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?
1994 (Score:2)
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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.
Re:1994 (Score:5, Insightful)
How about "cursive is so different from person to person, and most people write it sloppy anyway, so just scribble something that looks vaguely right and they'll just assume you know what you're doing but they just can't read it"?
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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)
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)
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.
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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
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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.
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Re:quick notes? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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
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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)
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.
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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.
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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.
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Man, it's amazing how many people who think they rock at writing, really suck at reading. They're not stopping teaching writing with pen and paper. They are stopping teaching cursive. Printing is faster for note taking anyway, cursive is just a way of trying to make your writing prettier.
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Then blame Timmay for posting a shitty summary that says "giving up teaching handwriting". Notice it does not say "cursive only".
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"The Savon Sanomat newspaper reports that from autumn 2016 cursive handwriting will no longer be a compulsory part of the school curriculum."
I mean... sure, it's slashdot tradition to not read the article, but to not even read the first 3 sentences of the summary...
Re:I agree (Score:4, Informative)
The word "cursive" isn't used much outside North America. "(Hand)writing" (as contrasted with "printing") has much wider currency.
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Printing is faster for note taking anyway, cursive is just a way of trying to make your writing prettier.
Bullshit. Cursive is several times faster than printing.
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...cursive is just a way of trying to make your writing prettier.
No, it is most certainly not. You're missing the point. It's not for looking pretty, it's for writing quickly quick while retaining legibility.
My handwriting sucked until sometime in 3rd of 4th grade I quit trying to make my writing look like what was in the copy-books and started figuring out how to form the letters in a way that was fast *for me* and still neat for those trying to read it. Within a year I went from bottom of the class to having my handwriting shown off as an example, and I still receive c
Sign on the dotted line. (Score:3)
Sign on the dotted line ... ernnn, uh, well, you see, it's like this ...
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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
Cursive is virtually dead already (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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
Just cursive, or all writing? (Score:3)
(Not to mention I can't actually manage to *read* most people's cursive writing, no matter what era they were taught it in.)
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Just cursive.
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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.
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Makes sense to me (Score:2)
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
Sounds like a translation error in the article (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Ah yes, that too, didn't notice that. So, both the /. article and the referred one ARE completely based on a translation error.
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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)
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?
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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 have never learnt cursive (Score:2)
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.
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Someone above mentioned that "texting" was likely a translation error, the actual word used means block-letter writing, aka "printing" in the US.
Stupid, stupid, stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Don't compare cursive to manual transmission (Score:2)
Cultural misunderstanding (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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And then you had to go and ruin it with your accurate translation.
There's a reason people don't like foreigners!
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No, I should. That is our exact term. And its goal is to ensure that "stupid children" as you put it get both peer and teacher's help to progress. That's why we score so high on PISA - we tend to lack the super high achievers, but our average is high and we have very few students who fall through the cracks.
BBC has a pretty good primer for Anglo countries' citizenry here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/860... [bbc.co.uk]
missing tag (Score:2)
andnothingofvaluewaslost
Typing is so 5 minutes ago (Score:2)
Just emojis thanks
"Please Print" (Score:2)
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?
Cursive/Printing a different process mentally (Score:3)
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.
Pfft ... (Score:2)
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
Is technology making us dumber not smarter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is technology making us dumber not smarter? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Given that cursive writing doesn't make any smarter, increase their work ethic, or provide them with useful skills I don't think that this trend is all that disturbing."
Except, of course, that it makes you smarter, increases your work ethic and provides a quite useful skill.
Hand writing instills in young minds the need of work hard to reach the desired results and while doing so, exercises the brain and conects abstract thinking with fine-grain motions. On top on that, once mastered, it allows to effortlessly take notes which helps fixating concepts and have a look at them at a glance for deeper understandment.
The fact all of you American saying that you left cursive as soon as you could just shows how ill-fitted your education system has become, not that cursive is of no use.
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Except, of course, that it makes you smarter, increases your work ethic and provides a quite useful skill.
How does learning another way, to write the same word in the same language make one smarter, or provide a useful skill? I would say it's useful if anyone ever tried to communicate with me in cursive script, but no one does. There's a reason why the font used for this website is not in a cursive script. I find that learning two ways to write the same characters confuses my hands muscle memory. Once I made an intentional effort to stop writing the cursive I noticed that my block letter hand writing clarity in
I'm not so willing to abandon cursive. (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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.
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Re:Finland will save money on napkins (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Finland will save money on napkins (Score:5, Insightful)
Finland is also dropping the handwritten long division algorithm in 2016.
Now that's just stupid. People will need to use their smartphone's calculator to figure out everything from restaurant tips to spacing between items to make them look equally spaced to adjusting the ingredients for a recipe.
It seems that the smarter our devices get, the dumber we get.
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Finland is also dropping the handwritten long division algorithm in 2016.
Now that's just stupid. People will need to use their smartphone's calculator to figure out everything from restaurant tips to spacing between items to make them look equally spaced to adjusting the ingredients for a recipe.
It seems that the smarter our devices get, the dumber we get.
Say that again when you're using an abacus to do math, in Roman Numerals.
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Where do you draw the line? Why not make kids extract roots by hand? Run a few iterations of Newton's Method while they're at it? At some point you're just misusing the limited classroom time you have available. Long division probably crosses that line, and cursive writing indisputably does.
Re:Finland will save money on napkins (Score:4, Interesting)
In Mexico City, at the end of the primary school, ~1988, we did learn how to extract square roots (and covered the basis for "higher" roots). Of course, it was not something we used since; in secondary school we went on with algebra, and didn't do much more pure arithmetics since. But square roots are useful to at least estimate without computers.
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At some point you're just misusing the limited classroom time you have available. Long division probably crosses that line
I disagree very strongly. Being able to perform division without the aid of a machine is a critical life skill. I would not allow a child to pass out of elementary school without it.
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Being able to perform division without the aid of a machine is a critical life skill.
Why? I can imagine survival situations where you may not have a calculator/cellphone/computer available. But I am having a hard time thinking of any such desperate situation that involves long division. Can you explain a plausible scenario where manual long would be critical to survival?
I wouldn't say that being able to perform long division on paper is, itself, terribly useful; but I'd be a trifle nervous about whether or not learning how to perform calculations manually is related to developing a decent sense for estimation(I don't know if it is or not; but the idea seems just plausible enough that I'd want to have somebody check).
Playing FPU is relatively rarely all that important; but developing a good, reasonably intuitive, sense for approximate answers is immensely helpful. You ca
Re:Finland will save money on napkins (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't think of a single time in my life where I would've literally died if I couldn't read.
Yet that happens all the time. People die because they cannot read emergency instructions, a medicine label, a warning label on a pesticide, etc. One thing that all the countries with active ebola have in common, is far lower literacy than neighboring countries where the disease was stopped dead in its tracks.
People that can read have measurably longer, healthier lives. Literacy is a real critical life skill. Manual long division is not. Equating the two is idiotic.
Re:Finland will save money on napkins (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wiritng cursive has crossed the line for decades (just teach them so they can write legibly, which is still required - but all that cursive shit, no).
However long division and other things such as doing multiplication by hand are important skills that should still be taught: it internalizes the idea that a big difficult calculation can be made easier by turning it into several smaller calculations. It's a bit like learning asm in computer science - you're (probably) never going to use it in the real world b
Re:Finland will save money on napkins (Score:4, Funny)
To be clear - they're only dropping the part of long division that is currently performed in cursive.
Re:Finland will save money on napkins (Score:5, Informative)
You haven't spent much time scribling on napkins. Cursive will tear the napkin and cause it to totally fall apart. You have to stick to print so when it tears it is in an isolated spot. Cursive, the napkin will be weakened continuously where you've written, and once a tear starts it keeps tearing - right through the writing!
As long as the kids are learning to print by hand, they will be fine. Cursive is now a specialized skill for caligraphers.
Re:Finland will save money on napkins (Score:4, Insightful)
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" Stroke of fucking genius."
I think we're on the same page as this being a bad idea -- but I'm no where near as far along that page as you.
They most likely won't be able to read/write CURSIVE. They'll be able to read JUST fine. They'll be able to WRITE (print little letters that look like the letters they read). Will they be able to write quickly? Probably not, but they'll be able to write just fine.
Lawn, off, please get. (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have that. So do they.
We older folks sit together and talk to each other. We smile, frown, roll our eyes, laugh, and more, all while undertaking integrated forays into spoken language and listening comprehension.
They sit there mute, heads folded halfway over, tapping madly on their smart-phones while occasionally sniggering to themselves. I've seen whole tables of them doing this, many times. It's like the others at the table don't even exist, except inasmuch as they might be connected via those same smart-phones.
And when you try to engage them in conversation, just watch how long it takes before they're head-back-in-smartphone.
It's a fascinating social development. But I'm not at all certain it is a positive one.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Written communication is the only thing that will keep working throughout history and they want to stop teaching it.
They aren't going to stop teaching printing. They are going to stop teaching cursive.
In highschool my cursive was illegible enough that I switched back to printing for notes, assignments, and exams.
I would be with you 100% if if they were going to stop teaching printing, and if all note taking and draft writing, math homehork, spelling tests, and everything else was going to be done on a keyboard. But they aren't doing that. Nobody is suggesting that.
They're getting rid of cursive. It's not a big deal.
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That's quite interesting, but to me instead of it being a defense of cursive ... it raises the point that if we are going to teach 'writing' as a computer input mechanism, perhaps we should be teaching kids shorthand instead, and/or developing shorthand techniques that are designed to lend them selves well to recognition software. (e.g. maybe not Pitman or Gregg 'as they are' but developed specifically with computer recognition in mind.
That would be a much more useful skill to have then cursive.
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I disagree. I learned to write cursive in school, and did so in all school assignments except reports until college. My little sister and brother did not have to learn cursive, and even their manuscript is lousy. They write noticeably slower than I (I am left-handed and they are not, their handwriting should be better than mine).
I understand it's not necessary like it used to be, in that formal documents are typed nowadays, but I think it should s
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I understand it's not necessary like it used to be,... but I think it should still be taught.
I believe that's the same argument for teaching Latin.
Funny (Score:3)
Perhaps the cursive script itself should be revised? Also, cursive writing really helps to develop fine motor skills which are linked with h
Oh what do we do? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
What do you do? The same thing that I do now, you print it. No reason to put anyone, including myself, through trying to decipher my cursive writing. Idiotic question!
Oh what do we do? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The reason to learn and use cursive is because it's much more efficient in terms of writing large amounts. It's not the fault of cursive if people like you can't be bothered to use it correctly any more than it's the fault of the OS that people click on things they shouldn't be clicking on.
I've tried taking notice with regular printing and it just doesn't work out well. I can write far more with cursive before my hand starts to ache.
Before you bring up laptops for taking notes, I'd like to point out that I hate those assholes for making all that noise while I'm trying to concentrate on the class. Not to mention the fact that it's easy to have material wind up on the page that wasn't in the lecture because you're not really thinking about what you're typing.
Re:Oh what do we do? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The reason to learn and use cursive is because it's much more efficient in terms of writing large amounts.
That's the point... (almost) no one does that any more. For those that actually at some point in their life write more than a few sentences in a row by hand, they certainly can go out and learn cursive. But to teach everyone to write cursive, because 0.01% of them at some point might have need to write out many pages of text, rather than just typing it (as 99.99% wold), is ridiculous. That time absolutely is better spent teaching people to type efficiently.
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Well, seeing as there are people here who can't read (you), what does the writing matter?
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Works fine with printed; cursive not required.
Re:Dumps, you say? From the anus? (Score:4, Insightful)
Historical records in many countries are written in cursive, and not just English wring ones. Only a complete idiot would want to sever children from their past.
Re:Dumps, you say? From the anus? (Score:4, Insightful)
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A lot of historical documents are written in Olde English or Saxxon
Wasn't that a popular diagonally-scrolling shooter in the Early Middle Ages?
Re: Dumps, you say? From the anus? (Score:3)
Yes. Tapestries of that era depict serfs slowly pulling long parchment scrolls bearing the brightly colored playing field diagonally across a refectory table as knights took turns shooting.
Re:Dumps, you say? From the anus? (Score:4, Interesting)
Historical records in many countries are written in cursive, and not just English wring ones. Only a complete idiot would want to sever children from their past.
There's a difference between being able to read cursive (i.e. "joined up" in Commonwealth English) handwriting and actually being able to write it yourself. Besides which, even *my* joined-up handwriting isn't the same style as some of the more elaborate "copperplate" styles favoured in the past.
And while we're talking about it, the headline "Finland dumps handwriting"- which the original story used and Slashdot copied- is misleading anyway. From the article itself, it's joined-up writing that's being dumped, not writing altogether. The latter would be far more serious- IMHO kids should learn to write, but joined-up? Well, it makes me slightly uncomfortable to think of ditching it, but then *I* remember how little I actually write these days. (*) As long as they can at least write half-competently, that's the main thing.
FWIW, I certainly think that kids should be being taught basic typing skills, and if you're going to explicitly teach it anyway, it makes sense to go with touch typing. I'd been using computers for around 15 years before I learned to touch type in the late 90s, and that only happened because I explicitly learned to do so. I'd got pretty good at "hunt and peck" (**), but I would never have picked up touch typing skills from that alone.
I used Mavis Beacon, and to be honest, it didn't take *that* long to become good enough that I switched completely to touch-typing. I'm pretty sure that most kids could pick it up as fast, so it shouldn't waste too much schooltime anyway, even if typing (say) became obsolete in fifteen years time.
"Texting" skills, OTOH... stupid waste of time. Smacks of a slightly out-of-touch and conservative middle-aged person having belatedly caught up with this new "texting" fad and mistaking it for an important skill. Even if old-style (numeric keypad) texting needed a bit of practice to learn, it's not something that kids needed to be- or should have been- taught. More importantly, that typing style is being quickly rendered obsolete by the move to smartphones that use virtual QWERTY keyboards instead.
(*) And how rubbish it is often when I do- mainly because the speed of typing has made me impatient with writing speed- even though rushing it doesn't speed things up that much. If I actually make an effort to write, I'm still as neat as I ever was.
(**) My classmates were quite impressed with my typing speed, but this was back in the late 80s/early 90s when computers hadn't permeated everyday life as much, and most domestic use by non-geeks was for games or very basic use that didn't need much typing skill. (I was a geek, of course!)
Re:Dumps, you say? From the anus? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen some people, that might be considered conspiracy theorists, that believe this is the intent. If it is possible to remove children from foundational documents like the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and Federalist Papers then it would be much easier to convince children to be quiet and obey Dear Leader.
I'm not saying it is a very convincing argument but I've seen it made many times now.
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Like Sweden did in the 70s, inventing a horrible new handwriting ("SÖ-stilen" [google.com]); people of that generation can't read the old handwriting, and the new handwriting is really, really ugly. 10 years after forcing that handwriting they let other styles be taught as well, again.
I'm surprised Finland still did cursive handwriting. I'm sure you can add it as extra credit still, and not all schools give it up.
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Or difficult enough to require a pretty intense course. In the Netherlands, we have at least a dozen wildly different medieval writing styles, not counting the handwriting of different writers. Given the changes in how to write the letters of the alphabet, grammar drift, and various attempts over the centuries to "modernize" the language and make it "easier to understand", reading old handwriting is nigh impossible without a decent course.
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Several uses huh? Name one other than signatures. As a rule nobody else can read your cursive, and shorthand is far superior for note taking.
As for historical documents - the same way historical documents in Babylonian or any other abandoned written language are read: If you actually want to read the things you either learn the language or find a translation. Why should the other 99% of the population be forced to learn a largely useless alphabet?
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But yes, I think in general that M/T drivers do tend to be more aware of how the whole system works.
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You can downshift an automatic transmission. The torque converter will give higher torque at low output shaft rpm. you have no point, you are ignorant
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"Font" is a typographical concept in printing, it doesn't apply to writing by hand, in which you would call them different "scripts" or styles of writing.
But yeah, the article is rubbish, apparently based on translating tekstaus to "texting".
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And thus the communication method that's most efficient should take priority.
I'd rather kids spent times learning how to use the words than how they are drawn. Especially if they are left-handed, clumsy, short-sighted, etc.
My mother stormed up to my school innumerable times to point out this very fact to them.
"He's handwriting is messy"
"But is the answer right?"
"Well, yes, but it's messy."
"But you could read it, and the answer was right?"
"Well, yes..."
At that point the schools tended to change tack, becaus
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Guess what getting raised on both metric and cursive is fine, learning wise. I believe you're australian as I seen in "Heartbreak High" TV series hilarious young prick gets in trouble while messing up rolling a carpet floor.. missed by a few inches or tens centimeters because they use inches in a metric country. This crap shortly predated the Mars probe fuck up.
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How do you "sign your name" is the same thing my "luddite" teacher in 9th grade asked when I was the first person in the school to turn in a paper from a word processor. I "printed" my signature and he didn't like it, but he didn't have to.
He, and now you, are the only ones to ever care.
So who is the luddite? Have you ever used a word processor?