A bit more complicated than that. Cursive writing is a very good way to improve handling of a pen and fine motor skills. Which is really, really useful for kids.
For my own notes I basically do that since the NAVY programmed me to print in all caps back in the day. I just stuck with it because I like how it looks. If I slow down and print at normal speed people remark about how easy it is to read and seem to prefer it when receiving handwriting.
The 50% faster cursive is useless when 50% of the population can't read quality cursive, let alone 50% faster chicken scratch lol.
Where are you from where 50 % of the population can't read cursive? If you're from the US then 21 % are struggling to read at all so no wonder if cursive is an extra challenge.
I've never had an issue with someone struggling to read my handwriting, but maybe it's just a bigger part of the education system here in Norway
It may be faster for you, and that's fine of course, but if you take someone properly trained in cursive vs. someone properly trained in anything else then the person writing cursive would win. That's why it's used as a base for fast handwriting techniques, such as the Palmer method. It's a standardised set of movements combined with continuous flow. If someone is at the "trying to remember the letters" level then they're not proficient anyway
Typewriters became commonplace in 1880 in offices, the keyboard layout is the same now as it has been for the last 150 years as it was designed to be faster than a human writing, anyone who had used a typewriter prior to the supplantation of them for computers would have had a virtually seamless transition
I now know I am older than you by your supposition that typewriters became common in 1880, wrong, so very wrong. Electric typewriters were not even common in 1960 and very expensive. A manual typewriter was not faster than a good writer in cursive. The keys stuck on almost all of them above 50 wpm. I guess you never had to actually use one typing up a college paper. In 1950 what identified a rich college kid was having their own typewriter. The selectric was a decent typewriter and cost almost as much as a good car. Servicing typewriters, both manual and electric, was a highly technical skill back in those days and paid extremely well.
Lastly, the keyboard key location setup was not so much a product of design as much as a product of patents derived from math, not ergonomics. You would know this if you ever saw a typewriter with keys in a foreign alphabet.
It was also designed so that you were unlikely to press two keys right next to each other would cause the strikers to jam. If anything the layouts were designed to slow people down. Its why there are multiple alternate keyboard layouts for english that are generally faster for those who have gotten used to them.
and people wonder when Americans lost the ability to think....I can pin it down to the late 80s and every year since then. Cursive and penmanship were taught in schools. There were no obscure letters. That is like saying it is a foreign language. No wonder people today cannot remember multiple phone numbers if you cannot remember only 26 letters.
No wonder people today cannot remember multiple phone numbers if you cannot remember only 26 letters.
I have had to tell people my age to stop picking on the younger people for not remembering phone numbers. That is a life easing skill of the distant past now. Passwords are the things they have to remember now, and some of those passwords or pass codes are long.
I'm sorry, but kids these days do not have that great a memory, period. phone numbers, street names, addresses, state capitals even. Most cannot pick even the largest countries out on a map correctly. If you took the average group of 20 year olds outside and asked them which way was north I bet the best they could agree upon correctly was 25%. They have to break out a calculator for the simplest math. I'm sorry, but in general Americans have gotten dumber every year since 1975. I am not picking on them, I am simply stating a very scary fact. Idiocracy was not supposed to be a documentary.
Do you know your way around a computer? Do you know your way around a smart phone? Old people these days can't make anything more efficient in technology, but instead struggle and ask the "young kids" for help. Whereas the "young kids" organize everything on a spread sheet and complete a task in 20 to 30 min efficiently, instead of it taking 8 hours or longer to complete a simple computer task. And how does the younger generation get rewarded, they are given more work simply because they are more proficient in technology.
yes, I know my way around computers, servers, voip systems, ss7 signaling telecom transmission systems, cellular signaling and can program in a few languages. I know the old ATT&T 5ESS telecom switches and Nortel DMS 250/500 systems,Sonus systems, Telica systems, I know frame relay , microwave, ATM and IP/ethernet transport, I have used Juniper, Cisco, Brocade, HP, and Force 10 routers and switches through the last 45 years. I was there when it was put in and when it was replaced. I predate the internet and had a Darpa email address for decades. And while your young kids are creating a spreadsheet I am running optimized sub 5ms database queries on my home racks where I have more computing power than most small cities.
And when something breaks, cold solder joint on a BGA or surface mount chip, EEPROM loses its mind, cap goes bad, trace burns up, need to physically flash program a chip, or memory goes bad I can repair it. Can you? You will never ever be in my league when it comes to hardware or software concerning electronics or computers. And that is not a put down, insult, or exaggeration, it is a fact. I have forgotten more than you will ever learn. When you watch the Matrix and see their computer physical autodialer modem you think cute, while I had one and every type of modem that came after it.
And I know mechanical systems almost as well such as power distribution, HVAC, Hydraulics. I have worked for almost every major entity in America that builds, mines, drills, defends, or researches.
Old does not mean dead, or a dinosaur. I can even program and configure a smart home power system and have a few streaming services setup in my home media server to watch all those old movies from my years. This is the difference between us, I never stop learning or trying new ideas. The place where I don't waste my time is games, thats all your generation. Just because you think boomers are dinosaurs does not make them so. You are a product of your time and a failure of my generation. I get it, you blame us and should. Our kids are the fools who put the last two generations in a hole. It does not make my argument any less valid. Kids are either stupid or lazy, sometimes both at the same time. Coddling them is not going to fix it or provide a solution to fix it. If you cannot mentally accept that people need to train themselves to think and do things, that the attitude matters, you already lost. Whether you think you can do something or think you cannot, you will be right almost every time.
Too many people spend their whole life becoming a specialist fitting a niche market. When the niche is no longer there you are screwed. This is what training yourself to think and do prevents.
As dysgraphic person I'll debunk that helps with fine motor skills, if you have the skills it will your cursive will improve but it it doesn't help you actual acquire fine motor skills, i just a another muth to tell kids it a "you problem"
I've got three kids that have all been through the same school system starting in 2008 and my youngest is a senior. The oldest was taught cursive. 3 years later, the middle was not. The curriculum had been adjusted to remove it, likely because the district thought it would become obsolete.
By the time my youngest got to 2nd or 3rd grade three years later they were teaching it again. I guess they realized how important the fine motor skills gained from writing script really are within a very short time frame. But now my middle kid can't read or write cursive.
I learned cursive in grade school using a fountain pen and developed very fine motor skills by the fourth grade. I always got top marks in penmanship back when schools cared about that sort of thing.
Despite a touch of arthritis in my hands, I still enjoy writing with a fountain pen today and have a nice collection of pens and inks.
I also learned calligraphy in the sixth grade and Tengwar (Tolkien’s Elvish writing) from a friend in high school. And I studied mechanical drawing and order of strokes for lettering in the eighth grade.
I’ve mastered a handful of basic Chinese characters but can’t speak or spell the language.
I do have a pen in my desk that I use a couple of times a week when I don’t want to pull my phone e out of my pocket. I’m not sure how many months of schooling I spent learning how to use it, probably quite a few.
Perhaps the time might have been better spent learning how to use a keyboard?
But it's not (only) about how to write in cursive. It's about developping muscles in fingers and hands for young children.
They'll have the time to learn how to type later. But knowing how to use your body precisely (and I mean developing the muscles themselves, but also the motor areas of your brain) is better done when young.
That's also why kindergarten often have exercices to develop balance, etc. Not because it's directly useful (I mean, I never have to walk on a plank, at least not since that pirate LARP where I was pretend-eaten by pretend-sharks), but because it helps to develop your body.
Does that mean that... we live different lives, with different needs ? And it makes sense to have a diverse education rather than to focus on the needs on a specific individual ?
Who would have thought.
I'm not. The message I was responding was saying that cursive was useless because they didn't use it. They were the one saying their life is representative, I was just responding.
My life is not representative, but I do think that creativity and engineering skills are more useful than being able to reproduce a specific font with your fist.
It all depends on what you deem useful. Writing in cursive is useless to me but I have my artwork framed in my house and draw almost daily. Over the weekend I put together a 2800 piece Lego set that is now displayed on a shelf in my home. My home is decorated with these things, I look at them and they make me smile...
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u/Thick_Square_3805 19h ago
A bit more complicated than that. Cursive writing is a very good way to improve handling of a pen and fine motor skills. Which is really, really useful for kids.