A Change in Learning

Absolutely not! These are basic skills that everyone needs to know. I know; I'm speaking from an "old fashioned" perspective. I feel that a person to be truly educated needs to learn these basics; otherwise we can train chimpanzees to do our jobs. I am very adament about this. I have grandkids who ask for homework help. I can help them, but the teaching is different from when I was a kid. I try to get them to understand what a question is asked of them. When they can understand the how and why, can they fully understand what they are being taught. Bring back the old and proven system of education. Education methods have changed over the years in an effort to get the lower percentile of students to absorb what is being taught. It is debatable whether it does any good, but it seems to degrade the achievers.

And what are these educators proposing to do when the lights go out?

What a shame that the schools can't find the time to teach cursive writing. This is an art form that every literate person should possess. Are they going to sign their names with an X? If my kids hadn't been taught cursive, I would teach them myself! Lack of art appreciation has become epidemic in our schools.

Handwriting is so personal maybe it could become a Family legacy.handed down by ones favorite relatives handwriting techniques.The most impressive handwriting Ive ever seen was written on some over one hundred year old legal Filings like Deeds and Contracts ,those Lawyers of the past were just incredible.and their use of the English language was really awesome and All American.

Teachers could find some 100 year old handwriritng to show to their classes in the Title Abstracts Department at the Court Clerks office dating as far back as they go.ds

What a silly, silly idea, weak statement I know.. what I'm thinking is not readable...

Rearrange the following words into their logical order..

Walk... crawl....Run.

BEFORE you can use a keyboard, work out the simplest of arithmetic equations... and know that you have it correct you have to learn AND master the basics, and to do that you have to start at the beginning.

I can only hope the logic behind this STAYS firmly where it came from... on the other side of the Atlantic!

Nah, jst bcum compent w/ txtspyecch, dude!

Or, written in cursive, f&u#c%k, n$o.

You definitely know how to put the curse in cursive.

Have the Indiana schools authority considered how short sighted this move is?

Given the pace of change, keyboard input could easily be obsolete in 20 years. Then you will have a generation that can't write and don't need to type.

If anaidnI is not a backward state now, it soon will be!

That's the state that once legislated that pi = 3, or something equivalent.

I seem to be a bit at odds with everyone else here. Although I agree that the schools should not drop the teaching of cursive writing, I applaud their decision to teach keyboard skills. If I had been sent on a 1 week typing course when I started work it would have saved me hours every week now. I really have tried to learn to type properly, but, as soon as I get back to working in earnest I return to two fingered "pick and peck" because it's "faster for now".

How many people here type without looking at the keyboard?

as i said earlier..

Rearrange the following words into their logical order.. Walk... crawl....Run.

No probs with learning how to type.. but what happens when the power is off?

I do type without looking at the keyboard, and I do write in cursive. They aren't mutually exclusive skills. In my psychology studies, I've read a number of articles in the past three years on the benefits of penmanship for learning. Penmanship combines motor skills and cognitive neurology in a way that keyboarding does not. Here's an excerpt from a recent science news blurb on the topic:

"Cursive handwriting allows for fluency in communication," she said. "This type of fluency allows the ability to record ideas quickly and effortlessly."

Curtis also said that all handwriting helps students develop fine motor skills and it reinforces actions like buttoning a shirt or zipping a jacket.

"As young children practice writing, they are using a multisensory pathway to remember the shapes and names of the letters they will need as they learn to read," she said. "Keyboarding, simply poking letters to form words on a screen, doesn't allow children to utilize their motor memory to enhance spelling and word comprehension."

from http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-penmanship-important-skill-kids.html

I agree that the teaching of cursive is an important part of early education, teaching fine motor skills and connecting thoughts with fluidity. This new idea of replacing it with keyboarding seems to me that the educators who are proposing it have forgotten why they were teaching it in the first place, and now they must teach-the-test in order to get a good evaluation in their No-Child-Left-Behind world, motor skills aren't evaluated, just plug the facts into the boxes.

hmmm I remember taking a course in typing in high school...back in the '60s, we had no computers then and it was good training, along with standard reading, writing, and math.

I can never understand why things that just work, need to be changed. (Yeah I think teachers should be able to discipline kids too!)

_{ok I'll go back in the corner now...}

Cursive is the specific penmanship skill most of the educational psychology studies have mentioned (if they specified they type of penmanship studied) as most useful in stimulating neuro-cognitive development. I do not remember (darn I'm getting older) if they compared writing with printing or if their baseline was niether writing nor printing.

Art classes? What art classes? Haven't you heard that the arts aren't important anymore? Who needs that creativity stuff anyway? We need more followers, not leaders or inventors, right?

I learned cursive in elementary school, and that's where it still is, I haven't used it one day sense. I never could figure out why I needed to be able to write in two forms, one everyone can read(standard writing), and one barely anyone could read (cursive writing). I always was cursing the cursive.

Good point about calligraphy, I would happily lump cursive writing & calligraphy into an optional elective style class.

I say we take a toll, and see just how many of us here on CR4 actually write in Cursive in our day-to-day lives. I saw no real reason to learn it way back when I did, and I still don't see a big reason why it should be a mandatory subject in school. Maybe some real world skills ought to be taught... Like "Don't piss off your elders 101" or some basic science maybe.

I use cursive daily, and rue the day that twitter and facebook drove the hand written letter into obscurity. It has been years since I have received a hand written letter, but I still have a major collection of ones I once received in profusion. I will still occasionally rifle through them and read one or two- a great store of memories...

I also have a tendency to, most likely unjustly, judge the intelligence of those I encounter from their handwriting (doctors excluded, of course). By this measure, intelligence has been decreasing exponentially over the past half century...

Most Engineers have writing similar to doctors I have noticed. If I don't type it, chances are no one will be able to decipher it.

I was officially taught all the proper handwriting skills, but it's never been a strong point of mine (regardless of hours/days/months of training), I just have messy writing. I can always read it perfectly, but rarely can anyone else, and heaven forbid if I write it in cursive, I might not even be able to decipher it. I have nothing against the finer aspects of communication, such as a well written letter, poem, etc. but...

Handwriting will be a lost art, and in my mind, it's WAY to late to try and hold onto it at this point. The kids these days have no use for it. Heck, most written communication these days is composed with a single thumb, using non-real words.

Kids communicate through texts

• Texting is the #2 use of cell phones -- after checking the time
• Kids send billions of texts every year -- and it's increasing
• Text messages connect kids instantly -- and privately
• Text messages and images can be spread virally or uploaded
• Texting has a language of its own
• Text messages can be broadcast to multiple recipients at once
• Texting is becoming the #1 form of communication

I'm not saying I like it, But I realize what has been happening, and it's futile to fight it. New forms of communication have taken hold, and are here to stay. It may be dumbing down the youth, but theres not a whole lot we can do about it at this point, this new generation of kids has no use for a pencil/pen/paper. They can receive, and complete their homework on a touch-pad if they so desire.
It might not be right, But it is what it is, and theres nothing anyone can do to stop the Devolution of modern society.

Ohhh... and I can type way faster than I could write, in any form. I'd wager I can type faster than most people can write in cursive on a good day. Skills vs skills I suppose. At least I know no one will have any issue reading my typed word.

A love letter written in cursive most likely beats a txtmsg such as "luvya bby"

(Well, once upon a time, anyway.)

Yeah, and in this fast-moving age, Harlequin Romances feature lines like "He sucked face so tenderly it melted my heart."