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OT: Should cursive still be taught in schools

Should cursive still be taught in schools

  • yes

    Votes: 116 62.4%

  • no

    Votes: 70 37.6%
  • Total voters
    186
  • Poll closed .
Upstream said:
LOL. You truly have no historical perspective.

So what about baby boomer's grandparents complaining about baby boomer's parents?
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In this part of the US they were heavily immigrant. And they survived the Depression. I had the pleasure of knowing some great grandparents, and I never heard them whine about my grandparents. They were proud of them. They taught them English and American culture.

OTOH, this board is a great case study in the boomer generation. The music is too loud, kids today can't write in outdated formats or read in dead languages....you know my grandparents spoke jilted Southern Italian dialects and I never once heard my grandparents complain about my parents inability to do so, despite those languages actually having more use than cursive or Latin. Meanwhile we have boomers cheering when Spanish is deemed a language of the poor or candidates get scolded for using it.

Not to mention, if you talk to many millenials they could actually not only discuss EDM but the Beatles, the Who, plenty of classic rock music their parents listen to. In fact the only music I really hate is country and that goes for most people in NJ. Yet the stadium is not the only place where boomers complain about loud EDM or rap being vulgar or whatever it is that hurts their ears.

Maybe millenials will act that way towards their children, we'll see. But the boomers are truly exceptional in their ability to critically judge their parents and children while viewing themselves so exceptionally. It wasn't the millenials that called them the me generation, was it?
 
J.L. Gotrocks said:
Been a while since I've been in school. Have these gone out of style?

th
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not in japan, anyone remember the counting system they have with beads?
was there 50 years ago for 2 years and was amazed how fast they can work it.
 
bac2therac said:
this is sad that they are forcing to teach skills that should be taught by parents and parents only...getting in trouble in chat rooms..that sounds sort of stalkerish creepy kind of stuff, is this some kind of class on how you handle social media? This is what we are teaching our kids today?
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Blame the parents, not the school. When Johnny is being bullied on social media, Johnny's parents march into the principal's office threatening law suits and demanding action. And in the rare event Johnny does something terrible, guess who gets blamed? I'll give you a hint. It's not Johnny's parents.
 
cooldude33 said:
Those things are not supposed to be taught in schools, they're supposed to be taught at home.

You sound like a shitty parent.
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You've over generalizing, plus you've got it backwards. Courtesy, respect, and self responsibility are taught in schools, and they should be. The problem lies with parents that don't also teach these values. If Johnny fails a test or gets in trouble, it's the teachers fault.
 
NotInRHouse said:
The difference of course is that the Boomer's parents fought and survived through WW2. The boomers didn't. Many of them walked out of high school and into well paying jobs.

That is why they are truly the "me" generation. They turned from taking heat about the Beatles and hippy music and then disco into now whining louder than their parents ever did about EDM. They are the generation that benefited from the safety net given their veteran parents who now desperately tear it away and bemoan it despite that causing a recession. And the ones who attended college at the NYC or CA state colleges paid no tuition, and then claim their children are in debt because they didn't study the right thing.

In my experience the "Greatest Generation" may behind on race and sex versus today, but they whine way, way less. The difference is mostly the hypocrisy, and they show the same intransigence towards millenials they showed to their parents.
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Sounds like a whiny Generation Xer to me.
 
graystork said:
Sounds like a whiny Generation Xer to me.
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Straw man king liberal Xer. Formulate some character of everything with which you disagree, sprinkle liberally with negative traits, assign this fearsome foe untenable arguments and then argue against it. Wham-bamm you look like a genius.
 
It's funny GOR would point out a "conspiracy nut" when he had the most bat shit pile of festering paranoia tangents of the entire thread. You don't get to have it both ways.
 
bac2therac said:
Was reading an editorial in the Courier News the other day where the op ed board said that the NJ legislators introducing a bill to make sure cursive writing is still taught is unnecessary as cursive wrting skills are no longer needed and schools should be spending their time teaching other things. I was actually taken aback that kids are not taught cursive in over half the schools in NJ anymore. I dont have kids and have been oblivious to any changes. Yes I realize now more is done on computers and less cursive is necessary but gee what happens if a kid sees a letter from his grandmother or sees a document from the past and they have no clue how to read it.

I say keep cursive writing in our schools
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I think many of the teachers / most of the students are (cursing).

MO
 
My two girls, 8 and 10, go to a charter school in Jersey city, and they are not being taught cursive. They do emphasize reading though, something not done when I was there age.
 
GoodOl'Rutgers said:
On the CE board he revealed himself to be a 9-11 conspiracy nut. Anything he can do to blame America and the establishment is A-okay with him.
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LOL um no I did not. 9/11 was caused by Osama Bin Laden, the same guy who was given weapons by the hero president you worship
 
GoodOl'Rutgers said:
Way to make a poor argument.
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Yeah, he should have dropped the likely.

The same people in this thread wanting cursive are the same ones who want Latin, they have no gauge on modernity and it consistently reflected in thread after thread.

They should just admit what they want it shoving their views down the rest of our throats, and forcing other people's children to learn things they will never use versus things that are useful but are perceived to fall out of the 1950s Mayberry version of life they think they have.
 
Six pages for this? That's what's wrong with America. Why waste time debating an answer that is obvious to anyone who should be making these kinds of decisions?
 
bac2therac said:
I dont know much about common core but where Ive seen examples it seems very strange

tell me some things they arent learning that we used to learn..I bet the way US history is taught has changed alot
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In many schools it is called Social Studies. History is out the door.
 
camdenlawprof said:
It was called Social Studies when I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, and, yes, it was primarily history, with other subjects thrown in. Nothing new here.
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NJ High School course requirements for at least the last 50 years call for Social Studies, not History. Social Studies includes US and World History, but also civics, geography, economics, and other social content.
 
Caliknight said:
Why teach art? That is completely useless. How about French? Hardly anyone outside of France speaks French, why even offer it? Not going to help you professionally. History? Utter waste of time. To major in it is laughable. Social studies? Even more so. If the standard is STEM and what surrounds it, there is a lot to gut before you get to something learned in what amounts to probably 20 hours like cursive writing.
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Yeah, F* *k the French!!..... I see on Watters world that they were responsible for the revolutionary, civil, world war one and two, wars!
 
There are still times where you need to sign your name -- for example, getting your driver's license.

Watching my son try to write his name in script was painful. Signing your own name should be a requirement for getting out of second grade.

I also think there's a difference between taking notes with pen & paper vs. in a text editor on a tablet or laptop -- for that I would use cursive, but cursive for me was far faster than manuscript. That's just preference.
 
Do teachers write on chalkboards anymore? Are there chalkboards? How do kids take notes? Do teachers spoon feed their tired brains?
 
bac2therac said:
Do teachers write on chalkboards anymore? Are there chalkboards? How do kids take notes? Do teachers spoon feed their tired brains?
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Smartboards. Power point presentations. Probably printed out.

That is a shame since writing something reinforces it in your brain, moreso than typing. At least that's my experience....
 
We use whiteboards at the Camden law school. Many of my colleagues use power points. I am in the early 20th century if not earlier -- my handwriting is terrible, so I tend just to talk, and the students take notes, largely on their computers. I think power points are typically too simplistic, and there are plenty of times in a lawyer's life when he or she will have to absorb information conveyed orally; there won't always be a power point or whiteboard around. I have to say that I do not see any improvement in comprehension from the switch from handwritten notes to computer notes. I also have to say that cursive is far faster than printing.

As for Caliknight's rejection of French, there is a saying in Europe, "What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American."
 
camdenlawprof said:
We use whiteboards at the Camden law school. Many of my colleagues use power points. I am in the early 20th century if not earlier -- my handwriting is terrible, so I tend just to talk, and the students take notes, largely on their computers. I think power points are typically too simplistic, and there are plenty of times in a lawyer's life when he or she will have to absorb information conveyed orally; there won't always be a power point or whiteboard around. I have to say that I do not see any improvement in comprehension from the switch from handwritten notes to computer notes. I also have to say that cursive is far faster than printing.

As for Caliknight's rejection of French, there is a saying in Europe, "What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American."
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But you are teaching law school. If someone's gotten that far and can't sign their name or take notes, then something's wrong with them.

If it's in 4th grade, not so much.

I love the quote.
 
megadrone said:
But you are teaching law school. If someone's gotten that far and can't sign their name or take notes, then something's wrong with them.

If it's in 4th grade, not so much.

I love the quote.
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I am told that I would be amazed by the number of students, even in college or beyond, who take notes by printing. Perhaps the day will come when taking notes on a tablet, say, will be so easy that everyone will do it, but I'm not sure we should rely on that day coming soon. Until then, students need cursive. BTW, there are occasions (like writing a thank-you note or a condolence note) when using handwriting is vastly more acceptable than a typed message.
 
I think people have gotten comfortable with the fact that America has such a huge lead in the STEM world. However, we have to be careful to maintain this lead. If we ever fall behind, it will be the worst thing that could happen.

To the people that say we need to teach other things so our kids are not socially awkward, I think you are just looking for reasons to put down people with high technical skill. Social skills and technical skills can and do work together (look at Gates, Page, Brin, Musk, Woz, Zuck, etc). Cursive, while it may teach many things, is really really unimportant moving forward. Arguing for cursive now is similar to arguing for horseback riding when cars were first getting started. Or the knights that chose to keep swords when guns came around. People argued for it, but in the end, those arguments were pointless.

We need to make sure we remain the trend-setters. Otherwise, the next Google or Apple or Tesla will come from another country.
 
camdenlawprof said:
We use whiteboards at the Camden law school. Many of my colleagues use power points. I am in the early 20th century if not earlier -- my handwriting is terrible, so I tend just to talk, and the students take notes, largely on their computers. I think power points are typically too simplistic, and there are plenty of times in a lawyer's life when he or she will have to absorb information conveyed orally; there won't always be a power point or whiteboard around. I have to say that I do not see any improvement in comprehension from the switch from handwritten notes to computer notes. I also have to say that cursive is far faster than printing.

As for Caliknight's rejection of French, there is a saying in Europe, "What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American."
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That's because we are American. The world comes to us :) I wouldn't call your average French person enlightened on the language front.

English is fast becoming the language of communication choice on the globe. If you want to know one language, English is the one to know.
 
camdenlawprof said:
We use whiteboards at the Camden law school. Many of my colleagues use power points. I am in the early 20th century if not earlier -- my handwriting is terrible, so I tend just to talk, and the students take notes, largely on their computers. I think power points are typically too simplistic, and there are plenty of times in a lawyer's life when he or she will have to absorb information conveyed orally; there won't always be a power point or whiteboard around. I have to say that I do not see any improvement in comprehension from the switch from handwritten notes to computer notes. I also have to say that cursive is far faster than printing.

As for Caliknight's rejection of French, there is a saying in Europe, "What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American."
Click to expand...

1) You can hand write notes by printing. You don't need to use cursive. I print much faster than I write cursive, which is why I never use cursive. (But as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I recognize that other people prefer cursive to printing, which is why schools should teach both.)

2) Europeans have a great lack of understanding of American culture, and that joke plays on that lack of understanding. In Europe, it is pretty necessary to speak more than one language, and for one of those languages to be English.

If someone from Venice travels to Munich (a distance slightly less than from New York to Washington, DC), he would not expect people in Munich to understand Italian, and he would not be expected to speak German, but he would expect that he could get around and conduct business in English. If he were a frequent traveler to Germany, he would benefit from learning German, in addition to his native Italian and English.

But in the United States, there is very little need to speak a language other than English. You can travel thousands of miles, and only need to speak English. And except for select geographic areas, there is very little opportunity to speak languages other than English.

According to the Census Bureau, 79% of Americans speak only English at home. Of the 21% who speak a language other than English, 78% of them speak English "very well" or "well". That means that only about 4.6% of Americans do not speak English well. And those 4.6% all speak different languages (about half speak Spanish, and the other half speak other languages). Also note that 80% of those who do not speak English well were born in other countries.

This is fairly similar to Australia, which is a large country with little opportunity to speak a language other than English. And similar to the US, 80% of Australians speak only English.
 
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Distance is only part of the equation.

Many Canadians are bilingual in English and French, but there are very few French-only speakers in say, British Columbia. If they never visited Quebec, would they need it?

The other thing in Europe is that many languages are "close" to English- German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic are all in the Germanic language family with English. Dutch is the closest living language to English, and German is next up. It's pretty easy for them to learn it- OTOH, not easy for English speakers to learn German particularly.

Another thing is with say, Spanish speakers, in both Spain and Latin America- their media content is dubbed and not subtitled. In many European countries, there are subtitles, so English is picked up much easier. Other countries with this phenomenon- Italy, France, and Brazil, for example, similarly have lower numbers of English speakers.

Some of this is also a cultural thing. People in Portugal are very hung up about being lumped in with Spain. if you speak Spanish there you will get a lot of side eye, even though it's very easy for them to understand. But many people there speak English- some of the best I've heard abroad. And, I met multiple people who lived in NJ alone, nevermind the rest of the US, and returned to Portugal. Countries with this type of phenomenon will also have more English speakers.

And inmigration is also part of the equation. Today, a city like Berlin is as multicultural as New York. If an Israeli, a Russian, a Turk and a Greek walk into a Berlin bar, well, it will be easiest for them to communicate in English because that's likely the second most proficient language for all of them.

Some places more than others are more voracious in their consumption of English language media. In my travels in Latin America, there will be some English music, but Spanish language music predominates (and Portuguese in Brazil). You may go the whole night in a club or bar and hear not one English song. In Amsterdam or Berlin, it's the reverse.
 
Upstream said:
1) You can hand write notes by printing. You don't need to use cursive. I print much faster than I write cursive, which is why I never use cursive. (But as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I recognize that other people prefer cursive to printing, which is why schools should teach both.)

2) Europeans have a great lack of understanding of American culture, and that joke plays on that lack of understanding. In Europe, it is pretty necessary to speak more than one language, and for one of those languages to be English.

If someone from Venice travels to Munich (a distance slightly less than from New York to Washington, DC), he would not expect people in Munich to understand Italian, and he would not be expected to speak German, but he would expect that he could get around and conduct business in English. If he were a frequent traveler to Germany, he would benefit from learning German, in addition to his native Italian and English.

But in the United States, there is very little need to speak a language other than English. You can travel thousands of miles, and only need to speak English. And except for select geographic areas, there is very little opportunity to speak languages other than English.

According to the Census Bureau, 79% of Americans speak only English at home. Of the 21% who speak a language other than English, 78% of them speak English "very well" or "well". That means that only about 4.6% of Americans do not speak English well. And those 4.6% all speak different languages (about half speak Spanish, and the other half speak other languages). Also note that 80% of those who do not speak English well were born in other countries.

This is fairly similar to Australia, which is a large country with little opportunity to speak a language other than English. And similar to the US, 80% of Australians speak only English.
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All very true. Plus English-language pop culture is plentiful there. Radio sounds about the same as it does here, with maybe 1 out of 10 songs being in the native language, at least in the places I've been. Plenty of American/British TV, too. So even if you don't do well in English in school, you end up with a ton of exposure.

At first I felt bad speaking English there, but when you realize that English is basically a mandatory subject in many schools, and you basically would have trouble getting through a day without encountering some English, there's nothing to feel bad about.

I took six years of German back in school and could have probably survived pretty well on German alone ... but I've had nearly 20 years of not using German at all since there's virtually nowhere to use it here. Could have used Spanish more regularly, but that would have backfired since I don't have the need to travel much to Spanish-speaking countries.
 
Learning a foreign language introduces you to the culture of that nation. In a world in which national borders are becoming less and less important, and in which it's therefore more important than ever for us to understand others, knowledge of a foreign language is extremely helpful.
 
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