Why do they bother to teach us cursive in school?
So you’re okay with us getting rid of art, music, and gym? Doing away with the teaching of Shakespeare and the Classics? Things that I think either prepare us for the world or make us smarter/better people : art, music, gym, Shakespeare, Classics One thing that doesn’t do either : cursive Yes. But that is a little skewed, isn’t it? Anyone whose parents care about education and had the means would go to private schools: schools that do manage to teach all three things well. So your argument is that crappy schools can’t do all three. Well, duh, they’re crappy. Fix that. According to the data, most American public schools are crappy. I propose that one of the ways to fix this is to modernize the curriculum. That’s essentially saying it shoudn’t be taught to the majority of people. And that’s an argument. But you may as well admit that it’s your argument. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be taught to the majority of people. I’m just saying that we have a limited amount of time to teach chi
Concentrating on the content rather than the penmanship seems generally wiser to me. But that’s nearly impossible when you have to decode erratic writing. When people don’t write in some sort of standard form, you spend a lot more time trying to figure out what their letterforms are supposed to represent, which draws your attention away from content.
This must be an age thing. I’m in my late 30s, and I almost never print. Maybe not – I’m shy of 30, can type very quickly, and find myself frequently setting down marks on paper in cursive. Sure, cursive may not be as important now as when fountain pens were the norm, but I feel that being able to write well, in either print or cursive, is an important life skill. Why do they teach kids art, music, woodworking, cooking, poetry, literature, how to dismantle a lawnmower engine and put it back togather again, and physical fitness in schools? School curriculae should cover a broad range of subjects and writing well is an important one. Now if only schools taught kids how to pilot starships.
I would say that you are in the minority. If so, it’s a fairly large one. I’m hardly the only literate, numerate person with good penmanship. The data on American education is sad, sad, sad. Yes. But you don’t think it has something to do with American culture not valuing education and intelligence, and not treating teachers well? You really think if only we got rid of penmanship class everything would be magical? doesn’t make sense to cut out something that (A) doesn’t do much to prepare us for the world and (B) doesn’t make us better/smarter people? Cursive does do both (A) and (B). Metafilter is hardly a cross section of society, and many people do still write by hand fairly often. For instance, I have a crappy printer and bad internet, yet I still need to make lists and leave notes. As Miko has noted, some people still write faster than they type and prefer to take notes that way. I have to write for work when marking up proofs. Just because some people have constructed their lives
OMG! Girls are better at something. Let’s get rid of it!!!! My real annoyance is that they insist on teaching it so early. If you’re gonna teach it, teach it when you can expect all of your students to have the motor control to actually do it instead of berating them for a few years because they don’t, as if it were some choice on their part. I can’t think of any reason why the world would explode if people didn’t learn cursive until middle or high school, assuming they learned it at all. The traditional pattern of teaching printing, which you’re then almost immediately forced to abandon in favor of cursive, which many people then re-abandon in favor of printing again, seems absolutely the worst of all possible worlds. Seems far more sensible to me to teach printing alone for several years, until it’s actually well mastered, and then teach cursive if that’s really necessary, or some other hand. But, yes, it’s a skill I don’t have, and obviously therefore not really worth having. After
