Posted on 06/28/2013 1:29:33 PM PDT by TigerClaws
A single sentence, uttered in the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin, has catapulted an issue into the national spotlight.
When asked if she could read a letter in court, witness Rachel Jeantel, her head bowed, murmured with embarrassment, "I don't read cursive," according to court testimony.
Is it any surprise that cursive -- the looped, curvaceous style of handwriting that's been a mainstay of education for generations -- is all but dead? [15 Weird Things We Do Everyday, and Why]
"Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it's already dying, despite having been taught for decades," Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, told The New York Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
So I must really be out of it because still after half a century I take notes in shorthand. I actually worked with someone who was able to read my shorthand notes. It was Gregg shorthand.
I made it a point to ignore most of them.
The friend when I was younger was white; the most shocking thing to me was working with blacks with college degrees who would have never gotten out of grammar school with their English skills (I know there are whites like this too, but not at my job).
You don’t realize that they spell phonetically how they speak; it is really sad, and a real disservice was done to them by passing them. With more effort earlier they’d be much more today.
Pretty much but not as bad as it could get, in my opinion.
We barely touched on shorthand in school. More of a passing mention really.
My mother said they had a semester of it.
You’re probably right about that.
Probably can’t spell worth a darn, though.
“Was the name of the “friend” Benjamin Crump?”
It was signed “Diamond E-something.” Maybe that’s where the Dee Dee came from. Still coulda been Crump, I suppose.
I taught cursive to 1st graders.
It was 1954.
I also started learning it in 1st grade——1939.
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It should. The integral (either Lebesgue or Riemann) is the limit of sums. Newton and Leibniz recognized this, even though they didn't have access to a rigorous theory of integration. So, from the beginning, a long S has been used to indicate summing by integration.
Discrete sums used a different symbol, which was already taken: "Σ" which is a Greek S. (and NOT an E, the way it's misused in My Big Fat GRΣΣK Wedding, which should really be My Big Fat ΓΡΕΕΚ Wedding.)
Growing up in Central PA where there are lots of Germans (including my Dad) who pronounce their consonants hard, I was SHOCKED to discover the correct spelling was “spigot,” since “spicket” was indeed the word I had always heard.
My system was to write down everything my professors said, and after my classes were over I’d outline the notes, adding in whatever reading material there was. Then I would memorize my outlines. It sounds like a lot of work, but I didn’t have to struggle through information cramming for tests.
Yeah I'm not perfect, but I at least try to avoid the obvious mistakes. I'm certainly prone to the more esoteric nuances of the language.
Cheers.
Wasn't OJ acquitted to avoid riots?
0bama got elected not just on "white guilt", but also on the fear of riots if he lost.
When rioters are given doses of hot lead, this extortion will end.
Exactly!
It's tedious, often frustrating, but a skill that, eventually, with persistence, almost anyone can learn.
Can't imagine the need for any of those lessons.
As when people say "There's" with a plural noun: "There's a lot of dumbasses who don't speak very well English." Oh, there is dumbasses is there? "There're" is a perfectly good contraction and "there are" works, too. 'Course, on the Internet, I've no doubt we would see They're're and Their're if the old contraction regained currency... sigh ... still not ready to give up just yet; even if everybody else is.
When my kids were going through Fairfax County (VA) public schools, diagramming sentences was prohibited. My daughter’s teacher had to extract a promise from her students not to tell anyone, as she closed the door to teach them anyway.
We should not wonder why younger people today are lacking in certain skills, in literacy, in use of proper grammar, etc.
Italics is certainly more practical and joined italics is what I taught my children, The Portland Handwriting program.
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