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 ...
There are 44,000 logograms (characters) used in Chinese writing. “Studies carried out in China have shown that functional literacy requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.” (As per Wikipedia.)
Even though the English language is much different than Chinese Mandarin, it may be easier to communicate with in writing and printing.
I actually studied Chinese Mandarin at DLI while in the U.S.Navy.
My understanding is not that she was asked to read a letter written in cursive, but that she was asked to read a letter that SHE supposedly wrote which was written in cursive.
If she can’t read it, how the hell did she write it?
_____________________
If you listened to the entire exchange, the defense lawyer made it clear that she had dictated to another. He named the other.
Sorry, I went back to my source and wrote was in quote markes. Reading another article I understand her friend wrote it for her. I appologise.
I still enjoy writing in Gregg, too. Nowhere near as fast as it once was, but a skill I really don’t want to lose even tho there’s little to no use for it today.
ah...CBS doing its part to cover for the 19yro senior to be high school Trademark cellphone friend..
“It’s an excuse for some people to make unintelligible marks on paper.”
I think that doing away with cursive (I think we called it “long-hand”) isn’t a good thing. Just another way to homogenize the population. Also, could be a path to make cheating easier. It’ll be more difficult to distinguish one writer from another. Pretty cool for the dems when they drag in the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers to the voting booths.
Oh! Jim! No apologies required. I just want people to avoid using that in any discussions or arguments, as it’s been proven to be untrue. No problems at all Jim!
I attended parochial schools in the 50s. The nuns never taught us to print. We started out immediately with cursive. ** ALL** the children in the class could read well. I know because we were lined up and forced to read aloud one student at a time.
We are ALREADY illiterate in comparison to the Founders.
Even if you translated their writings into block text, the vast majority of Americans would struggle to understand a single page.
I doubt cursive writing is the only text this person cannot read!
That said it’s not just cursive writing but Education as a whole is Dead!
The whole English Language is under attack by the internet!
Peeps do not use whole words anymore and has filtered down to what is presentable and what is not. As in the example of the first word of the last sentence.
It is always a special treat when I see magnificent penmanship
I run across old documents that makes one wonder the time,effort, and patience that was utilized to take a task to perfection.
My third-grade teacher in New Orleans wouldn’t tolerate southpaws so I was obliged to learn penmanship right-handed. Away from school I would gravitate back to the more natural (for me) left hand.
As a result for years I could write tolerably with either hand.
I’ve spent so many years typing now that I embarrass myself when I attempt cursive writing nowadays.
Well now we know who DIDN’T write Rachel’s letter ;-)
Date formats (big, middle and little endian) vary by country. Canada uses all three systems, simultaneously (we got the DMY format from the British, the MDY from the U.S. [civilian], and YMD from Europe via the metric system). For the first 12 days of each month, it’s almost impossible to tell, DD MM YY from MM DD YY. I use YYYY, MM, DD whenever I can now — so that there’s less confusion. That format has the advantage of extending to smaller units of time: YYYY,MM,DD,HH,MM,SS.
Written at 2013.06.28.16:55:10
ping
Hey professor Polikoff, go Polikoff yourself! You frik’n moron!
So, how do they sign their name?
That was very close to my routine...and I still do this when in important meetings where I need to really know what is going on and what are the deliverables.
Cheers
Oddly, methinks the last great hope for cursive was the Apple Newton. That early pocket tablet computer (13 years before iPhone) recognized cursive better than block printing. It started my return to cursive. Alas, the hardware wasn’t up to the task, “egg freckles” ensued (look it up), and the last practical reason for cursive died.
GTFO! what are people doing when they take a pen to paper nowadays?
The govt of Chile noticed that Chile was scoring consistently on a par with Indonesia or Cameroon in international science and math tests. Their answer was to quit taking the test so often.
This dipwad is reasoning the same way. Jeantel can’t read cursive, so let’s quit using cursive. There may be a few good reasons to dispense with it, but DeeDee is not one of them.
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