26 Years Old and Can't Write In Cursive 921
theodp writes "Back in 1942, Chicago mail-order house Spiegel's looked to handwriting analysis to identify inconsistent, unreliable, poorly adjusted people. Ah, those were the days. TIME reports we are witnessing the death of handwriting, noting that Gen Y struggles with cursive and the group following them has even less of a need for good penmanship. And while the knee-jerk explanation is that computers are to blame for our increasingly illegible scrawl, literacy prof Steve Graham explains that kids haven't learned to write neatly because no one has forced them to. 'Writing is just not part of the national agenda anymore,' he says. So much for 100 Years of Handwriting Success!"
26 years (Score:5, Insightful)
26 year old people are just old enough to have learned to write before computers. If they can't, it's the school, not the keyboard.
Because its a useles skill (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing in the real world uses cursive. It's all manuscript. Cursive is far harder to read, has more person to person variation, and isn't really faster to write. In addition, there's plenty of evidence that teaching it harms children's education by confusing them. So long as they can still read and write script, there's nothing to be concerned about here.
Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)
M.e.h.
29 and cannot write the full ABC's in cursive (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's exactly one profession that requires cursive handwriting skills.
Third grade teachers.
Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you use handwriting for ? (Score:3, Insightful)
The hand writing is going the way of the draw-cariage with horse. Plainly and simply. Hand writing is QUAINT that is it.
Signature and that's it (Score:5, Insightful)
The only cursive I use, oh, since high school, is to write my signature. And I hardly even bother with that any more either. I just put down a squiggle.
-Matt
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Teachers don't care / It isn't taught (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. The answer is easy.
The whole thing on the 'decline of handwriting' is just silly. Anceint Greek isn't taught in most schools either - should we lament the 'decline of 26 year olds being able to understand Ancient Greek'? Of course not.
They can't write in cursive because cursive is either not taught at all, or taught poorly at best - and /nobody cares/ whether or not you can write well.
Explain to me why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe one of the reasons American children are falling behind is because the curriculum is filed with crap that is outdated or never needed to exist in the first place.
We'd be best off to get rid of cursive writing and the Imperial measurement system from society and save ourselves the trouble. I'm sure there is more nostalgic and idiotic fat that can be cut from the studies of children. Especially since these two wastes of time are taught in a period of the child's development that bears a ton more fruit per hour invested than it does 8-10 years later when we're teaching high science and math.
I know I dropped cursive writing from my skill set the moment I was no longer penalized for not using it.
Re:Think it is bad now? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you mean on paper with a pen, my grandpa would've done that. If you mean the demise of the punchcards, good luck with that. Today, only the punch card can satisfy the information density required by today's programming languages, and I don't think this will change anytime soon.
FTFY
Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:5, Insightful)
I am curious how you can say you have no problem reading neat cursive when you type riding instead of writing. How do you know you are reading it correctly when you don't know which letters are supposed to be there?
Re:26 years (Score:3, Insightful)
That also makes me wonder whether people are going to lose fine manual dexterity as a result. Already kids do less manual craft (like building models) in favour of computer games. I wonder if lack of fine motor training will result in a generation that is unable to do anything more accurate with their hands than push buttons.
Everyday life requires some dexterity, too. Just think about your movements next time you put your socks on. Of course it's not as detailed, as e.g. painting, but it should be enough.
And, of course, typing requires dexterity as well. Look at your hands sometime :) The real danger lies in sitting all day in a bad posture.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pre-gen-X and I've never written in cursive. The educational system didn't get through to whatever part of the brain is responsible for it.
]The advantage of cursive over printing is that it is faster and less fatiguing to the hand.
Also makes it unreadable. I used to go out with a teacher and I never figured out how she could read the scrawl that was handed to her.
Re:26 years (Score:3, Insightful)
That also makes me wonder whether people are going to lose fine manual dexterity as a result. Already kids do less manual craft (like building models) in favour of computer games. I wonder if lack of fine motor training will result in a generation that is unable to do anything more accurate with their hands than push buttons.
I think you're overlooking the effect that a few decades of text messages and complicated video game controllers has on manual dexterity. Studies linked before on Slashdot indicated that a typical teenager today has better manual dexterity in his or her thumbs than someone age 25 or older, thanks to extensive use texting at the ages where motor skills are still developing.
Meanwhile, the typical Playstation controller has far more just "buttons"; a typical game might require use of the direction buttons on one hand, with simultaneous use of the analog stick on the other hand and several fingers for firing. The overall coordination required to operate the game, in my opinion, more than compensates in terms of dexterity for the possible loss in variety of actions.
Re:26 years (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm over 26, and of course I learned to write in cursive, but I'm so out of practice that I basically can't. My handwriting is illegible, and it doesn't take a lot of writing to tire my hand out, I guess because I'm not used to using those muscles.
Computers certainly shoulder some of the blame. I've been typing since I was a kid, and I can type much more quickly than I can write, and it's easier on my hands. What's crazier is that I have a harder time composing my thoughts in writing if I have to do it by hand. I'm used to typing things up quickly as I think, and then going back over it a few times, editing, rearranging things, fleshing out ideas to make them more clear that what I thought to write out the first time around.
I still write letters by hand now and then, mostly to make them more personal than a type-written note. Still, it's much easier for me if I compose what I'm going to say ahead of time on a computer, edit it, spell-check it, and then copy it down by hand. Is it a bad thing that I'm so reliant on computers? Maybe. I don't know.
Re:26 years (Score:3, Insightful)
Same story; I'm 32, and I can no longer remember how to make the full array of capital letters in cursive, especially the less-common ones. So long as I can still sign my name, it probably doesn't matter. Writing hurts my [gigantic] hands, so I generally just type everything.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
As sacrilegious as it is for me to say, the fact is that one needs to be able to write in handwriting, cursive is quite useful at times when for one reason or another one can't use or doesn't want to trust a computer. Sure you can lose the notes or destroy them, but it's somewhat more difficult than with computer files.
got you by a generation... (Score:2, Insightful)
...and I don't use it anymore either. It's just not needed. Grew up with it, all school papers and tests (and penmanship was part of the grade always) and snail mail letters in cursive, but since around the mid 90s or so, with having a decent enough machine with a printer, I can't recall actually writing anything long and involved in cursive, and before that going back to the 70s, most everything I wrote longer than a thankyou note was typed on a manual typewriter anyway. Not all, but most. I can still do it of course, and it remains legible..but I would agree, it's going the way of the dodo. It is faster for me than block writing though, by a considerable degree.
I can't really say if this is overall good or bad, it's a learned skill, but I can't see it as being terribly useful for much longer outside of treating it more like art than a day to day necessity. Electronic communications has been a huge game changer.
I think you can see something similar with languages and immigration. Folks from nation A move to B, they struggle to learn the new language, and even if they do, retain an obvious foreign accent forever. By the second generation, the new language is prominent, but the old language is still understood at home with the family. By the third generation it is mostly gone except for a few words and phrases. Significant change doesn't take very long.
no one forced them to learn. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is mostly true. With the advent of no child left behind, they all are. Writing and cursive in general are no longer part of the curriculum. Though cursive is no longer a necessary skill unless you're planning on a career in the literary or graphic arts.
I'm more concerned about this generations' general inability to form complete sentences. They haven't learned their language mostly because it wasn't taught to them.
Children who have attended elementary in the last ten years are at the most disadvantaged. They haven't learned proper language skills. Their writing is being taught in template format. They will never be effective communicators. Educators all knew better and were silenced by the administration at every level. Now teachers just don't care. Children still aren't learning proper language skills.
Who should we blame when other children around the world have better second language skills in English than our childrens' first language skills?
Re:26 years (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm 23 and I was taught cursive for at least 2 years in school.
It's not the computers. It's not the schools. It's that the only time I've used cursive since 6th grade is to fill out those stupid *#$&!ing "honestly policy" sections on standardized tests that have to be written in cursive.
Just about everyone in my highschool had to have the teacher write it up on the front board so that we could have a reference on how to fill it out. And I know all of us learned cursive in grade school because most of my classmates were in the same class with me when I 'learned it'.
It is useless so I forgot it. Just like how to solve 10343.34931/9093.9483 without a calculator.
Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because you are bad at it doesn't mean that its a completely useless skill
Just because you are good at it doesn't mean that it's not a completely useless skill.
Re:26 years (Score:5, Insightful)
You are ignoring the atrophy issue. I'm 28 and distinctly remember writing cursive in 3rd grade, but 3rd grade was 20 years ago. Afterwards I could write proficiently in cursive, and for the next couple of years they forced us to write at least some cursive, but after that everything that wasn't on computers we were allowed to hand in with print. The fact of the matter is that it's just easier to both read and write and print.
That's my feeling about it as well.
The teachers who ordered us to use script justified it by saying that, once we got out into the real world, everything would have to be in script, lest we appear unprofessional.
Ha. Ha.
Everything I do in my work is typed, with the exception of notes I scribble to myself. On the rare occasion I give handwritten notes to colleagues, they're usually things like filenames or database table names...and they're on Post-it notes.
And they're always printed. If I gave anyone anything in script, they'd just look at me blankly.
About the only thing I can do in script is sign my name.
Re:Ball Point Pens Destroyed Cursive (Score:4, Insightful)
Ergonomics. A good fountain pen's own weight provides almost all the pressure necessary, so instead of having to apply downward force and then attempt fine control you only need the fine control, which means you can write for longer without your hand cramping. Fountain pens (and fine felt-tip pens, for that matter) only scrape when you press down too hard, a habit that comes from using cheap biros with poor ink flow.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep my weekly logbook in cursive writing.
I'm an Engineer, and my logbook must be kept for 6 years after my death for legal reasons. If all goes well, that'll be in 70+ years. It is unlikely at best that anything written on a computer will be readable in that time frame.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you don't need to be able to write in cursive. You really don't. Writing legibly is necessary, but cursive is not.
Long gone are the days where you write long compositions by hand. And they aren't coming back.
Print for anything someone else needs to read, and short hand for anything only you need to read is more than enough.
cursive sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
if reading things in cursive was beneficial, we'd all be using cursive fonts all over the place on computers. I dont think I've seen anyone use a cursive font on a computer that made things better in any way ever, so I can only conclude that reading cursive sucks compared to a nice clean (preferably san serif) font.
now there's the personal preference aspect, that you may prefer to hand write something; but having established that reading cursive is inferior to pretty much any decent font, you're not doing anyone any favors by opting to handwrite things.
in short, good riddance.
Re:Ball Point Pens Destroyed Cursive (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite right. Also, the sliderule is the one true way to compute. You need to spend good money, but it's an investment that will last a lifetime. A really nice sliderule sells for hundreds of dollars.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
No one's talking about being unable to write. What's happening is the death of script.
To my parents, born before and during the great depression, 'writing' meant script. To produce, by hand, text in block letters was 'printing' to them, and was entirely distinct from proper 'writing'. As a child, I said to them "You mean cursive," which was met with blank expressions. To many people over a certain age, 'writing' will mean what you describe as 'cursive writing".
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
If it had been print then he would have known immediately that it was a foreign language. Cursive is utterly useless. If you need to record large volumes of information you type it. Its faster than cursive and some of us can type faster than you can dictate. If you need to secure it then you encrypt it, it will certainly be more secure than your hidden sticky note.
On the rare occasions when you need to write something the old fashioned way good old military recruit handwriting is the best choice.
Re:no one forced them to learn. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like to see some proof of what you're saying. I'm 19 years old and going into my sophomore year of college. Although that means I was past elementary school by NCLB (I was between fifth and sixth grades when it was passed), I'm still part of the generation that people always say can't write in complete sentences or form coherent thoughts. You specifically called out children who attended elementary school in the last ten years. Ten years ago, I was between third and fourth grade. I guess that counts.
In my experience, however, people my age are likely no better or worse than previously. Almost all of my friends will complain if you mess up there/their/they're, or even its/it's. Most of us use complete sentences on IM or in a text message, even if the punctuation isn't perfect (it's a speed thing, not an intelligence thing). We correct typos when we're talking. I've seen people use words like halcyon or androgyny in text messages. When was the last time you saw that? I've also seen a disgusting number of road signs with hideous punctuation, or television ads with awful grammar. None of it is any worse than the worst of what I commonly see among my peers.
A lot of people are doing a great job of claiming that my generation is the dumbest generation. That's simply not true, at least not as far as I'm aware. Everyone I know can write well enough for most forms of communication, and certainly no worse than the worst adult writing I've seen.
Oh, and about your claim that ESL students speak English better than native speakers? I've yet to see any proof of that. Admittedly, my experience is quite limited: just a few exchange students in high school. Still, most of them spoke English the same way I spoke Spanish: terribly.
Stop saying my generation is stupid. No, we're not good at cursive, or even manuscript. We never had to. I rarely write by hand. I haven't written in cursive since probably fourth grade (to the point where a cursive section of the SATs was my most feared section). Our education has been different, and we're very different from what all adults are used to. It's the function of growing up in a technology-heavy world. We're hardly stupid though, and we definitely have the ability to form complete sentences.
Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had the suspicion that the decline of cursive is partly due to the change in pen types.
A good fountain pen (which can have the nib altered to suit the angle you hold the pen) needs almost no pressure to apply the ink. Long flowing strokes are very easy and very fast.
Ball point pens, on the other hand, require a lot of pressure, compared to a fountain pen, and seems to be more suited to the short strokes of printing, which limits the length of time you have to apply the pressure before being able to rest.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is not going to happen unless everything we base our civilisation on breaks down as well. And in that case, I'd rather worry about my hunting and gathering skills than my penmanship.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep my weekly logbook in cursive writing.
I'm an Engineer, and my logbook must be kept for 6 years after my death for legal reasons. If all goes well, that'll be in 70+ years. It is unlikely at best that anything written on a computer will be readable in that time frame.
And according to this news, it will be unlikely what anyone will be able to decipher your handwriting by then : )
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine that, a format that transcends time just because it's really fucking simple. An encoding that is so simple that you could guess it using character frequency mapping. [The caveat here is that higher bits of Unicode throws this off some, but most documents on computers by far are written in English, and ASCII is still works unchanged with UTF-8; it's the stupid formats like Java's Broken-Unicode and Microsoft's ANSI and widechar that will die much more quickly, simply because they are incompatible and more complex than necessary].
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep my weekly logbook in cursive writing.
I'm an Engineer, and my logbook must be kept for 6 years after my death for legal reasons. If all goes well, that'll be in 70+ years. It is unlikely at best that anything written on a computer will be readable in that time frame.
Well, there's a device known as printer. Any reason why you cannot use that?
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
And according to this news, it will be unlikely what anyone will be able to decipher your handwriting by then : )
Actually, the makers of fancy pens have been reporting increasing sales over the past several decades. The number of people who are studying and practicing good writing may not be increasing as fast as the population, but the number is increasing. So there's a good chance that there will still be experts in all sorts of handwriting in another 70 or 80 or 100 years. It'll just be the great masses who were never educated in the topic who won't be able to read all those old letters and logbooks.
To use the ob automotive analogy, I have a number of friends who raise horses. There may have been a drop in the number of horses back in the early 20th century, but for some decades now, horse breeding has been on the increase. And it's not just race or show horses; various kinds of work horses are also being bred and trained. It turns out that there are a number of situations where horses are very practical tools for getting a job done. And people usually like them a lot better than machines.
I've read comments by a number of historians to the effect that new technology rarely totally obsoletes what came before. The new tools may take over a lot of the work, but there are usually situations where the old tools are still the best for some jobs. Thus, people who have several power drills usually have even more wrist-powered screwdrivers. And even though they know how to build with screws, they still use simple nails and hammers for some jobs.
So handwritten text probably also has a good future. The percentage of the population using it may decline, but we'll still have a reasonable population using it for the foreseeable future.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
I RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE. DO YOU THINK ALL CAPS IS ONLY OBNOXIOUS WHEN USED ON THE INTERNET?
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a question. Are you a time traveler from 1860?
Seriously - wtf kind of retarded rules are these? Do they think you can't duplicate or alter a bound book? Guh?
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think there is a lot of use for hand writing still aside from just filling in forms. I would not support handicapping anyone by depriving them of that ability.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, I can't use a printer. Good thinking, but it just won't suit legal criteria.
I am required to use a bound book. That means that pages cannot be added or removed without making it obvious.
Is the legal requirement that you use a bound book, or ensure that pages cannot be added or removed without it being obvious?
If the latter, then one-way hashes are a MUCH more reliable indicator. On the bottom of each page, print the hash of the previous page, the hash of that page and the hash of the hashes. This will ensure that not only can no page be added or removed, but no page can be altered, either.
To make it even better, use a secure timestamping service and include the timestamp.
Also, I strongly dispute your original assertion that no computer format will be readable in 70+ years. Plain ASCII text will. HTML will (ASCII encoding). Also, basically any format with an open standard and open source implementations will.
Finally, your log book is far too easy to lose, damage or destroy. It's not feasible to copy it (not without losing the integrity features provided by the bound book), so it can't be backed up. It's also bulky.
Your logging problem is solved by the log book, barely. Technology provides much better solutions with higher survivability, better accessiblity, easier production and much, much higher integrity verification.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cursive serves *one* important purpose. It's makes writing from a "real" pen (not a ball-point) readable, as you tend to get a splotch whereever you first touch pen to paper. Ballpoints, not computers, pretty much made cursive obsolete.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you know simply posting on slashdot is a guarantee for digital longevity?
You don't. Because neither /. nor Google are 70+ years old, and we can't predict if these institutions or the data they gather will survive the next 3 weeks even. Things may happen and typically the things that have the biggest influence cannot be predicted.
Having said that, he should talk to the dude responsible for his backup either. A backup is a means of taking a copy of the data which you store for a limited time frame (4 weeks to half a year, in most typical cases) that has nothing to do with Archival.
At the end of the day he should talk to an archiving expert, but not many companies employ those. A librarian, if you will. But archival isn't an easy task, and we still suffer from the unpredictability of significant events, so hand-written logs sound as good as anything, really.