Not being able to write cursive I understand.
Not being able to read cursive is an issue that will out your lesser education and put you at a disadvantage in social situations.
In this thread:
Americans: Why do I need to learn it when I can just type?
The World: It’s literally just writing. You don’t want to learn how to write??
My kids are learning cursive and I’m glad they are doing so.
But one of the main point of cursive was to be able to write more quickly, and typing has absolutely replaced that need, many times over. And also you learn print first, so not learning how to write cursive doesnt mean you don’t learn to write.
Ironically, your post is supposed to be insulting Americans for not being smart, but God damn is the point fucking stupid and ignorant.
It wasn’t meant to be insulting to Americans, the hate for learning to join up letters and write quickly just doesn’t really make sense to the rest of us.
You know what’s stupid and fucking ignorant? Assuming everyone has a laptop on them all the time. Do people really not write notes anymore? Handwriting notes is much more conducive to learning than typing and is a basic skill that aids education at all levels.
I’ve got a phone on me far more than I have a writing instrument, let alone paper: and I suspect that is true for the overwhelming majority of people.
I’ll even just give you that cursive improves retention and learning and fine motor skills (there are studies that go either way, and my personal experience is that it did nothing at all, but fig leaf): is the benefit worth the time versus just having more time in class for the subjects in question?
It wasn’t meant to be insulting to Americans, the hate for learning to join up letters and write quickly just doesn’t really make sense to the rest of us.
Lol this is like the best example of pissing on my foot and telling me it’s raining.
You know what’s stupid and fucking ignorant? Assuming everyone has a laptop on them all the time.
And if I had argued that we shouldn’t need to learn cursive because everyone has a laptop all the time, this wouldn’t be a completely fucking stupid argument. Alas, I did not.
I also almost never write in cursive and know how. I can count on one hand how many times in my life I was like “oh crap! I should switch over to cursive to save some time!” and I lost all the fingers on that hand in a freak grenade accident (joking).
This is especially stupid because I actually support kids learning cursive. It’s just a skill that is much less important than it was 50 years ago and so I don’t particularly care either way if kids learn it.
You can just admit you were wrong, its much easier than trying to pile on more nonsense to justify the ignorant insult.
I was wrong about what exactly? My facetious point about American and World views on the matter? I still think it was on point despite not being 100% serious.
It’s absolutely commonplace in the UK to learn this at an extremely young age and not something that “takes up valuable learning time”. It seems weird not to learn it. How about we don’t learn how to paint either because most people don’t have use for watercolours in their daily life?
I think the fact I’m being down voted by the Americans who don’t want to learn cursive is kind of a hilarious confirmation.
There’s no need to learn cursive, it serves no functional purpose that typing cannot match. Other than your signature, which… you have to learn how to do separate to cursive anyway to protect yourself from fraud by making it as unique and as difficult to replicate as possible.
Good luck typing something when you have no electronic device nearby or no power. I know we live in a connected, techno-cebtric world now, but it’s wild to think that this simple skill is no longer valued at all by some.
Also, your signature being the thing protecting you from fraud is quite hilarious from a European perspective too!
Conservatives are trying to prevent kids from learning history and sex ed, and we’re still hearing this bullshit lamentation about CURSIVE?
Schools are underfunded, teachers are underpaid and overworked, students are graduating barely able to read and with no critical thinking skills.
Who in their right mind is actually concerned about kids learning cursive?
Things I’d rather schools focus on:
Typing, Personal finance, Current events, Technology literacy, Graphic design, Human Computer Interaction
Or maybe practical skills related to trades or how to fix things: CAD, Cooking, Electrical, Plumbing
Literally ANYTHING but this cursive crap. It’s useless, it’s dead, move on.
To be fair, it’s trivially easy to learn cursive and it’s basically always been an extension of penmanship.
I’ve never been in a situation where penmanship mattered. Typing skills on the other hand are abysmal across the board and hamper my coworkers constantly.
It’s an easy way to teach fine motor control.
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Or disassembling electornics, which ice used way more than fucking cursive.
I’m really confused by all of these not being on the curriculum. I went to secondary school in the 90s in the UK. I had learned joined up writing in early primary school (which was what you used to write essays and coursework) and I had both an electronics class where we soldered circuits and IT class where typing improvement games were available.
Absolutely they need to teach finance. I remember when I had to get a mortgage for my house and it was a complete slog because I had absolutely no idea how the whole process was supposed to work. The thing is its actually not that complicated, but because I didn’t know what I was doing it took forever and was stressful.
Schools teach academics. Parents teach life skills. Teachers already have enough to handle, I don’t understand this recent push to make teachers teach shit that parents should be explaining.
I hate how way more school districts (at least in North America) insist on teaching kids cursive than the ones that teach kids how to touch type.
Which skill do you reckon they’ll find more valuable in their adulthood?
But does touch typing really require teaching? I learned to touch type just by typing. Gained my muscle memory naturally during regular usage.
I will say I hated being told to use home row in school, think that was only in one class though. Luckily the teacher only ever walked around every now and then. My hands were too big for home row placement.
This was slightly less than 2 decades ago, so computers were only in the computer lab and a few computer classes. This was mid aughts.
Touch typing does in fact require teaching. In the UK alone, only 20% of people can touch type fluently (https://touchtypeit.co.uk/just-how-many-people-can-touch-type). In the US, I saw a stat somewhere that was even lower at 10%, but I can’t find it again. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s accurate though.
I don’t remember people ever writing cursive like what I was taught growing up. People just self-servingly turbo-scribble some chicken-scratch and call it a day. The kid who can’t read our B-movie elvish script isn’t the one with literacy issues.
We either write within the ballpark of standardization, or we don’t. I think kids should be required to put in as much effort into learning cursive, as people put into actually writing cursive. Which is to say, absolutely none at all.
(Sorry to people who actually write legible, clean cursive. I wish I got to read your output in the wild.)
feels like a lot of older people just use cursive as an excuse to cover up bad handwriting, because it’s harder to tell when it’s all squiggly in the first place
like, there’s a reason we don’t write in fancy serif typefaces, that would result in most people’s writing being even less legible than it already is.
You’re just not old enough. Cursive was everywhere when I was a kid. They should still teach it to children because children learn language and writing easier than adults do. We should be able to read cursive. It is part of our language, and our history. Every old document is written in cursive. We shouldn’t end up with a society that can’t even read its original Constitution. That’s just Idiocracy.
Language changes. Teaching an entire script to be able to read translated documents when there are practical skills that could be taught instead is silly.
We don’t teach old English anymore, even though there’s a huge amount of our cultural history contained in it.
We don’t even teach people about the eras when we used to use “f” in place if “s”, and that’s right in the middle of the constitution.Can you read the original magna carta? America would not be unique amongst English speaking nations in having issues dealing with language drift.
Do you read old English?
On a regular basis? No. Ever? Of course. Shakespeare is written in old English, the original translation of Homer’s The Odyssey, and the King James Bible, to name a few things.
Shakespeare is modern English with some old words. This is Old English.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version
Thanks for the example and the correction.
I thought cursive was the American word for joined up handwriting, but reading this thread I don’t really get what it means.
Please use only Noto Sans Linear A Bold Size 42 for cover
It isn’t just cursive. I’ve seen a lot of younger people have issues reading bad copies of older print letters. Part of it isn’t being used to seeing information presented in a certain way or not being found via OCR.
I don’t get it. Are children in north-america taught writing with block letters ? What do your writing copybooks look like ?
Yes. We are taught to “Print” first, and then taught cursive but reassured its not that serious or important to know how, because we will be expected to write in print on everything academic.
Interessing. In France, you are expected to write cursive until you are 11 years old, when you enter collège (junior high).
Or…people can stop being catered too because they are uneducated. I’m sick of things being dumbed down to suit the lowest common denominator.
to*
Blame phones. Again, catering to the lowest in terms of function
Normally I’m totally on the side of the younger generations as I see how tough things have been made for them- this however, I have no sympathy for.
Why should they be forced to learn an idiotic, outdated system of writing, so they can communicate with a bunch of stubborn boomers?
My 80-something grandmother went from writing a letter in cursive to us to simply messaging us on Facebook, she found it so much easier. What’s your excuse?
What my excuse?
I’m not you.
Americans why are they like this?
Faster and easier than copying a typeface.
"Omg it’s so hard. It might as well be in Chinese "
Don’t lower yourselves to the lowest denominator.
