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Look how neat that handwriting is. None of that nonsense scrawl they introduce in KS2 now (I believe Americans call it cursive)
by iso1631 5y ago
Look how neat that handwriting is. None of that nonsense scrawl they introduce in KS2 now (I believe Americans call it cursive)
- derbOac 5y agoIn the US they've stopped teaching cursive, at least in some areas.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoIn the right hands and with the right practice, cursive is beautiful and a work of art.
- happytoexplain 5y agoYes, skilled penmanship and calligraphy is wonderful. But in my personal life, the majority of times I encounter cursive, I can not even read the handwriting, which is, to put it lightly, bad.
- toast0 5y agoI'm equally skilled at illegible writing in block letters or cursive, thanks. My third grade teacher thought I'd turn out ok, because I'd have a secretary. Sadly, secretaries were out of fashion by the time I graduated college.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI'm not sure if they fell out of fashion, or because people don't want to pay reasonable rates for them anymore.
- DocTomoe 5y agoI find it interesting that I only ever hear that kind of complaint from Americans. Here in Europe, cursive/script is the basic way you learn writing, you automatically transition to something other later in life ... and we have zero hate for either variant. As for lack of legibility: I would guess US teachers not enforcing good style in preschool and elementary school contribute to that.
- dmix 5y agoI can't remember the last time I wrote anything long form without a keyboard. Is that still a thing enough people do to have strong opinions about this?
- b112 5y agoThen the zombies happened, and your message to the front couldn't be read, we fell to the hordes because of your lack of skill at cursive thank you the end.
- iso1631 5y agoIf I want something to be read I will write it in block letters at a perfectly reasonable speed
- b112 5y agoTruthfully, there is a reason for cursive. Not lifting the pen is a big time save, and cursive is designed to be written without that. EG, F doesn't require a pen lift pause to make the lower bar, in cursive. The way the letters are written are also for maximal speed, and of course, you don't have to lift pen between letters. Any skilled cursive writer will tell you, it is many times faster to write legibly in cursive over block letters. Do we need to learn it any more? Well, I'd say not for the speed benefits. But discounting the speed benefits, acting as if they are a lie, is silly. From my side, I see a lot of people complaining about leaning "dumb things" in public school, in these responses. Wow. Totally don't get the point of it. And of course if we removed what everyone on this thread complained about, in the public school curriculum, well, there'd be nothing to teach! Because everyone likes different things. Which is part of what public school is supposed to be about. Teach the basics, while seeing what you excel in, what interests you. You know what cursive teaches, outside of itself? Fine finger control. Brain to finger control mapping. It is an entirely different skill than keyboard pecking. And while you are learning it, you are still learning grammar, learning to craft thought to speech, and so on. There is no loss here.
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- iso1210 5y agoAnd the rest of the time it's illegible scrawl and has no place in basic education. Even [0], the US declaration of independence, is horrendous to read compared to this 8 year old girl's handwriting. https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-declaration-of-independence-in-congress-july-6145873/ https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-declaration-of-independenc...?
- retrac 5y agoThe chancery/round hand style used in the Declaration of Independence is not a style of cursive much used in the last ~150 years. So it's potentially quite difficult without some practice. A major part of why we teach (or taught) writing cursive is because it also helps teach you to read cursive. You may not need to write much, but until recently you would encounter written cursive all the time. In my experience it's still common enough. It'd be awkward to be unable to read the New Year's cards from my older relatives.
- colechristensen 5y agoIt is, in essence, a different dialect of writing. It is not illegible, you just don’t know how to read it. Deposit yourself in Edinburgh, Appalachia, or rural Minnesota and you’ll have various levels of difficulty understanding how people speak, is their speech wrong or is your knowledge of their language lacking?
- Someone 5y agoApart from the low resolution of that scan, I find that easy to read.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoThe hi res version sibling posted at Wikipedia is very readable and very beautiful.
- pcrh 5y agoThat is perfectly legible. Many modern fonts are less legible than that. I am curious about the opposition to cursive script that some people demonstrate, mostly in the US. In Europe cursive script is the norm; block letter writing by an adult is considered a mark of poor education.
- derbOac 5y agoI feel sort of neutral about it. I always felt like it took me more time so I stopped using it. But with others I don't have much preference one way or another. I guess I prefer non-cursive? But some of it is very beautiful. There are a lot of children in my extended family, and at some point I noticed they were very confused by cursive, and saw it as a curiosity, almost like there was a secret alphabet adults used to use. When I asked around about it, I found out they were no longer being taught it, and then found articles about how it was disappearing from curricula. It's mostly interesting to me because it was such a big part of my writing education, and my teachers were so adamant about it, and it was so common. So it's strange to me to see it just disappear.
- bdowling 5y ago> In the right hands and with the right practice Also the right kind of pen. Cursive can be beautiful with a nib pen or some fountain pens, but it tends to be ugly with a ballpoint pen.
- vmception 5y agoGood riddance. If people want to learn those arts they can always go to the monetary with their sensei.
- pcrh 5y agoThe writing on the message isn't cursive.
- tempestn 5y agoIf we're honest, most of the actual content of the first 5-7 years or so of schooling is unimportant and ultimately forgotten, save for reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. Ideally some basic computer use too. But it's not like every moment spent on cursive writing in primary school would be a moment taken away from some critical, core subject. Aside from those few key building blocks, most of what you're doing in early school is learning socialization and 'how to learn'.
- vmception 5y agoI dont want to optimize a curriculum, I dont want them to bother with that. Glad to read other decision makers reached the same conclusion.
- tempestn 5y agoPersonally I'm glad I learned cursive in school, even though I'm terrible at it. Far more valuable than learning about the various species of local turtle, or 1000 other things we did in primary school that I've since forgotten.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoLearning about a load of random stuff in primary school is incredibly important. How else do children find out what they're interested in?
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- carbocation 5y agoIt looks like D'Nealian[1], which is designed as an introduction to handwriting that facilitates learning cursive. 1 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian
- scoot 5y agoI have to agree - my first thought was that the writing looked "pre-cursive". As a late teen I abandoned cursive in favor of something that I could read. These days about the only thing I write by hand is my signature. It's a squiggle.
- smabie 5y agoI'm sort of embarrassed to admit it but I can no longer write anymore. I can barely hold a pen and make any letter at all... anyone else feel like this?
- mindcrime 5y agoI also can no longer write in cursive, but I don't feel bad about it. It's an archaic and un-needed skill, a leftover relic of a bygone age. Also, I could never write in cursive particularly well to begin with... started getting nasty notes in my report cards about that starting from primary school, so as far as I'm concerned, "Good Riddance."
- OJFord 5y agoHas it really changed? Or do we just not keep up with it outside of/after leaving school any more? I'm a bit younger than her and was certainly taught properly (in KS1, not 2, if my quick search is correct that KS2 starts at form/year/grade 3) - I just quite quickly stopped using it and now my writing is an only-half-joined-up 'nonsense scrawl'.
- iso1631 5y agoMy kids are in year 2 and 5. Year 5 had perfectly legible handwriting (not quite as good as the stuff in the image, but pretty good) until they forced the joined up shit starting in year 3. Looking at other words on the wall confirms this is normal - writing goes back severely in KS2 because of this 1960s view that you have to be able to write large amounts of prose at speed.
- gavinray 5y agoI was born in 1997, I recall a faint effort being made to teach us cursive in about 5th grade, but neither myself nor anyone my age I know can write it. I can only write print. I don't see the use for cursive, and I said as much when I was 10 (I already had a personal computer, if I was going to write something long it'd be faster for me to type it).
- Symbiote 5y agoI've looked at some teaching materials and examples for KS2 and KS3 in England. It seems there's now more emphasis on letter forms than there was in the 1990s, when I was being taught "joined-up writing". I didn't have to put a stupid tail on the left of the C at the beginning of "cat", or any other round initial letter. Let alone the tail on a lower case initial H, or any capital letters.
- oneoff786 5y agoSome people, including some commenters down thread seem to think cursive is about being fancy. It’s not, it’s an efficiency play for writing faster. That’s of course useless in modern day with so little actual hand writing. So it’s less common in schools
- alar44 5y agoThat's a common misconception. It stopped being more effecient when we stopped dipping pens or quills in ink. Lifting the pen from the paper tended to cause splattering too so you wanted to keep the pen on the paper rather than lifting it for every letter.
- oneoff786 5y agoI believe that’s the major gain. I’m not convinced it’s not still faster with a ballpoint pen marginally.
- iso1631 5y agoAlas not in the UK, where it's still mandated. Looks like the US has finally dropped this outdated "skill", but not in the 1850s UK
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI wonder if they kept holding onto it for a good while because it was also an exercise in manual dexterity. I mean it didn't work for me, my handwriting is still scribbled and anything but aesthetically pleasing, lol.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xeromal 5y agoI don't think it's cursive. In the cursive I learned in the south eastern US, every letter connects in some fashion. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J-ui6ybQ4gg/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J-ui6ybQ4gg/maxresdefault.jpg