4 ms·
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 docum
by 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 agoAlso, 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 agoIf 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 agoShorthand 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 agoIt'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.
- beej71 4y agoAmerican doctors, as well. I guess as long as the pharmacy can read it, it's fine...
- wink 4y ago> Cursive was extremely practical or fast note-taking You mean it should have been that. We had tons of people (me included) whose cursive stuff is 100% illegible (we were forced to use it for the first few years at school, not 100% sure if it was only the 4 years of elementary school) and as soon as we were allowed to use whatever type we liked (be it cursive, or printed, or a mix) suddenly I could read what I wrote and I was also a lot quicker.