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It's not really the case that memorising those lines have taken up useful brain space. On the contrary from all we know it probably made you better at memorisi

It's not really the case that memorising those lines have taken up useful brain space. On the contrary from all we know it probably made you better at memorising. Similarly being able to write cursive gives you better fine motor control in your writing hand. I learnt cursive at school, as well as use of a slide rule and log tables. They were obsolete by many decades when I was learning to use them. But are my arithmetic skills worse than the average zoomer who has a smartphone practically cemented into their hand? No, I'm fact I'm probably more efficient at using the calculator app on their phone. In theory computer algebra systems have obsoleted junior maths courses let alone times tables (multiplication tables). But good luck using one if you didn't do the wax-on wax-off leg work of memorising seemingly useless data. In my current job I oversee trainees who have to sit 3 exams (at great cost totalling about 10k). The recommended reading for those those exams is about £25 question bank. Everyone who does it comes away feeling it was useless. The vast majority will pass and tell their more junior friends not to bother with it. And invariably the group that doesn't use it has more fails. There is bias here, those that are willing to work are more motivated and more likely to pass. But this always reminds me that 1) you don't even know what you're gaining when you do any kind of training 2) we rarely remember how we know something or why we came up with a particular idea. Usually the reason is some boring combination of seemingly unrelated grunt work.

duifullg 4y ago
You can make the case than learning almost anything “useless” will help you with something else than everyone considers useful nowadays. Cursive helps with fine motor control. Chess helps you with memorization. Using an abacus might help with both. That’s not the point. The point is kids have a limited time. I don’t want my kids to learn cursive or the abacus because that will take time off from stuff that’s almost surely more relevant. Perhaps I’m wrong and learning with an abacus is the best use of their time. I hated cursive with a passion and some of my teachers forced me to use it at different points of my primary education. It was falling out of fashion then and only the hardcore old-timers thought it should be forced upon children. I wrote a perfectly legible print, but for them I just HAD to do it their way
- michaelgrafl 4y ago
  In my view fine motor control is actually very important, as it seems to have a big effect on neuroplasticity and the prevention of Parkinson's. I also want my kids to learn how to appreciate things that have no tangible purpose other than be beautiful. I think it's a shame though that you were forced to use cursive when you hated it. Although where I grew up writing cursive used to be the norm. But it's not anymore apparently, as my son is learning non-cursive first.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    >as my son is learning non-cursive first. Is non-cursive different than print? Didn't everyone learn to print before learning cursive?
    - michaelgrafl 4y ago
      No, I just didn't know what it's called. And no, I never learned print at school, only cursive. I started writing in print as a teenager because I thought it looked cooler, but it took me some time to get used to it.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  I think people massively overestimate what kids are willing to do or capable of. Kids are stupid. Like really dumb, not even just not well informed (they are entirely uninformed) but also wildly illogical and without strategy. They do by brute force. Unable to appraise tasks and split them into smaller pieces. I don't think many get to use an abacus these days but if you do you'll see an abacus makes visual the way numbers can be split into digits for addition and subtraction. Believe it or not at one point in your life that wasn't so deeply rooted into your soul that it seems alien and a colossal insight. To kids the sums of numbers might as well have been plucked from thin air. Every time there is an attempt to teach kids "useful" maths there's a backlash that it's too hard. That parents can't manage it. New Maths, Common Core. Add to that 50% have IQ below the mean ( of course).
  - 4y ago
throwaway675309 4y ago
I'm going to address each one of your points since you didn't really bother to provide any corroborating evidence beyond one personal anecdote. "It's not really the case that memorising those lines have taken up useful brain space. On the contrary from all we know it probably made you better at memorising." I have heard of no study that indicates that rote memorization is some kind of magically distinct musculature in your brain that lets you memorize more rote information - the few studies that I have seen about improving your ability to memorize talk about that it's more important how you memorize information and the means and effort in which you used to encode it, for example creating highly vivid mnemonics. I will concede that if you take the time when memorizing information to consciously connect it to other information particularly seemingly disparate unrelated information, that this can help significantly with retention. But most people don't make an effort to do this, they just repeat the information and ad nauseum until it "sticks". "Similarly being able to write cursive gives you better fine motor control in your writing hand." One could just as easily apply the same logic to the fact that more kids play video games, and said video games require fine dexterity and control. "I learnt cursive at school, as well as use of a slide rule and log tables. They were obsolete by many decades when I was learning to use them. But are my arithmetic skills worse than the average zoomer who has a smartphone practically cemented into their hand? No, I'm fact I'm probably more efficient at using the calculator app on their phone." I don't even know how to respond to this seemingly wild conjecture. Every generation makes these exact same set of arguments (like learning To read and write Latin and Greek, the list goes on and on) and apparently you've fallen into the same trap. The bottom line is that we have a finite number of hours in which to cram an exponentially increasing amount of information to distill the entirety of the experiences and knowledge of mankind.

duifullg 4y ago

You can make the case than learning almost anything “useless” will help you with something else than everyone considers useful nowadays. Cursive helps with fine motor control. Chess helps you with memorization. Using an abacus might help with both. That’s not the point. The point is kids have a limited time. I don’t want my kids to learn cursive or the abacus because that will take time off from stuff that’s almost surely more relevant. Perhaps I’m wrong and learning with an abacus is the best use of their time. I hated cursive with a passion and some of my teachers forced me to use it at different points of my primary education. It was falling out of fashion then and only the hardcore old-timers thought it should be forced upon children. I wrote a perfectly legible print, but for them I just HAD to do it their way

michaelgrafl 4y ago
In my view fine motor control is actually very important, as it seems to have a big effect on neuroplasticity and the prevention of Parkinson's. I also want my kids to learn how to appreciate things that have no tangible purpose other than be beautiful. I think it's a shame though that you were forced to use cursive when you hated it. Although where I grew up writing cursive used to be the norm. But it's not anymore apparently, as my son is learning non-cursive first.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >as my son is learning non-cursive first. Is non-cursive different than print? Didn't everyone learn to print before learning cursive?
  - michaelgrafl 4y ago
    No, I just didn't know what it's called. And no, I never learned print at school, only cursive. I started writing in print as a teenager because I thought it looked cooler, but it took me some time to get used to it.
psychphysic 4y ago
I think people massively overestimate what kids are willing to do or capable of. Kids are stupid. Like really dumb, not even just not well informed (they are entirely uninformed) but also wildly illogical and without strategy. They do by brute force. Unable to appraise tasks and split them into smaller pieces. I don't think many get to use an abacus these days but if you do you'll see an abacus makes visual the way numbers can be split into digits for addition and subtraction. Believe it or not at one point in your life that wasn't so deeply rooted into your soul that it seems alien and a colossal insight. To kids the sums of numbers might as well have been plucked from thin air. Every time there is an attempt to teach kids "useful" maths there's a backlash that it's too hard. That parents can't manage it. New Maths, Common Core. Add to that 50% have IQ below the mean ( of course).
- 4y ago

throwaway675309 4y ago

I'm going to address each one of your points since you didn't really bother to provide any corroborating evidence beyond one personal anecdote. "It's not really the case that memorising those lines have taken up useful brain space. On the contrary from all we know it probably made you better at memorising." I have heard of no study that indicates that rote memorization is some kind of magically distinct musculature in your brain that lets you memorize more rote information - the few studies that I have seen about improving your ability to memorize talk about that it's more important how you memorize information and the means and effort in which you used to encode it, for example creating highly vivid mnemonics. I will concede that if you take the time when memorizing information to consciously connect it to other information particularly seemingly disparate unrelated information, that this can help significantly with retention. But most people don't make an effort to do this, they just repeat the information and ad nauseum until it "sticks". "Similarly being able to write cursive gives you better fine motor control in your writing hand." One could just as easily apply the same logic to the fact that more kids play video games, and said video games require fine dexterity and control. "I learnt cursive at school, as well as use of a slide rule and log tables. They were obsolete by many decades when I was learning to use them. But are my arithmetic skills worse than the average zoomer who has a smartphone practically cemented into their hand? No, I'm fact I'm probably more efficient at using the calculator app on their phone." I don't even know how to respond to this seemingly wild conjecture. Every generation makes these exact same set of arguments (like learning To read and write Latin and Greek, the list goes on and on) and apparently you've fallen into the same trap. The bottom line is that we have a finite number of hours in which to cram an exponentially increasing amount of information to distill the entirety of the experiences and knowledge of mankind.