10 ms·

I am a 42 year old European and I'm so glad that cursive is dying out as a compulsory school subject. Even as an elementary school student, I didn't understand

I am a 42 year old European and I'm so glad that cursive is dying out as a compulsory school subject. Even as an elementary school student, I didn't understand why two scripts were taught. That future generations are cut off from old writings is nonsense. You can learn to read cursive quickly. In fact you have to learn to decipher it again for every decade, region, and person, because it differs so much. I always wished for an OCR tool that translates handwriting into UTF-8 when I had to read it. Soon every phone will be able to translate it. I am happy about it.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago
In peer-reviewed studies, writing cursive has been linked to deeper processing of the language than printing, just as printing has been over typing. Early L1 development concerns aside, learning cursive was a pretty good ROI for me given how little time it took as a seven year-old, and how much time cursive has saved me over the years since. Related research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7399101/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7399101/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4274624/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4274624/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422512/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422512/
- Macha 4y ago
  So despite containing cursive in the title, the first study appears to be comparing handwriting as a whole vs typing, not print vs cursive handwriting. The second study compares handwriting vs tracing vs typing, again no cursive vs print. The third study compares drawing vs typing, it doesn't address handwriting. Also all of them are using proxy measures like brain activity and not recall of the studied material. I could actually accept the more laborious and slower process of handwriting may slow kids down and therefore spend more time thinking about a subject as a hypothesis, but that's not what was tested here. Such a hypothesis would however favour print handwriting more than the theoretically faster cursive.
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    Here’s one more narrowly focused on what you’re looking for. It compares students taught cursive writing, printing and a mix of both. The students who only printed lagged on every metric: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/langandlit/index.php/langandlit/article/download/11028/13067 https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/langandlit/index.php/la...
    - robocat 4y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_c... Does the paper have any relevance to whether teaching cursive helps (causes) learning more generally?
    - titoCA321 4y ago
      Enough with "studies." I have multiple studies correlating that smokers survive COVID-19 hospitalization better than non-smokers. Should we adopt smoking as a health policy against COVID? I don't think it would be a wise recommendation when factoring in other health risks associated with smoking. There's a few studies showing how SAT scores declined once American studies stopped praying in school.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Deeper processing isn't necessarily better. I would bet it also takes "deeper processing" to learn all the characters in written Chinese. There's been movements to simplify Chinese, but never movements to complicate English. Language is best when it uses as little processing as possible. Its meant to be a medium, not a mental task in its own right. So taking your research claims at face value, that's not actually evidence that cursive is good. In fact, its the opposite.
tgv 4y ago
> You can learn to read cursive quickly. ... Soon every phone will be able to translate it. Not only does that require substantial backup, it also sidesteps the problem of writing. There will come a point when you need it. Heck, if the war in Ukraine gets out of control, it may become a necessity. Your phone might just stop working. And there's nothing wrong with being taught two ways of achieving the same. Or do you only know one way to add? One way to program? One way to throw a ball? It might even make the process more flexible and adaptable.
- killingtime74 4y ago
  If we wanted backup would learning another language not be much more beneficial?
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  .-- .... -.-- / .. / -.-. --- ..- .-.. -.. -. - / .- --. .-. . . / -- --- .-. . .-.-.- / - .... . / .-- .- -.-- / - .... . / -.-- --- ..- - .... / - --- -.. .- -.-- / -.-. .- -. - / . ...- . -. / - .- .--. / --- ..- - / .- / -... .- ... .. -.-. / -- . ... .- --. . / .. -. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . / --- .-. / -. --- / -... .- ... .. -.-. / ... .. --. -. .- .-.. / ..-. .-.. .- --. --. .. -. --. / .. ... / ..-. .-. .- -. -.- .-.. -.- / .- .-.. .- .-. -- .. -. --. .-.-.- / .... --- .-- / -.-. .- -. / - .... . / ... --- -. ... / .- -. -.. / -. .- ..- --. .... .- ..- - . .-. ... / . ...- . .-. / -... . / .-. . .- -.. -.-- / ..-. --- .-. / - .... . / .-- .- .-. / -. --- .-- / -... .-. . .-- .. -. --. / --- -. / --- ..- .-. / . .- ... - . .-. -. / ..-. .-. --- -. - / .. ..-. / - .... . -.-- / -.. --- -. - / . ...- . -. / -.- -. --- .-- / .-- .... .- - / .- / -. .- ...- .- .-.. / -.-. --- -.. . / ..-. .-.. .- --. / .-.. --- --- -.- ... / .-.. .. -.- . ..--.. / - .... . / -.- .. -.. ... / - --- -.. .- -.-- / -.-. --- .-- .-.. -.. -. - / - . .-.. .-.. / - .... . / -.. .. ..-. ..-. . .-. . -. -.-. . / -... . - .-- .-- . . -. / .- / .-.. --- .-.. / .- -. -.. / .- / ...---... / .-.-.-
  - blooalien 4y ago
    Upvoted despite the "snark" and "typos" for being an actual valid message in morse code… I actually did get a giggle out of this. :)
Qem 4y ago
> Even as an elementary school student, I didn't understand why two scripts were taught. If you need to write by hand a lot, cursive is vastly more efficient and fast, as you don't need to lift the pen/pencil from the paper as often. You mostly glide over the paper.
- derekp7 4y ago
  This sounds good in theory, but in practice doesn't work out so well. In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down. Think of how most people's signatures aren't readable at all, that is because they evolved to be written fast. Whereas you can learn to do fast printing. My writing speed improved later in life once I convinced myself to switch back over to print characters -- I can speed up the process without losing legibility. Also some people do a mixture of the two, which really is writing out ligatures for common character pairings. I don't really do that, and it seams everyone sort of figures out their own stile, but it would be nice if written ligatures were taught as an in-between style. Edit: To see examples, do a search for "fast printing", I know there were several good posts on one of the fountain pen forums. The style I liked referenced "bookhand", and to get good/legible at it you start by practicing writing small circles (both clockwise and counter-clockwise) and small straight lines (horizontal, vertical, diagonal with various starting positions). This also helps with general technical drawing, things like writing circles and making them larger and smaller. And learning to draw a straight line across a page freehand will help with character alignment.
  - loloquwowndueo 4y ago
    Also If you want to write fast and don’t care about legibility, learn shorthand writing :)
    - supersrdjan 4y ago
      Word. I learned Orthic recently. It's easy to pick up, unlike the other system (at least that's my impression after a day of investigating)
    - 4y ago
astrobe_ 4y ago
That's a surprising point of view. In the schools of the 80/90ies, note-taking had to be done with pen and paper, and you were doing it for hours. Printed documents were rare (in the eighties Xerox machines were a luxury, so they used some sort of waterless printing [1] that left a strong smell of alcohol on the paper). Cursive was extremely practical or fast note-taking, so why cursive was a thing was pretty obvious. It was also normal to write in cursive for homework, tests, exams. I am still using it at work today. And if I were to go back to school, I would definitely use it again, although my touch-typing is decent enough that I could keep pace. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterless_printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterless_printing
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  Also, writing by hand has been shown to increase comprehension and retention. Developing your own short-hand helps a lot or just going with a standard
- adrian_b 4y ago
  If the purpose had been to be better at taking notes with pen and paper, than being taught to write in shorthand would have been a much more useful skill than being taught to write in cursive.
  - tdeck 4y ago
    Shorthand tends to be somewhat difficult to read quickly, difficult to scan, and somewhat personal to the individual stenographer. To make the notes useful most people would need to transcribe them first.
  - astrobe_ 4y ago
    It's not taught, but it is a skill one also develops. Probably this is not taught because french kids already have a hard time with spelling. Fun fact: french physicians are well known for undecipherable cursive hand writing. Part of what makes it difficult to write is that they use Greek letters for short hand. For instance, they replace "-tion" suffixes with a theta, or the "ph" combo with a phi.
squarefoot 4y ago
+1. I'm 56 and essentially can't write decent cursive anymore since like decades as I stopped as soon as I could. No problems reading when it's correctly written, but as a leftie I found cursive handwriting hard since day one, so I resorted to capitals only, save for my signature, which however is different every time: I have 5 filed at the bank as I can't produce two seemingly identical; I often joke with the clerk that for me would be a lot easier if they asked for a blood sample for DNA recognition:)
mradek 4y ago
I could be wrong as I am ESL and moved to USA at a young age. I believe we were taught cursive to build motor skills. My teachers always gave me good remarks for my neat handwriting, and I remember spending hours practicing both regular and cursive characters. Fill out the sheet, then my mom would erase it and I would do it again and again.
- _Microft 4y ago
  It might not only train fine motor skills but since learning cursive isn't easy, it might also require practicing focus, self-discipline and tenacity.
  - mradek 4y ago
    True. I’m definitely not complaining that I got to learn to read and write cursive. I think it’s a beautiful way to express characters on paper.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Digging dirt would probably increase your motor skills better and would be a more useful additional skill.
k__ 4y ago
Especially, since every country has its own variation.
retrac 4y ago
I've been learning Chinese. Learning to write the characters (not even memorizing -- just copying by sight correctly) has been a very effective way of learning to read Chinese handwriting, especially the semi-cursive script. With almost any writing instrument, the order and direction of strokes is important to reading Chinese, and the best way to learn to decode that is to learn to encode it yourself, probably. I would suspect the same is true of cursive Latin script, in the same way.
inglor_cz 4y ago
"You can learn to read cursive quickly." The same is true about Fraktur (the old German script), and yet few people are capable of reading pre-1940 books typeset in Fraktur. There is no way around it, the vast majority of people won't learn old scripts and they won't be able to read their grandparents' correspondence etc. This might be worth the progress, but let's not pretend that the continuity rupture is smaller than it is.
- nier 4y ago
  This is what I found when trying to understand the history of Fraktur. It’s complicated to say the least: "Fraktur is often associated with being the official Nazi font and is still being used by Neo-Nazi groups in Germany today. The fact that it was, ironically, banned by the Nazi Party is just a part of its long and strange history" Source: https://www.typeroom.eu/a-nazi-font-banned-by-nazis-fraktur-legacy-must-listen-design-podcast https://www.typeroom.eu/a-nazi-font-banned-by-nazis-fraktur-...
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    Yes, the Nazis ironically considered Fraktur (whose existence massively predates Nazism, by hundreds of years) a Jewish influence and got rid of it. After the ban, the only place where it survived were tombstones.
  - kleiba 4y ago
    Also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_disput...
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    Curiously, the same goes for the stahlhelm which is widely seen as the signature item of the Nazi military. In truth, it was simply the traditional helmet of the German military which the Nazi wanted to replace with a more modern design, but it was already too late for them, and it was the GDR military that ended up using it.
- barnabee 4y ago
ekianjo 4y ago
> Even as an elementary school student, I didn't understand why two scripts were taught. In my university you had to write so fast to follow the teachers that if you were not writing using cursive you were probably missing half of the content.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Did something change between generations? Because HS teachers would mythologize this but it doesn't match at all with my experience. Even ignoring that professors have slide decks and lectures are recorded professors seem to encourage students to only take light notes so you can actually focus and participate in the class.
- _dain_ 4y ago
  or the university could just .. make recordings of the lectures? why should students be burdened with realtime handwritten audio transcription? if you miss even a single sentence it can fuck up your understanding of the entire rest of the lecture. but with video you can just pause and rewind, speed up and slow down however you want. it's even worse in math / physics / anything that uses a blackboard -- you have to copy down what the prof draws on the board as well as what he says aloud. two simultaneous information channels, bottlenecked by handwriting speed and muscle cramps. students frantically copying down things by hand as professors talk is a ridiculous outdated ritual that ought to be binned.
  - snickerer 4y ago
    You are so right. When I will be king of the world, I will kick every professor who does this out of the universities immediately. Their didactics are so bad, they should not be allowed to teach.
sidewndr46 4y ago
I have severe carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand. I'm relatively certain that it was brought about by being forced as a child to write cursive for hours on end. We were even forced to hold our writing instruments in a specific manner. I would have horrible hand cramps each day, severe pain and I even have an abnormal growth on one finger from it. I was forced to waste hundreds of hours of my life getting instruction in an arcane, obsolete format.
mwcampbell 4y ago
As a nearly 42-year-old American, I fully agree with you. In particular: > That future generations are cut off from old writings is nonsense. Some of us are cut off anyway, until the writing is either OCR'd or manually transcribed. I'm legally blind (though with some usable vision), and some of my friends are totally blind. I can read handwriting if it's magnified enough, or large enough to begin with, but my skill for deciphering handwriting has faded due to disuse. It's very rarely a problem anymore. Some of my least happy memories from elementary school are of learning to handwrite. My teachers quite reasonably thought that I would be better off if I learned to make maximal use of the vision I have. It made sense at the time (the 80s and early 90s); if I had only been proficient at writing in Braille or on a computer, I would have had no way to write something in-class that could then be immediately read by my sighted teachers and peers (unless I used the one classroom computer, as I sometimes did). But now I wish I had started learning Braille in first grade, and that they had made me keep using it even when I thought I didn't need it. And these days, any low-vision kid shouldn't have to waste any time at all learning to handwrite. Honestly, I wish they'd quit teaching sighted kids to handwrite too, so future generations wouldn't produce any more text that's inaccessible to us. But I suppose that's too extreme.
irrational 4y ago
That ocr exists, at least in some form. There are efforts to digitize old census records, which are written in cursive. Humans are just used to double check the work of the ocr program.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago

In peer-reviewed studies, writing cursive has been linked to deeper processing of the language than printing, just as printing has been over typing. Early L1 development concerns aside, learning cursive was a pretty good ROI for me given how little time it took as a seven year-old, and how much time cursive has saved me over the years since. Related research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7399101/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7399101/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4274624/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4274624/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422512/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422512/

Macha 4y ago
So despite containing cursive in the title, the first study appears to be comparing handwriting as a whole vs typing, not print vs cursive handwriting. The second study compares handwriting vs tracing vs typing, again no cursive vs print. The third study compares drawing vs typing, it doesn't address handwriting. Also all of them are using proxy measures like brain activity and not recall of the studied material. I could actually accept the more laborious and slower process of handwriting may slow kids down and therefore spend more time thinking about a subject as a hypothesis, but that's not what was tested here. Such a hypothesis would however favour print handwriting more than the theoretically faster cursive.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  Here’s one more narrowly focused on what you’re looking for. It compares students taught cursive writing, printing and a mix of both. The students who only printed lagged on every metric: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/langandlit/index.php/langandlit/article/download/11028/13067 https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/langandlit/index.php/la...
  - robocat 4y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_c... Does the paper have any relevance to whether teaching cursive helps (causes) learning more generally?
  - titoCA321 4y ago
    Enough with "studies." I have multiple studies correlating that smokers survive COVID-19 hospitalization better than non-smokers. Should we adopt smoking as a health policy against COVID? I don't think it would be a wise recommendation when factoring in other health risks associated with smoking. There's a few studies showing how SAT scores declined once American studies stopped praying in school.
IIAOPSW 4y ago
Deeper processing isn't necessarily better. I would bet it also takes "deeper processing" to learn all the characters in written Chinese. There's been movements to simplify Chinese, but never movements to complicate English. Language is best when it uses as little processing as possible. Its meant to be a medium, not a mental task in its own right. So taking your research claims at face value, that's not actually evidence that cursive is good. In fact, its the opposite.

tgv 4y ago

> You can learn to read cursive quickly. ... Soon every phone will be able to translate it. Not only does that require substantial backup, it also sidesteps the problem of writing. There will come a point when you need it. Heck, if the war in Ukraine gets out of control, it may become a necessity. Your phone might just stop working. And there's nothing wrong with being taught two ways of achieving the same. Or do you only know one way to add? One way to program? One way to throw a ball? It might even make the process more flexible and adaptable.

killingtime74 4y ago
If we wanted backup would learning another language not be much more beneficial?
IIAOPSW 4y ago
.-- .... -.-- / .. / -.-. --- ..- .-.. -.. -. - / .- --. .-. . . / -- --- .-. . .-.-.- / - .... . / .-- .- -.-- / - .... . / -.-- --- ..- - .... / - --- -.. .- -.-- / -.-. .- -. - / . ...- . -. / - .- .--. / --- ..- - / .- / -... .- ... .. -.-. / -- . ... .- --. . / .. -. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . / --- .-. / -. --- / -... .- ... .. -.-. / ... .. --. -. .- .-.. / ..-. .-.. .- --. --. .. -. --. / .. ... / ..-. .-. .- -. -.- .-.. -.- / .- .-.. .- .-. -- .. -. --. .-.-.- / .... --- .-- / -.-. .- -. / - .... . / ... --- -. ... / .- -. -.. / -. .- ..- --. .... .- ..- - . .-. ... / . ...- . .-. / -... . / .-. . .- -.. -.-- / ..-. --- .-. / - .... . / .-- .- .-. / -. --- .-- / -... .-. . .-- .. -. --. / --- -. / --- ..- .-. / . .- ... - . .-. -. / ..-. .-. --- -. - / .. ..-. / - .... . -.-- / -.. --- -. - / . ...- . -. / -.- -. --- .-- / .-- .... .- - / .- / -. .- ...- .- .-.. / -.-. --- -.. . / ..-. .-.. .- --. / .-.. --- --- -.- ... / .-.. .. -.- . ..--.. / - .... . / -.- .. -.. ... / - --- -.. .- -.-- / -.-. --- .-- .-.. -.. -. - / - . .-.. .-.. / - .... . / -.. .. ..-. ..-. . .-. . -. -.-. . / -... . - .-- .-- . . -. / .- / .-.. --- .-.. / .- -. -.. / .- / ...---... / .-.-.-
- blooalien 4y ago
  Upvoted despite the "snark" and "typos" for being an actual valid message in morse code… I actually did get a giggle out of this. :)

Qem 4y ago

> Even as an elementary school student, I didn't understand why two scripts were taught. If you need to write by hand a lot, cursive is vastly more efficient and fast, as you don't need to lift the pen/pencil from the paper as often. You mostly glide over the paper.

derekp7 4y ago
This sounds good in theory, but in practice doesn't work out so well. In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down. Think of how most people's signatures aren't readable at all, that is because they evolved to be written fast. Whereas you can learn to do fast printing. My writing speed improved later in life once I convinced myself to switch back over to print characters -- I can speed up the process without losing legibility. Also some people do a mixture of the two, which really is writing out ligatures for common character pairings. I don't really do that, and it seams everyone sort of figures out their own stile, but it would be nice if written ligatures were taught as an in-between style. Edit: To see examples, do a search for "fast printing", I know there were several good posts on one of the fountain pen forums. The style I liked referenced "bookhand", and to get good/legible at it you start by practicing writing small circles (both clockwise and counter-clockwise) and small straight lines (horizontal, vertical, diagonal with various starting positions). This also helps with general technical drawing, things like writing circles and making them larger and smaller. And learning to draw a straight line across a page freehand will help with character alignment.
- loloquwowndueo 4y ago
  Also If you want to write fast and don’t care about legibility, learn shorthand writing :)
  - supersrdjan 4y ago
    Word. I learned Orthic recently. It's easy to pick up, unlike the other system (at least that's my impression after a day of investigating)
  - 4y ago

astrobe_ 4y ago

That's a surprising point of view. In the schools of the 80/90ies, note-taking had to be done with pen and paper, and you were doing it for hours. Printed documents were rare (in the eighties Xerox machines were a luxury, so they used some sort of waterless printing [1] that left a strong smell of alcohol on the paper). Cursive was extremely practical or fast note-taking, so why cursive was a thing was pretty obvious. It was also normal to write in cursive for homework, tests, exams. I am still using it at work today. And if I were to go back to school, I would definitely use it again, although my touch-typing is decent enough that I could keep pace. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterless_printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterless_printing

upsidesinclude 4y ago
Also, writing by hand has been shown to increase comprehension and retention. Developing your own short-hand helps a lot or just going with a standard
adrian_b 4y ago
If the purpose had been to be better at taking notes with pen and paper, than being taught to write in shorthand would have been a much more useful skill than being taught to write in cursive.
- tdeck 4y ago
  Shorthand tends to be somewhat difficult to read quickly, difficult to scan, and somewhat personal to the individual stenographer. To make the notes useful most people would need to transcribe them first.
- astrobe_ 4y ago
  It's not taught, but it is a skill one also develops. Probably this is not taught because french kids already have a hard time with spelling. Fun fact: french physicians are well known for undecipherable cursive hand writing. Part of what makes it difficult to write is that they use Greek letters for short hand. For instance, they replace "-tion" suffixes with a theta, or the "ph" combo with a phi.

squarefoot 4y ago

+1. I'm 56 and essentially can't write decent cursive anymore since like decades as I stopped as soon as I could. No problems reading when it's correctly written, but as a leftie I found cursive handwriting hard since day one, so I resorted to capitals only, save for my signature, which however is different every time: I have 5 filed at the bank as I can't produce two seemingly identical; I often joke with the clerk that for me would be a lot easier if they asked for a blood sample for DNA recognition:)

mradek 4y ago

I could be wrong as I am ESL and moved to USA at a young age. I believe we were taught cursive to build motor skills. My teachers always gave me good remarks for my neat handwriting, and I remember spending hours practicing both regular and cursive characters. Fill out the sheet, then my mom would erase it and I would do it again and again.

_Microft 4y ago
It might not only train fine motor skills but since learning cursive isn't easy, it might also require practicing focus, self-discipline and tenacity.
- mradek 4y ago
  True. I’m definitely not complaining that I got to learn to read and write cursive. I think it’s a beautiful way to express characters on paper.
ramraj07 4y ago
Digging dirt would probably increase your motor skills better and would be a more useful additional skill.

k__ 4y ago

Especially, since every country has its own variation.

retrac 4y ago

I've been learning Chinese. Learning to write the characters (not even memorizing -- just copying by sight correctly) has been a very effective way of learning to read Chinese handwriting, especially the semi-cursive script. With almost any writing instrument, the order and direction of strokes is important to reading Chinese, and the best way to learn to decode that is to learn to encode it yourself, probably. I would suspect the same is true of cursive Latin script, in the same way.

inglor_cz 4y ago

"You can learn to read cursive quickly." The same is true about Fraktur (the old German script), and yet few people are capable of reading pre-1940 books typeset in Fraktur. There is no way around it, the vast majority of people won't learn old scripts and they won't be able to read their grandparents' correspondence etc. This might be worth the progress, but let's not pretend that the continuity rupture is smaller than it is.

nier 4y ago
This is what I found when trying to understand the history of Fraktur. It’s complicated to say the least: "Fraktur is often associated with being the official Nazi font and is still being used by Neo-Nazi groups in Germany today. The fact that it was, ironically, banned by the Nazi Party is just a part of its long and strange history" Source: https://www.typeroom.eu/a-nazi-font-banned-by-nazis-fraktur-legacy-must-listen-design-podcast https://www.typeroom.eu/a-nazi-font-banned-by-nazis-fraktur-...
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Yes, the Nazis ironically considered Fraktur (whose existence massively predates Nazism, by hundreds of years) a Jewish influence and got rid of it. After the ban, the only place where it survived were tombstones.
- kleiba 4y ago
  Also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_disput...
- Koshkin 4y ago
  Curiously, the same goes for the stahlhelm which is widely seen as the signature item of the Nazi military. In truth, it was simply the traditional helmet of the German military which the Nazi wanted to replace with a more modern design, but it was already too late for them, and it was the GDR military that ended up using it.
barnabee 4y ago

ekianjo 4y ago

> Even as an elementary school student, I didn't understand why two scripts were taught. In my university you had to write so fast to follow the teachers that if you were not writing using cursive you were probably missing half of the content.

Spivak 4y ago
Did something change between generations? Because HS teachers would mythologize this but it doesn't match at all with my experience. Even ignoring that professors have slide decks and lectures are recorded professors seem to encourage students to only take light notes so you can actually focus and participate in the class.
_dain_ 4y ago
or the university could just .. make recordings of the lectures? why should students be burdened with realtime handwritten audio transcription? if you miss even a single sentence it can fuck up your understanding of the entire rest of the lecture. but with video you can just pause and rewind, speed up and slow down however you want. it's even worse in math / physics / anything that uses a blackboard -- you have to copy down what the prof draws on the board as well as what he says aloud. two simultaneous information channels, bottlenecked by handwriting speed and muscle cramps. students frantically copying down things by hand as professors talk is a ridiculous outdated ritual that ought to be binned.
- snickerer 4y ago
  You are so right. When I will be king of the world, I will kick every professor who does this out of the universities immediately. Their didactics are so bad, they should not be allowed to teach.

sidewndr46 4y ago

I have severe carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand. I'm relatively certain that it was brought about by being forced as a child to write cursive for hours on end. We were even forced to hold our writing instruments in a specific manner. I would have horrible hand cramps each day, severe pain and I even have an abnormal growth on one finger from it. I was forced to waste hundreds of hours of my life getting instruction in an arcane, obsolete format.

mwcampbell 4y ago

As a nearly 42-year-old American, I fully agree with you. In particular: > That future generations are cut off from old writings is nonsense. Some of us are cut off anyway, until the writing is either OCR'd or manually transcribed. I'm legally blind (though with some usable vision), and some of my friends are totally blind. I can read handwriting if it's magnified enough, or large enough to begin with, but my skill for deciphering handwriting has faded due to disuse. It's very rarely a problem anymore. Some of my least happy memories from elementary school are of learning to handwrite. My teachers quite reasonably thought that I would be better off if I learned to make maximal use of the vision I have. It made sense at the time (the 80s and early 90s); if I had only been proficient at writing in Braille or on a computer, I would have had no way to write something in-class that could then be immediately read by my sighted teachers and peers (unless I used the one classroom computer, as I sometimes did). But now I wish I had started learning Braille in first grade, and that they had made me keep using it even when I thought I didn't need it. And these days, any low-vision kid shouldn't have to waste any time at all learning to handwrite. Honestly, I wish they'd quit teaching sighted kids to handwrite too, so future generations wouldn't produce any more text that's inaccessible to us. But I suppose that's too extreme.

irrational 4y ago

That ocr exists, at least in some form. There are efforts to digitize old census records, which are written in cursive. Humans are just used to double check the work of the ocr program.