Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Education

Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing 523

mikejuk writes It seems incredible that in the 21st century schools are still teaching children to scratch marks on paper. Well in Finland they are taking a step in the direction of the future by giving up teaching handwriting. The Savon Sanomat newspaper reports that from autumn 2016 cursive handwriting will no longer be a compulsory part of the school curriculum. Instead the schools will teach keyboard skills and 'texting'. The idea of teaching proper keyboard skills to children is unquestionably a great idea, the idea of texting is a little more dubious and many will mourn the loss of a traditional skill like cursive writing. So what about a world where cursive writing is forgotten? What do you do when your computer is dead and you need to leave a note? The death of cursive script probably isn't the death of handwriting but the death of doing it quickly and with style. Some no doubt will want to master it just for the sake of it — like driving a stick shift. I know some U.S. schools have done the same; how proficient should kids be with cursive?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing

Comments Filter:
  • when i was in grade school, they taught cursive still but they were starting to also teach typing. we had apple ][ (on a computer bus... it traveled to each school in the district, was trippy) and we would spend 1 day a week for about an hour in there learning how to type. by the time i hit middle school we didnt even have to learn or use cursive anylonger. by high school I was bringing a laptop to school and doing all my work on the laptop instead of a notebook.
    • by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      We were the last class in our elementary school to learn it... in 1989 or 1990. This was up in washington, we were still playing Reader Rabbit on an Apple II that the 2nd grade classes all shared. Outside of my Grandmother's letters I can't remember the last time I used cursive, reading or writing. The Constitution is some illegible form of cursive and my signature these days on credit card receipts is an "X" to save time.

    • I went to primary school in the 60's, ballpoints were not allowed, only fountain pens or pencil. In HS, boys were not allowed to learn typing because "only girls grew up to be typists and secretaries". Nobody had a calculator, even if they did they wouldn't be allowed to use it.
      • I went to primary school late 60's and early 70's and we were allowed only pencil. In HS, we did learn typing on typewriters with inked ribbons because the boys only school I went to believe this skill will be of great use in the future. They were spot on, that was one of the greatest skills I learned there. I learned to type blind with all my fingers and it was a long time between the time I actually learned typing and the time I actually needed it. Something like 4 or 5 years between both events.

        Today, I

  • quick notes? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @02:27PM (#48486233)
    I don't know about you, but I can jot-down quick notes on scraps of paper a hell of a lot faster than I can get out an electronic device, open a note-taking program, and attempt to use an on-screen keyboard to type the same notes with any degree of accuracy.

    I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with several coworkers and an outside vendor, and it was a quite technical meeting. I had to be able to follow all of the jumps between topics and to keep my notes straight and organized. I later reorganized my notes when I typed them for e-mail, but what I took was stream-of-consciousness at best, and would not have been immediately sendable to others. Since I had to reorganize the notes anyway, using paper was a lot more practical than attempting to do it electronically.
    • Re:quick notes? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @02:33PM (#48486257)

      I don't know about you, but I can jot-down quick notes on scraps of paper a hell of a lot faster than I can get out an electronic device, open a note-taking program, and attempt to use an on-screen keyboard to type the same notes with any degree of accuracy.

      That's not a fair comparison. If you're counting the time to open the memo app on your phone, you should also count the time to find a pen or pencil and a scrap of paper. For me the time which the former takes is fairly consistent, but the latter varies considerably because I don't usually carry a pen in my trouser pocket.

      As an aside, you seem to be making more of an argument for teaching shorthand than for teaching writing.

      • I have buckets of pens and piles of notepads all over my desk and around my office.

        I'll tell you though, I've never once grabbed a pad to jot a note and done it is cursive. Never once. I spent my early years suffering through the lessons; I could probably still write that way if I wanted. Writing quickly, it would be a total mess and impossible to read later. It made sense in a past where it was important to conserve ink and paper. When you're racing against your ink drying from exposure to air, you're bett

        • by sribe ( 304414 )

          Cursive is just an old alternate script, from an age where anything professional was hand lettered calligraphy. It is not useful as a backup skill for recording information on paper. That can be done with a pen and normal print script.

          Bullshit. Cursive is several times faster than printing.

          • by jandrese ( 485 )
            Depends if you want to be able to read it afterward. For me, the cursive that was considerably faster than block letters was basically write only. It was almost impossible to make out what I'd written afterward. I decided it would be easier to just get fast with block letters instead so I could both write and read fast.
          • Re:quick notes? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by oogoliegoogolie ( 635356 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @05:13PM (#48487421)

            I use to be like you and believed that cursive is faster than printing, but that all changed one day half a lifetime ago when I was reading tips on how to take better notes in college, and one tip was to print your notes because printing is faster and neater than cursive.

            "Bullshit!" I said, "Everyone knows that cursive is faster than print. Who do they think they are kidding?". On top of this heresy they also stated that writing with a pencil is neater than with a pen. Their tips were changing from heresy to blasphemy! "Little kids print with pencils." I smugly muttered, "and adults write in cursive with pens, where the letters are joined beautifully together in flowing strokes in order to save time and be neater.". Although I knew cursive would best printing in speed and neatness, I must have had some doubts, for at that moment I grabbed my best pen, some crappy dog-chewed pencil, a few sheets of foolscap, and picked out a couple paragraphs in a book to copy to prove them wrong. I should have left well enough alone.

            After numerous iterations of writing and printing with pencil and pen, I could not believe the results but had to accept them:printing, with pencil or pen, was about 30% faster than writing, and clearly more legible. My fastest writing was nothing better than the worst chicken-scratches and would be unreadable by another person, whereas my quickest print was still legible and neat.

            "Oh my god!" I exclaimed just as the dizziness hit me. As I fell to my knees, then to the floor, as my belief system crumbled around me, the last thing I remember before I lost consciousness is muttering "Printing IS faster than writing!"

            Seriously. Write,then print a few paragraphs as fast as you can. The fastest printing is faster and much more legible than the fastest writing. I shit you not.

            • by Zobeid ( 314469 )

              So, I had to do a quick test on this... I pulled out a book and found a long paragraph to transcribe, first in cursive with a fountain pen, then printing with a mechanical pencil. My results: 7 minutes 53 seconds with the pen, 9 minutes 20 seconds with the pencil. That works out to a 15% speed advantage for cursive. It's not a huge, dramatic difference, but it's significant. Also, writing with the fountain pen was much less tiring to my hand, and it came out looking neater and easier to read (althoug

    • Would you support using the time spent on cursive to teach typing, but still teach block letters? Because, while the article is not well written, and that carried through to the copypasta summary, that seems to be the case.

      Would that we could discuss the articles here instead of trying to agree on what they are about.

    • Re:quick notes? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 29, 2014 @03:08PM (#48486523)

      Writing is an exceptionally important part of learning (http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3555, http://www.uwlax.edu/catl/writing/assignments/writingtolearn.htm). Despite Finland's reputation for excellent education, doing away with an essential skill like writing is shortsighted. The fact that keyboards and tablets and crappy little mobile devices make writing difficult, is a failing of the crappy device, not writing itself. It would be like doing away with reading because you can get audio books. Just becuase the infantile can't write properly is their handicap, not a sign of having abandoned an archaic system for data recording for a more efficient one.

      People learn better when writing notes down, it helps the brain to process the information and to retain it. The perception held by those with such poor motor skills that they find writing difficult to perform have, that their efficiency is improved by typing, is purely that, a perception, and an incorrect one at that. Study after study has proved them wrong, despite their febrile and plaintif cries to the contrary. Writing is far better for learning than typing. You can also continue to record your thoughts and other information when there is no electricity, no requirement for a keyboard or an internet connection ....

      Stupid, stupid, stupid.

    • And do you use cursive (aka handwriting) to do so? Personally I find quickly-written cursive tends to be difficult to read, I went back to printing years ago simply because my cursive wasn't getting enough usage to keep it legible when writing at speed. Frankly, if speed is your concern I'd suggest we teach shorthand instead - WAY more useful in the modern world than cursive.

    • by arielCo ( 995647 )

      They're not dropping handwriting altogether; that wouldn't be practical. Even TFS says it's cursive script that they're dropping. From TFA (more of a blog post):

      So what about a world where cursive writing is forgotten?

      What do you do when your computer is dead and you need to leave a note? The death of cursive script probably isn't the death of handwriting but the death of doing it quickly and with style. Some no doubt will want to master it just for the sake of it - like driving a stick shift.

      And signatures? A poor authentication system at the best of times - good riddance.

      What do we get in return for dropping the writing system that we have used for centuries?

      (Emphasis mine)

      Cursive is an art form, best left to those who have a reason to become competent at it (calligraphists). Rest of the world, please write clearly.

  • Sign on the dotted line ... ernnn, uh, well, you see, it's like this ...

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      They are still teaching how to write, just not how to write cursively.

      Signing needs to go away anyway. Not everyone can sign stuff. I'm borderline - I can make a mark but because I have arthritis in my hands it won't look very close to the example on the back of my credit card. I actually have a few cards so I can pick the one it is closest too as an example, but sometimes even that fails... So really it's a fairly useless form of authentication for me.

      In Japan people use stamps. They are hand made and each

  • by Dega704 ( 1454673 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @02:32PM (#48486251)
    I remember learning cursive all throughout middle school. It never served any functional purpose afterward. Almost nobody used it and the few people who still insisted on it were the ones whose handwriting nobody wanted to have to read because it was so difficult to make out. In college, many professors will not accept a paper written in cursive for that same reason. I still think handwriting is important, but to hell with cursive. Why waste time teaching it when the vast majority will never use it?
    • That is really the funniest part. After being forced to write papers in cursive as a child, you get to college... banned. Just straight out banned. You can hand print, or computer print.

      The same thing would happen in a professional setting. If somebody submits a report in cursive, they can plan some time to rewrite it in print so everybody can read it.

    • by ShaunC ( 203807 )

      I could say the same for algebra, and yet I feel that I'm much better off for having learned it. French? Je parle ne plus pas, which isn't likely to be entirely accurate for "I don't speak very much," but I haven't studied it in 20 years and still know enough to get a few points across. I don't agree at all that "most people don't ever use this" is a valid reason not to teach something.

      There is an entire generation of people, perhaps almost two now, who have grown up on the idea of text shortcuts and it's o

  • by Omega Hacker ( 6676 ) <omegaNO@SPAMomegacs.net> on Saturday November 29, 2014 @02:33PM (#48486259)
    I would hope that they're dropping the archaic cursive style of writing because it's just that: archaic. OTOH, ceasing to teach kids how to write in a legible block "font" would be mind-blowingly stupid. No matter what people need to be able to write, but they don't have to write "fancy".

    (Not to mention I can't actually manage to *read* most people's cursive writing, no matter what era they were taught it in.)
    • by hitmark ( 640295 )

      Just cursive.

    • by arielCo ( 995647 )

      Cursive. From TFA (more of a blog post):

      So what about a world where cursive writing is forgotten?

      What do you do when your computer is dead and you need to leave a note? The death of cursive script probably isn't the death of handwriting but the death of doing it quickly and with style. Some no doubt will want to master it just for the sake of it - like driving a stick shift.

      And signatures? A poor authentication system at the best of times - good riddance.

    • by Prune ( 557140 )
      Cursive exists because it's faster. This is why the letters are joined; it's not for looks. If it was about the latter, they would still be teaching Spencerian script in North America and similar systems elsewhere. There are other benefits: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfor... [nytimes.com]
  • Even when we learned cursive, it was more about writing "pretty" with nice, flowing curves than writing efficiently. If they wanted that, they'd teach us stenography. Kind of the grade school version of learning Latin, high degree of sophistication but of little practical value anymore. Typing with ease on the other hand is valuable both to concentrate on the actual task instead of the typing and because good typing skills + auto complete lets you use long, sane names and verbose comments with very little e

  • by magi ( 91730 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @02:40PM (#48486325) Homepage Journal

    This article could be a complete misconception, based on a translation error. The article says that Finnish children will only be taught "texting". In English, texting usually means writing SMS messages and such. The article refers to a Finnish article, where they talk about "tekstaus". In Finnish, "tekstaus" means writing block letters (or print writing) separate letters by hand. That's different from cursive, where the letters are joined.

    According to Wikipedia, in English-speaking countries, children also learn block writing first and MAY learn cursive. It doesn't mention how common it is.

    If so, this article is nonsense.

    The currently taught Finnish cursive is not very different from "tekstaus" anyhow. I personally nowadays mainly use the older cursive, for the exact reason that it has become rare.

    • by Lumpio- ( 986581 )
      This. The title of this article and the text in TFA sounds like a translation error. Tekstaus vs. texting - same origin, different meaning.
      • by magi ( 91730 )

        Ah yes, that too, didn't notice that. So, both the /. article and the referred one ARE completely based on a translation error.

    • The article seems to have been written by a non native writer. It is likely intended to give the meaning you got out of it. I deduced the same just based on the obvious mistakes such as using words interchangeably when they should not have been.

      The article becomes not nonsense but poorly written.

  • WTF biased summary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @02:41PM (#48486335) Homepage

    It seems incredible that in the 21st century schools are still teaching children to scratch marks on paper.

    It seems incredible? Hello, what sort of bizarro world does this come from? I know that handwriting is becoming less important, but WTF is this? Treating it as some sort of Amazon rainforest tribe barbarity?

    • That "mikejuk" is a moron of the highest caliber if he never writes by hand. He must have a low paying service job if any and live in his mother's basement.

  • I moved to United Kingdom when I was 13. I was never taught cursive in school. I am doing fine. However I don't think it is a good idea to teach texting, because different kind of input method may come along and make texting obsolete, e.g. Swype.

    • Someone above mentioned that "texting" was likely a translation error, the actual word used means block-letter writing, aka "printing" in the US.

  • by mendax ( 114116 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @02:50PM (#48486387)

    There is a definite cognitive connection between writing by hand and brain function. For example, I am a better writer when I write by hand. Furthermore, I enjoy the task better because I can to make the cursive squiggles. I use a fountain pen which makes it even more enjoyable. But then I am a luddite. I write letters by hand and put them in the mail. I do it partially because I write prisoners but I also have regular correspondents. It's much better than e-mail.

    • by sribe ( 304414 )

      For example, I am a better writer when I write by hand.

      I believe you, but I think that's a side-effect of how you learned to write, not an innate universal connection.

  • I have driven several cars with manual transmissions this year. I have not used cursive once unless you count my signature which my cursive writing instructor (from 3rd grade many decades ago) would have flunked for illegibility. As long as people can write in some legible manner with a pen or pencil there is no good argument to beat them up with cursive; just let them go from handwriting to typing.
  • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @02:52PM (#48486401)

    The article is appears to be a mix of bad translation provided by google translate and a cultural misunderstanding.

    Preface: I'm a Finn. I read OP, was very confused that I never heard about this happening, went to the original article and understood why I never heard about it.
    Original article is here: http://www.savonsanomat.fi/uut... [savonsanomat.fi]

    What the article actually says is that teachers will now be allowed to not teach writing in cursive if they choose to do so. They will still be required to teach writing skills, they'll just drop the requirement to teach cursive. Specifically this is a part of update of legal requirements for schools which is a part of larger legislative package that's coming in 2015. Nothing has been decided yet apparently, this is just one of the main suggestions. The change suggested would require complete overhaul of school books, which is not a cheap or easy feat in a country with only 5 million people, meaning far less buyers of said books that pushes up the prices significantly. It would also require massive investments in hardware for poorer students who may not have access to necessary hardware. We are very big on "no child left behind" principle here. That means that some of the poorer regions would have to update their schools. Regions have wide reaching autonomy around here, and can have as few as a few thousand people, so schools for little children tend to be equally small and operate on tight budgets.

    Considering that "most teachers are very confused by this requirement" and that teachers in this country are required to have master's degree in education by law and as a result get significant leeway in designing and implementing course work, something that is often considered to be of key importance to Finland's high PISA standings, I don't think we're looking at this change happening on large scale outside a few schools in larger cities any time soon. The article also notes that there are a lot of practical issues with the idea and the article is prefaced with a photograph text under which says that 4th grade student doesn't like this change because "writing in block letters is much slower than in cursive"

    Overall this looks like your standard US citizen reading a story about a different country that has a completely different culture and ways of doing things, projecting their own culture upon it, and running away with insanity that results from this heap of misunderstandings. The actual change here is that the schools will likely have teaching of typing skills added to curriculum at much earlier date than before. Not dropping of cursive.

    • Overall this looks like your standard US citizen reading a story about a different country that has a completely different culture and ways of doing things, projecting their own culture upon it, and running away with insanity that results from this heap of misunderstandings.

      And then you had to go and ruin it with your accurate translation.

      There's a reason people don't like foreigners!

  • andnothingofvaluewaslost

  • Just emojis thanks

  • I spent years in grammar school trying to write cursive well, because everyone told me that when I got to middle school, cursive would be required! When I actually got there, cursive was forbidden because nobody can read anyone else's cursive handwriting. And besides, we were already typing everything. Every handwritten form I've ever seen says "Please print" on the top. Why did I spend all of that time learning cursive if everyone always tells me to print?

  • by Morpeth ( 577066 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @03:16PM (#48486589)

    I'll leave it to people to search for themselves, but there's been some interesting studies that show the process of writing by hand involves different aspects of the brain than typing on a computer (there's also differences between a typewriter and PC type keyboard).

    There are still writers/authors who write by hand before having their work transcribed, feeling that their creative process is better (or different) when writing manually.

    Anyway, it sounds like they're still teaching printing, not cursive yes? So that makes some more sense.

  • How do you write without hand writing on a flip chart?
    On a white board? How to sketch in the sand?

    It seems incredible that in the 21st century schools are still teaching children to scratch marks on paper.
    Incredible? Wow, without handwriting skills quite a lot of jobs are out of the question as is lots of fun stuff.

    Want to sail a boat? Want to have a SRC/LRC (short/long range radio certification)? How do you think you put a received radio call into your log? How do you think to translate it, if you are in e

  • by kheldan ( 1460303 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @03:26PM (#48486673) Journal
    I seem to be seeing a trend of technology making people dumber, lazier, and more unskilled than ever before, and it really disturbs me.
  • by westlake ( 615356 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @03:44PM (#48486811)

    I can't help being reminded of the scene in Wall-E which scrolls past the portraits of the ship's Captains. Their signatures becoming more and more illegible as the machine takes control.

    Our family preserves letters, notes, cards and such that document over two hundred years of family history, They remain readable and expressive, exposing age and emotion in ways that print cannot --- in many ways tmore intimately than any photograph.

    This Thanksgiving what I saw as a quest at a family dinner was a near total self-absorption in the gadget. The smartphone. the tablet, The need to text as over-powering as the need to drink, no matter how inappropriate the setting or that there was nothing left to say.

  • Diaries (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mendax ( 114116 ) on Saturday November 29, 2014 @05:56PM (#48487701)

    My diary is written on paper and in longhand. It's the ultimate in keeping my innermost thoughts away from those who should not know them. It's immune from PRISM and the other NSA civil rights atrocities.

Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line

Working...