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My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it. Here is a counterpoint. The US foundational documents (Declaration, Constitution) are writte
by dpierce9 4y ago
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it.
Here is a counterpoint. The US foundational documents (Declaration, Constitution) are written in cursive/script. Public education certainly has something to do with creating citizens capable of participating in US democracy and reading these docs is one significant part of that. Obviously they can be transcribed so I don’t think this is super compelling but perhaps it is not anachronistic as it seems.
- cool_dude85 4y agoCan be and has been. So, not compelling at all, I'd say. Even if you extend the general idea to a need to read grandma's recipes, you could post a pic online and someone who can read cursive could transcribe it for you.
- fuzzzerd 4y agoWhat a horrible way to live. Dependent on others for even basic needs. I'm not arguing you have to be 100% self sufficient, but learning to read what amounts to a specific font shouldn't be too much to ask.
- lovich 4y agoI’d disagree that it’s a basic need or that it’s not too much to ask. I think most people on this board have had to deal with not automating a one off task because the time to automate it is longer than the time saved. Spending time learning how to read a font optimized for hand writing that you might need to read a handful of times in your life seems like it would fall into the same category of work that’s not worth the time
- ben_w 4y agoWhen I was a pup, my mum had several occult books, including on divination with runes. Because of this, I learned to read them. Because of this, I got slightly more out of the maps (and cover) of The Hobbit than most normal people — Tolkien used runes as merely a font for Dwarfish, which was really just English. I wouldn't say that this is any more useful than cursive.
- wahnfrieden 4y agoNo one is reading that in its original or at all
- coffee_beqn 4y agoI do wonder is cursive really that hard to read without any lessons? It’s still English just with a awkward font. Writing cursive has a lot of rules but I would think most GenZers could read the constitution albeit slowly
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoA lot depends on penmanship. My grandmother was taught old school, and her cursive was so precise it looked like a font. Like she didn't use a ruler but everything she wrote till the day she died looked like she did. Myself I've lost the ability to write cursive. Obviously I could get it back with a little practice but I see zero point in doing so. I barely even write anything vs type these days.
- cronix 4y ago> I barely even write anything vs type these days. Me as well, to the point that when I do write, it's a lot slower and less legible than it used to be. Most of that muscle memory has left in the last 30 years since I've been heavily using keyboards and writing less and less each year.
- Scoundreller 4y agoMy issue is that my entire method of long-form writing isn’t linear. I’m too used to highlighting a paragraph/sentence and pasting it somewhere else.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoAs a lefty, I was never going to have good penmanship without the ability to do it blind (your hand covers up what you are writing). I am so glad that penmanship became pointless to my career after sitting my university exams, and I had already learned that printing was the way to got anyways.
- zuminator 4y agoI'm a lefty, not sure what you mean by your hand covers up what you're writing? I hold my pen so that it's pointing to the right, so that my hand trails the path of the pen tip. Do you...hold the pen so that it is pointing to the left so as to avoid smearing? Thus the pen tip is trailing the path of your hand? If so, that's an ingenious solution to an annoying problem, don't know why I never thought of it before, but yeah that would make it impossible to write meticulously.
- shadowgovt 4y agoCursive isn't sufficient to read it; you also have to be aware of the long S to know why we don't call the body "Congrefs," and we haven't taught long-s for over a century.
- anigbrowl 4y agoNobody taught me long S, I figured it out for myself after seeing it repeated numerous times in a text.
- codeflo 4y agoFrom the outside perspective of a younger democracy, the fact that the US political system treats this ancient legal document with the same reverence that one might pay to the biblical stone tablets, where it would be sacrilegious to even change the font, let alone bring it up to speed with almost 250 years of progress in ethics, political practice and technology, seems like it might explain some problems.
- yonaguska 4y agoIt's slow to change by design. I don't know that ethics and political practice really has "progressed" all that much just 250 years.
- bobthepanda 4y agoWell, amendments used to be more common. We just haven’t passed a non-academic one since 1971.
- throwaway2037 4y agoI am confused by this post. From here: http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/all_amendments_usconst.htm http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/all_amendments_usconst.ht... I see the final amendment: << AMENDMENT XXVII - Originally proposed Sept. 25, 1789. Ratified May 7, 1992. No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened. >> First: Holy Sh-t: This is a long time between propsal and passage / acceptance! Second: Do I misunderstand? Do you consider this amendment academic? It sounds like reps cannot increase compenstation during their term.
- bobthepanda 4y agoThe reason I call it academic is this: > The proposed congressional pay amendment was largely forgotten until 1982, when Gregory Watson, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a paper for a government class in which he claimed that the amendment could still be ratified. He later launched a nationwide campaign to complete its ratification.[2][3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Historical_background https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_...
- ncallaway 4y ago> The US foundational documents (Declaration, Constitution) are written in cursive/script. Public education certainly has something to do with creating citizens capable of participating in US democracy and reading these docs is one significant part of that I’ve read most of the constitution on each 4th of July for a decade now. I’ve never read the cursive version. You don’t need to learn to read cursive in order to learn the history, importance, or context of our founding documents. I promise that the script is NOT the most important thing about those documents, and someone who was unable to read cursive is still fully able to participate fully in our democracy.
- bobthepanda 4y agoAlso, in the same way that old English is now strictly the domain of its academia, do we need to teach cursive to all?
- tdeck 4y agoEven at the time the vast majority of people reading these documents would have read them in print, because they were... printed for public distribution.
- Isamu 4y agoI just looked at them in the National Archives Museum and frankly they are hard to read because the ink is surprisingly faint, at least for the Declaration. That one I think looks like it was handled a lot in the olden days before they took pains to protect it.
- ghaff 4y agoThe reality is that even those of us who were taught cursive--Palmer script in my case--and can vaguely sort of still write some poor imitation of most of the letters, would generally struggle to read a lot of old documents. The lettering tends to be small (paper/vellum was expensive), many spellings are archaic--as is some of the language. The fact is that you can't teach everything and, as I recall my grade school, learning Palmer script actually occupied quite a bit of time at one point in school. (And it was always my lowest grade.) You can just as easily argue for required music classes, typing classes, cooking classes, or any number of classes appropriate for early elementary school.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> The reality is that even those of us who were taught cursive--Palmer script in my case--and can vaguely sort of still write some poor imitation of most of the letters, would generally struggle to read a lot of old documents. Yes, I can attest to that. But it rapidly becomes easier if I stick with it for more than a few minutes. If you can read it at all, with effort, it's something you can acclimatize to.
- jjeaff 4y agoThere will always be room and need for experts in every little topic. But of course, there is no need to teach every little topic in grade school.
- throwaway675309 4y agoBy that logic anyone who reads religious texts should be reading them in their original languages, such as Aramaic for the Bible.