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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 7, 2011 15:21:58 GMT -5
Face-to-the-fucking-palm.
People, if you don't want cursive to be an elective, you are arguing for mandatory cursive classes. As I said to begin with. Please get your own fucking arguments straight so I know what the Hell I'm critiquing.
No. Pay attention this time, damn it:
I can't define what I lost because that time could have been filled with ANYTHING.
BUT I can define the benefit I gained from learning cursive, which is nothing.
Simple logic says that most things a school would replace that with would have been more of a benefit. It's not that I'm saying the act of learning cursive itself somehow gives you cancer.
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Post by Yaezakura on Dec 7, 2011 15:51:55 GMT -5
I still say devote all time currently spent on cursive to improving the speed and legibility of students' printed writing. Then you get all the benefits of cursive, none of the drawbacks, and we can do away with the retarded notion of two entirely separate alphabets for the same language.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 7, 2011 15:55:09 GMT -5
My problem with that is the myth that practice makes perfect.
I've been writing shit out for 14 years now & my handwriting's still not what most would consider "good."
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Post by Yaezakura on Dec 7, 2011 15:57:15 GMT -5
Doesn't have to be perfect, just better than it was before. Any improvement in printing skill is a net gain over learning cursive.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 7, 2011 16:03:28 GMT -5
Yes, but what I'm saying is that I doubt the extra time spent would make a significant difference. It seems to me that most people have to work on their printing skills for several years afterwards.
Which ironically just becomes another strike against cursive. In fact, maybe my printing wouldn't be as fucked as it is now if I hadn't encountered those teachers who insist you use it.
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Post by Vene on Dec 7, 2011 16:21:06 GMT -5
My problem with that is the myth that practice makes perfect. I've been writing shit out for 14 years now & my handwriting's still not what most would consider "good." Practice makes perfect is oversimplified, perfect practice makes perfect. If you're practicing, but doing it wrong, then you're going to learn to do it wrong. In this context, if you write poorly and regularly write in an illegible fashion, then you are practicing to write illegibly and you will get better at writing illegibly.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 7, 2011 16:31:42 GMT -5
I don't believe that is completely true either. Frankly, I believe there's a point at which you aren't going to improve much, no matter what you do.
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Post by Vene on Dec 7, 2011 16:37:07 GMT -5
I don't believe that is completely true either. Frankly, I believe there's a point at which you aren't going to improve much, no matter what you do. Asymptotes are a bitch.
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Post by Old Viking on Dec 7, 2011 18:08:16 GMT -5
Cursive may be only a physical skill, but if "useful" is the criterion by which we judge the worth of a subject, why not provide vocational training exclusively and be done with it?
Does it require diligence? Does it requires discipline? Does it require application and practice? Then it has an inherent value for these reasons.
I don't know where the idea that learning should be "fun" originated. We were told that it requires effort, and if you don't like that, tough luck. Here is the fun I encountered in a college prep institution in the 1940's: we were offered no course options. Every single course, from Latin to history to science to trig, was mandatory. You were expected to grit your teeth, dive in, and master it.
The practicality of this approach lay in disciplining your mind and absorbing the knowledge that was then expected of a cultivated person. Fun was to be found elsewhere.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Dec 7, 2011 18:20:00 GMT -5
Oh yay, Old Viking providing another one of his "Back in my day!" humor rants. I love it when he parodies other old people.
...But in all due seriousness, education has marched on since then, Viking. People have found out that when you're learning something you're interested in and enjoy, you learn it far better than if it's something you hate and are forced to learn.
In short, "it builds character" is NOT a good reason to force a student to learn something because it actually doesn't. It just builds resentment.
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Post by DeadpanDoubter on Dec 7, 2011 18:28:05 GMT -5
Dare I bring up Tiger Mom? *hides*
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Post by verasthebrujah on Dec 7, 2011 20:26:50 GMT -5
Face-to-the-fucking-palm. People, if you don't want cursive to be an elective, you are arguing for mandatory cursive classes. As I said to begin with. Please get your own fucking arguments straight so I know what the Hell I'm critiquing. No. Pay attention this time, damn it: I can't define what I lost because that time could have been filled with ANYTHING. BUT I can define the benefit I gained from learning cursive, which is nothing. Simple logic says that most things a school would replace that with would have been more of a benefit. It's not that I'm saying the act of learning cursive itself somehow gives you cancer. Again, sorry for lacking clarity on what I meant by mandatory. Somehow, the thought didn't properly transfer from my head into words. I meant nobody is suggesting that it should be mandatory to write in cursive all the time. I do think it should be mandatory to learn it. I guess we just have to agree to disagree. I consider the opportunity cost of learning cursive to be much lower than you seem to. I think this because I consider taking no more than 15 or 20 hours of instruction time out of the thousands of hours of instruction that a student will receive over their academic career to be an insignificantly small amount of time in the long run. A student couldn't learn a language, or how to play an instrument in that time. They may be able to further refine another skill, but there is no guarantee that they would use it after high school anyway, depending on what it is. I hated biology in school, I wasn't terribly good at it, and I've used almost nothing that I learned about biology in my life. I think it was important to learn it, but I don't think I would be better off in any way if I had received an extra few hours of science instruction in 3rd grade. I also find the benefit to be much higher than you do. You say that there is no benefit whatsoever to your knowing cursive, but I find that hard to believe, unless you are going to claim that you have never used your ability to read cursive even once in your entire life other than for the purpose of learning it, or, at the very least, that no useful information has ever been conveyed to you in cursive. Just out of curiosity, I kept an eye out for cursive today. I didn't go looking for it, but in the ten hours between when I left for work and when I got home, I saw cursive in four places: a signup sheet, a business card, an envelope addressed to me, and my ticket from the Chinese place I stopped at for dinner. I'm not suggesting that this is a scientific sample, nor that those instances of cursive were particularly important, but they do illustrate the point that cursive is still in use. It isn't extinct, and as long as that's the case, there is some value to knowing how to read it
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Dec 7, 2011 20:36:54 GMT -5
How many of those were signatures? Aside from the envelope, which is really stupid because you need people to be able to read the damn thing.
Basically, this is how I see things. If you need someone other than yourself to be able to read it, it is completely inappropriate to write in cursive. As signatures are not required to be legible, they do not count.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 7, 2011 21:17:59 GMT -5
Yeah, Viking, at this point all I have to say is this:
"Developmental psychology has progressed a lot further since then, & it will continue to do so. It has found that some of the ideals you were taught weren't necessarily the best promoters of actual long-term learning, even though they may have seemed like 'common sense.' If you don't like it, then I don't know what the fuck to tell you."
Then that is stupid.
Oh, now you're being anal. Yes, I'm sure I read a few cursive items in my time. Some were unimportant drivel--as you've conveniently already pointed for me, this is a common trend. And I mentioned I've run into all-cursive teachers before, so I guess I could read their shit. With much more difficulty than I'd have had if they had used print. And cursive caused the fucking problem in the first place. So it gets no points for that. But more importantly, you are missing the distinction between, let's call them; Individual Benefit & Objective Benefit.
Individual Benefit is how much cursive has benefitted you, personally. This is obviously a highly variable number. It can depend on writing preferences, who you're exposed to, & let's not forget how well you picked it up in the first place. For me, it is essentially 0.
Objective Benefit is not "does it have a benefit or doesn't it?" It's whether or not, all factors considered, it is a necessary subject. Whether you want to accept it or not, this is very low because of, but not limited to: The prevelence of technology today, the much wider accessibility of print, the discouragement of stylistic flairs in academic writing, the increased need for academic writing in pursuing all fields, the fact that individual cursive scripts can use completely different letters, & the very few media where cursive is still widely used.
And now we come full circle. No one has ever said "No one uses cursive any more." They said "It's a dying art," which contains 2 things: (1) it's an art & (2) it's in recession. Quit being anal. The fact of the matter is that in one day most official documents were expected to be in cursive, & now that is frowned upon. It is no longer accepted for official writings (it's an art) & has lost a great amount of its widespread influence (it's dying). A lot of the holdovers you mentioned are from it being beaten into peoples' heads in the first place, you can't very well use the fact that a relatively decent amount of people still do what they were trained to do as a reason for why it's a good thing to keep training people to do that.
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Post by cestlefun17 on Dec 8, 2011 3:51:08 GMT -5
There is a balance. Yes, there should be a general "canon" of what an average adult should know to function as an educated, enlightened member of society. I had to learn trigonometry. I didn't particularly like it, and I'll never use it, but I'm at least still aware of the concepts. I don't exactly remember the formulas for deriving conic sections, but I won't have a wuhh? face if they're brought up. Also, I've been exposed to trigonometry, so I know I don't like it and I know I don't want to pursue a math career. On the other hand, personal interests should be encouraged as well. There is a balance, but in elementary school it favors rigidity, getting more flexible as a student gets older.
I think too much focus is being put on the importance of cursive in the "real world." A lot of what is learned in elementary school is not just about how to succeed in the real world, but also how to succeed in school. Knowing cursive, for many, is integral to their note-taking habits. I simply could not take as detailed notes as I do if I didn't know cursive. Until every student is issued a computer to stick their faces behind ever single class (which some high-tech schools do, which I find abominable) then students will have to handwrite every single day, Monday through Friday, probably at faster speeds than they would normally to keep up with what the teacher is saying. Some will prefer to do this in print, others in script. It's good to have both in your arsenal so you can choose which is right for you.
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