Thought this was interesting. I don't see why they are even arguing over this, cursive and multiplications should be a requirement in private and public schools.
I'm torn on this. I think cursive is good to teach in school even if it's not considered practical anymore. It's now more of an art than anything else (and we teach art in school). At the same time, I don't see how this is the legislature's business. Isn't there a school board (hopefully comprised of educators) to make decisions like this?
It's taught because it is supposed to be a practical ability, but it no longer is. As for the art aspect, I'd wager there are more applicable forms of "practical" art that could be taught. Things like graphic design could begin being taught at the same age that cursive is. I agree with MrSandman's comment above: We could put so many more useful features in our education system at this point and we have people deciding to refocus on something that I believe is widely seen as the single most useless part of elementary school
Cursive: In English my handwriting isn't that great, but damn if I'm not proud of how it looks in Russian Cyrillic. My normal print is a hybrid of print and cursive anyway.
Cyrillic is totally fun to write. When I was in 4th grade the high school discontinued the Russian program so I studied it over the summer with the instructor's daughter. A beautiful clusterfuck of a language. I regret not keeping up with it but c'mon - voluntarily studying Russian the summer before 5th grade? That shit gets you beaten up.
I completely agree. There are certain things I think the govt should be able to keep out of schools though.
Cursive writing was originally developed for fast writing huge quantities by HAND. I myself noticed that after finishing school and before I started to write by keyboard I dropped cursive writing in favor of straight, loose letters which read much better. Making cursive writing mandatory is stupid and outdated (like forcing left-handed children to write right-handed). Learning tables of multiplication though is always a good thing, even in times of calculation apps on your smart phone. So that even without batteries you can still do your math.
I honestly think this is ridiculous. We could put so many more useful features in our education system at this point and we have people deciding to refocus on something that I believe is widely seen as the single most useless part of elementary school. I know I couldn't still write in cursive, and I doubt I'll ever need to again.
While I enjoyed learning cursive in grade school, more of an issue these days is to teach kids to to write legibly (seeing that most would rather type than write by hand). To me, the loss of handwriting will be a sad occasion. While probably not practical in school systems at the point it is now, the development of this "smart pen" that corrects handwriting mistakes and illegibility would be an interesting addition to education systems. http://www.geek.com/news/linux-powered-smart-pen-corrects-yo.../
I'm not sure what happened, but sometime during third grade (when we were learning to write in cursive), we kind of stopped learning cursive. After that, I never learned cursive again, and although I can read cursive, I can't write it off the top of my head. I do consider to have been useful in a way, because it helped me to pattern-match better, if that makes sense. I can recognize letters better now because I was made to recognize incomprehensible scribbles as letters.
I can't find the damn paper, but I know there's research that indicates that children learn to write faster if they write in print than if they write in cursive. If the argument is perhaps that this is a tradition worth preserving, i think it's already preserved in old documents and papers. Tradition is hardly a good reason for keed doing something. Kate Gladstone, in the NYT: [...] Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/30/should-schoo...Adults increasingly abandon cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority, 55 percent, wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When most handwriting teachers shun cursive, why mandate it?
I think teaching the Trachtenberg system would be more useful than teaching the multiplication tables, it's easier to learn and faster to apply.
Whoa, chisenbop! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisanbop) -XC
I definitely don't see how anyone could think that teaching the multiplication tables is a bad thing. Cursive may be a thing of the past in the not too distant future though. Truthfully, I can't recall the last time I used it. Also, I can't foresee a situation that would ever require that I do.