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 ...
It's more than likely that she thought that "cursive" writing had something to do with cursing (!!@#$%^)? If she was never exposed to it how would she know?
Regards,
GtG
It’s not dead in my house. I was taught the Palmer method, and use it every day.
My children did learn cursive in (Catholic) school, but it wasn’t as nice as Palmer (IMO). When I began homeschooling my younger son, I taught him the Palmer method as well. Now his penmanship is excellent — almost as good as mine.
My older boy...well...he also writes in cursive all the time (for note-taking in school), but HIS handwriting looks more like the marks left by a chicken in the final throes of a horrifying death caused by a spectacular gastric disturbance. Still, he seems to be able to read it. His signature is MUCH neater and even passes muster with me.
Regards,
That was my system as well...as I learned shorthand, I used that as well for class notes...I think I would be classified as a tactile kinesthetic learner—more senses involved, the better...I still like to take a lot of notes in cursive :)
My understanding is if you buy them officially they can make changes, but if you load your own copy via Calibre, they can’t.
Bad news: Cursive writing no longer taught.
Good News: Words per minute (WPM) typed is increasing, albeit Eubonics’ words are more common than English.
In the modern age you don’t need to know cursive to read the founding father’s documents. They’ve been typed hundreds maybe thousands of times, and if that’s not good enough you can always find images of the originals and point your favorite OCR software at them, bang instant printed version.
If you are putting down words, writing, with your hand using pen or paper, it is handwriting.
It’s not a matter of dumbing down society, it’s a matter of taking that time to teach them something that might actually be useful. Cursive is useless, has been useless for at least half a century now, it’s time to admit it and move on. Teach them simple interest and how expected income works so they won’t join in the student loan “crisis”. Grammar and spelling are still useful, spell check has too many limitations. Cursive is not. 3 generations have learned it and stopped using it as soon as they got out of school, society has spoken, we’re done with cursive. The only question is why haven’t the schools bothered to listen.
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Because they don't have to.
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