it's horses for courses; if you need to transfer textual information to other people, typing it or block capital writing is the quickest way to make it understandable.
Anecdotally: my partner passed away recently after a short illness and that's obviously had a huge impact on my life and wellbeing. I've taken to writing stuff down - with a cheap (3 quid!) fountain pen(1), no less - in a book in the hope of making it all easier to deal with, simply because I find it easier to order my thoughts that way. Being able to endlessly delete text when using a keyboard perversely makes it more difficult to get the right words in the right order than writing them out by hand, presumably because I have to apply thought before I write rather than while I type. I would also like to improve that handwriting, if only to make it more aesthetically pleasing to me.
(1) It's a Platinum Preppy. I think they're even cheaper in the USA. Thanks, Brexit.
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Wednesday November 02 2016, @10:59PM
No. Nothing you say makes up for the fact that cursive wastes at least a few hours of school time per week for multiple years. Do you know the kinda crap you can teach a gradeschooler with 100 hours of instruction across 2 years?
Shit you could train them to be a master of some adult trades.