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Post by verasthebrujah on Dec 6, 2011 9:23:49 GMT -5
I'm guessing we should make it mandatory for kids to learn all languages, because at one point in their lives they may receive written instructions in Spanish, Japanese, French, or whatever. The likelihood of needing to read cursive at some point in one's life is pretty high. The likelihood of needing to read Farsi is pretty slim.
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Post by lexikon on Dec 6, 2011 10:40:16 GMT -5
And that's a straw man. Spanish is the 3rd most spoken language, and Japan has the 3rd Biggest economy.
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Post by verasthebrujah on Dec 6, 2011 10:55:03 GMT -5
We teach Spanish, Japanese, and French, among several other languages. The argument that I was responding to compared the practicality of learning cursive to the practicality of learning ALL other languages. It isn't the same thing.
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Post by cestlefun17 on Dec 6, 2011 11:04:35 GMT -5
People love throwing around the term "straw man" around here. It doesn't make a difference how many speak Spanish, if you don't work in a Spanish-language work environment, then you will not regularly encounter Spanish. For example, I am a librarian assistant at an American university's study abroad site in Paris. Therefore, I work in a bilingual English/French environment and speak both languages. Nobody here speaks Spanish or Japanese, despite those countries' large sizes, but everybody does write things down. No matter what language your work environment operates in, it is highly likely people will be writing things down: notes, instructions, whatever.
Exactly. The argument is a false equivalency.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Dec 6, 2011 14:33:04 GMT -5
Learning to write cursive is not the same as learning to read cursive.
On the other hand, learning all of these languages would be FAR more useful than cursive. Sure, your chance of encountering someone writing in cursive is higher, but cross-cultural communication is far more beneficial in enriching any individual.
Furthermore, anything cursive can do, print can do many times better. You don't need to take a course to learn how to print. If you can read a book, you can read print. If you can't read print, then you can't read, period. (Unless their handwriting is just THAT BAD, and teaching them to write in cursive is NOT going to improve it, just make it worse.)
Cursive is not even equivalent to, say, Spanish, because learning a second alphabet to a language you already speak is less beneficial than learning a second language.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 6, 2011 14:49:41 GMT -5
I have to say, "You need it because someone might use it" may very well be the weakest defense I've ever seen mounted for anything ever. We don't even teach logic in school & you want me to believe that how to make pwetty swervey letters is something important. Disregard the 8 million other stylized writings you are discouraged from using in a professional setting because they're nigh illegible.
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Post by verasthebrujah on Dec 6, 2011 16:33:53 GMT -5
Granted, but do you know a better way to learn to read it than to learn to write it? This is a serious question, if you have any ideas, I'd be more than happy to pass them to the English teacher.
True, learning multiple languages would be immensely more valuable than writing in cursive. At the same time, the cost in terms of time and effort would also be prohibitively high. It takes years of training for a non-native speaker to be anything remotely resembling fluent in a language. This isn't to say that schools shouldn't teach foreign language (Indiana currently requires 2-3 years for a high school diploma), just that gaining the ability to communicate in dozens of languages isn't a realistic expectation. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, and most of them are basically identical in cursive and print. If it takes each student 15 to 30 minutes to learn each letter (which I would say is a pretty high estimate), we are talking about spending 6.5 to 13 hours out of an entire academic career learning a new skill. Learning a new language (or taking a complete elementary logic course, if you prefer, Admiral) takes far more time than that.
Cursive has two traditional advantages over print. 1) not having to pick up your quill makes it less likely to break, and 2) it is, on average, faster. The first of these two reasons is obsolete. The second isn't, unless one has a keyboard handy at all times. In high school and as an undergrad all of my notes were in cursive because I could better keep up with what was going on. I regularly check my high schoolers' notes from my classes, and half of them do the same. You can't tell me that it isn't a useful skill.
I'm having a hard time responding to this because, as far as I can tell, your argument is nothing more than you think my argument is dumb. One of the reasons we teach students skills is so they have those skills available if and when they use them. I find it unlikely that any of my students will get as far as college graduation coming across cursive. If I'm missing the point, please help me understand, but I will add that I'm not saying that cursive is more important than logic or any other subject. I'm looking at it from the perspective of a cost-benefit analysis. It costs very little to learn cursive. It costs a lot to learn logic. Devoting one hour each week to cursive over the course of a single semester isn't a big deal, and it provides a reasonable benefit. Devoting the time it takes to teach kids logic is a major investment, but it yields a major reward. My school teaches critical thinking, multiple foreign languages for every student, and cursive, and we manage just fine.
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Post by Yaezakura on Dec 6, 2011 16:46:43 GMT -5
You say learning cursive provides a reasonable benefit, but I don't see one. All it does is enable you to read something someone else was stupid enough to write in cursive when it was meant to be read by others.
Job application? Print is mandatory.
Filling out forms at work? Print is mandatory.
Any document you want other people to ever read? Print is mandatory.
The only legitimate use for cursive is personal notes. And considering it's only legitimate use is entirely personal in nature, mandatory cursive in public schools seems to me a waste of time that could be better spent on pretty much anything. Hell, devote all that time to helping students improve their printing speed instead of teaching them an entirely separate alphabet. It'll be a far more useful skill in life than cursive ever will.
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Post by Vene on Dec 6, 2011 17:00:25 GMT -5
Something I've noticed here is the equivalence of "don't mandate cursive" and "don't ever teach cursive." Which is, flawed, to say the least. Veras, you work at a school with gifted students, right? They probably have the mental capability to learn everything required by a reasonable primary and secondary school system and then some, meaning spending time teaching them cursive does not interfere with what they need to know in life. What sticks out to me is the take Sandman has on it, who most definitely does not teach these kinds of students. You might have plenty of time to teach cursive, but the teacher in the school who is struggling to teach kids how to read and write at all is probably going to be grateful for an opportunity to remove something from the curriculum that isn't strictly needed and be able to teach students what is actually needed to get by in life.
Can your life be enriched by learning cursive? Of course it can be, just like it can be enriched by learned pretty much anything. But the fact of the matter is that cursive is becoming less and less necessary to function in the world and there is only so much time to teach skills becoming more and more vital.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Dec 6, 2011 17:03:52 GMT -5
Regarding the "increase in writing speed" of cursive vs print: that largely depends on the person. I'm slow as fuck writing in cursive, but I can print fairly quickly. Shit...the only times I use cursive are, like others have already said, for signatures on documents and the occasional (very) personal bit of something or other.
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Post by lexikon on Dec 6, 2011 17:17:15 GMT -5
Exactly. The argument is a false equivalency. Depending on the school it may or may not be mandatory, and it is much more useful than cursive, especially if you want to become a part of the govenrment or live in or near the border states. Cursive doesn't need to be taught in Elementary school, since a kid could could probably pick up on it quickly later on if they would need to use it.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Dec 6, 2011 17:45:23 GMT -5
For the record, cursive kills my hand. Printing makes it so I have a split second break between letters. Cursive means I have to wait entire words for a break. And with someone whose disability causes immense pain when trying to write with a pencil... yeah.
Cursive is NOT quicker for me. It is in fact much slower, much more agonizing, and harder to read. What's the point again?
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 6, 2011 18:07:55 GMT -5
Well, YES. Your argument is that it is an important skill because you might come across it. That alone is a fallacy, I have come across bubble letters more than cursive, & we don't mandate those. But, more importantly, you are ignoring 3 important points:
1) Anyone who knows cursive also knows print. If they refuse to use it so they can communicate effectively, it's their own damn fault. If their writing is so fluffy that I can't even perceive it as my own native language, it's their own fault. 2) The further you get in a professional setting, the more the usage of cursive is discouraged anyway. 3) This would be a generational gap thing, a minor bump in the road in ANY educational transition, it is not an argument against streamlining a curriculum.
All 3 of these things make your statement that cursive is an "important skill" a false statement. Potentially, it provides a benefit to some people, but it's Russian Roulette as to whether the individual will actually ever be able to apply it.
Also, like Vene said, the point is against mandating cursive. I thought logic was important, so I took an elective in high school. As far as notetaking goes, I devised several conventions to make my notes more efficient on my own, without needing a required class for it. In that line of thought, even though I can't remember cursive anymore, if all I needed from it was personal use, I could easily recreate it just by modifying my printed letters slightly. In fact, that variant of cursive would probably be easier for me to do.
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Post by DeadpanDoubter on Dec 6, 2011 18:36:21 GMT -5
For the record, cursive kills my hand. Printing makes it so I have a split second break between letters. Cursive means I have to wait entire words for a break. And with someone whose disability causes immense pain when trying to write with a pencil... yeah. Cursive is NOT quicker for me. It is in fact much slower, much more agonizing, and harder to read. What's the point again? This...well, except for the disability part. I've 'perfected' my name in cursive, but it's tedious and annoying to write more than that in cursive, and while my print is horrid, my 'fancy' script is completely illegible. I like the point someone made about how it was originated to accommodate quills, though. Suddenly everyone's handwriting in Harry Potter makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE. Also why I'm tempted to link letters when using that leaky pen I like.
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Post by Meshakhad on Dec 6, 2011 19:15:15 GMT -5
The SAT and GRE have a little statement at the beginning that has to be written in cursive for some reason, and on both tests I started late because I was still trying to remember how to make some of the letters. What a stupid restriction. That bit took me FIFTEEN MINUTES OF PURE AGONY.
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