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Thread: High school grad can't read cursive.

  1. #1
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    High school grad can't read cursive.

    I was totally blown away today. We traveled north a couple hours for our last graduating grand daughter's commencement. (9 grandkids) 44 kids at CHA graduated high school.

    Afterwards, we had lunch, then went back to the house. Had a rousing game of dominoes going, and Gdaughter brought out a letter from her father, our son, deceased when she was 1yo. It was hand written, and she Could Not read it. She was never taught cursive.

    I was stunned. Absolutely jaw dropping stunned. Her mother read it for her.

    I guess when the powers that be, say they will not teach cursive, they actually banned cursive. I can't believe they wouldn't do so little as some kind of intro class.

    Unbelievable
    🙁

    I'm going to go read the Time for some levity thread. I need it.
    Last edited by Myk Rian; 06-05-2021 at 11:07 PM.

  2. #2
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    I don't recall ever being taught specifically how to read cursive although I can certainly read it.

    The only thing I use cursive for these days is my signature. If I write something by hand I use regular letters, not cursive. I'm not certain I could even remember how to write a paragraph or two in cursive anymore.

  3. #3
    I don't believe that my kids (2 recent grads and one still in high school) got taught cursive, which surprised me. They have all learned to sign their names in cursive, but I think they learned that on their own.

    I have mixed feelings on the obsolescence of cursive. On one hand the curmudgeon in me thinks that, since we had to learn it in elementary school and constantly hear that we were poor at it, kids still should still have to learn it. At the same time, I stopped using it as soon as I could, roughly high school, and find that most people I know have poor to out right illegible cursive writing. I sometimes think we are just better off with using regular printing and keyboards. Part of me thinks that cursive is a holdover from the days of quills, fountain pens, and inkwells.

  4. #4
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    In France cursive is taught from preschool until jr high or so when manuscript is introduced. Theory is a little kid can not draw straight line anyway so why try to teach them before they are ready. Pretty much all adults used to use similar looking cursive, few switched to manuscript.
    AFAIK France still is lockstep daily federal lesson plans in the entire country each grade does the exact same same thing as prescribed by Paris head quarters. A kid can transfer across country and next day he will be one page behind, just like all his new friends. If the students do not understand the new material there is no time to reteach it they must stay on schedule.
    Bill D
    Last edited by Bill Dufour; 06-06-2021 at 10:50 AM.

  5. #5
    They are no longer taught cursive here. I was also surprised. Here, they claim kids will be using keyboards/computers so they teach those skills (briefly). I dont know how they take notes in college - does everyone learn to type real fast?
    Last edited by Frederick Skelly; 06-06-2021 at 3:47 AM.
    "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

    “If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”

  6. #6
    I have always had a hard time reading cursive . My Mother could easily read anyone’s cursive, even stuff that to me just looked like straight
    lines drawn by someone with a slight tremor. I wonder what will happen with signatures. Since they are hard to read now, I guess they will
    get worse and then replaced ...with something.

  7. #7
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    I have always had a hard time reading cursive . My Mother could easily read anyone’s cursive, even stuff that to me just looked like straight
    lines drawn by someone with a slight tremor.
    I doubt if you're alone there.
    My granddad always said, :As one door closes, another opens".
    Wonderful man, terrible cabinet maker...

  8. #8
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    I am 63 years old and live in the UK. I was taught cursive writing from the age of 7 and the teaching took the following format
    (1) There was a chart permanently on the classroom wall depicting each letter of the alphabet in upper and lower case written in italics
    (2) Children either used a pen provided by the school which was dipped into an inkwell or you could purchase a pen with an ink cartridge from the school .I had to purchase a pen with an modified nib because I am left handed
    (3) Each week there would be a one hour lesson were the teacher wrote a poem on the blackboard and the children copied it The completed poem was the given to the teacher to assess the and if the writing was not of the required standard you were not allowed to participate in the sports class and had to remain in the classroom alone and repeat writing the poem The dread of missing sports concentrated the mind of every child in the class .Sports was every Childs favorite lesson
    (4) The writing paper provided was blank and children drew bold lines on a piece of paper which they placed underneath the blank unlined paper to provide a template of lines to ensure the writing was parallel
    (5) The upper and lowercase letter had to be a certain number of nib widths wide and the writing leant slightly to the right
    (6) Each classroom had a large bottle of ink and children refilled thier cartridges during the lunch hour using an hypodermic syringe with a needle attached We were never supervised refiling cartridge's and quickly learned the importance of pressing the plunger on the syringe slowly or the hypodermic needle came off ,ink would shoot across the room often depositing on the cloths of other children

    I find it interesting that more than fifty years later that if I see a letter y that has the tailed looped I immediately recognize letter has been incorrectly formed
    Last edited by Brian Deakin; 06-06-2021 at 5:24 AM.

  9. #9
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    My daughter is 8, and she was taught cursive, and I am very glad. That said, I ditched cursive for note taking around junior high, and use it only for my signature now. I am also one who hates it, but gets it. I studied in art and business, which included graphic art. Graphic art is highly focused on font usage. Cursive, as a font, is really a horrible design if you look at it through the eyes of a graphic artist. Is it a “j”, “g”, “q”, or a “z”? The letters are too similar, and there is no spacing, so they run together. The fact that a kid couldn’t read it kind of supports that it’s a terrible font. Also, I don’t believe it is faster to write with, excepting if you scribble it poorly and illegibly. That is why I gave it up for note taking. I could write much faster in print.

    My 8-year-old can already type. I agree, that is more important than scribbling illegibly. I’m old-school, by the way; I usually side with the old-school ways, but I’m fine with ditching cursive, except it needs to be a global initiative. Also, can we start teaching manners again?

  10. #10
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    Did anyone responding to this jot down a rough draft by hand, first?

    How many of us grind our own pounce or cut fresh quills for the task?

    Horrors

  11. #11
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    One of those utterly pointless skills that I'm happy to see consigned to the dustbin of history. What a waste of time and impediment to communication! I remember hating getting letters from my grandmother for the effort required to decipher them (this was 60 years ago). I took a drafting class in 8th grade where they (finally) taught me to print neatly and efficiently and there was no looking back-- making notes to myself that both I and others could actually read was such an improvement! That carried me through high school, college, and grad school up to the invention of word processors.

    For learning hand-eye coordination a drawing class would have been much more useful to me in life. I can't make a sketch worth a darn, which is horrible for a furniture maker. That one drafting class gave me a skill set I've used endlessly, both for scientific communication in my "day job", as well, of course, in drawing things I want to make. Typing (which I never learned, this is all hunt and peck) would also have been incredibly useful.

    If you like hard-to-read writing, hieroglyphs are more fun.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by roger wiegand View Post
    One of those utterly pointless skills that I'm happy to see consigned to the dustbin of history. What a waste of time and impediment to communication! I remember hating getting letters from my grandmother for the effort required to decipher them (this was 60 years ago). I took a drafting class in 8th grade where they (finally) taught me to print neatly and efficiently and there was no looking back-- making notes to myself that both I and others could actually read was such an improvement! That carried me through high school, college, and grad school up to the invention of word processors.

    For learning hand-eye coordination a drawing class would have been much more useful to me in life. I can't make a sketch worth a darn, which is horrible for a furniture maker. That one drafting class gave me a skill set I've used endlessly, both for scientific communication in my "day job", as well, of course, in drawing things I want to make. Typing (which I never learned, this is all hunt and peck) would also have been incredibly useful.

    If you like hard-to-read writing, hieroglyphs are more fun.
    Bingo! I gave up cursive by the time I got out of high school because I could never read my own writing & most of that by others.

  13. #13
    Put me in the Pro-Cursive camp.
    I'm 39, and was taught in grade school. I continue to write mostly in cursive to this day, although I do modify a few of the letters for aesthetic reasons. (Capital Qs and Gs are hideous.) I practiced my handwriting a lot and always took pride in it...for whatever weird reason.
    If I print, I print in all caps, and change the height of capital letters. I also incorporate some of the cursive versions of those capital letters. Regular printed letters always bothered me. They're less pleasing. They're less artistic.

    To me it's a shame we're losing this knowledge, though I understand why.

  14. #14
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    I've always admired folks with beautiful handwriting, but personally never saw the point. Like others here I abandoned it at an early age. Even my signature, carefully practiced and perfected when I was young, now is just a scrawl, and frankly, I can't remember the last time I actually had to sign something with a pen; even signatures are often digital these days.

    As to college students, at least in classes that I taught, note taking was all on devices. When we did any exercise that would require pen or pencil, I would have to remind the students to bring one as many don't even carry one in their backpack. And I would have extras.

    I much more rue the loss of wood shop and metal shop than the loss of cursive.
    --I had my patience tested. I'm negative--

  15. #15
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    Yep, the wife has retired after teaching 8th grade science for 20+ years. No cursive taught in our district. What folks don't realize is very little grammar is taught as well. No more instruction on diagraming sentences, nouns, verbs, etc. in our district. My wife purchased grammar books and taught our daughters grammar in the evenings.

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