Cursive

It's nice but not essential. I am more concerned with the students' lack to master the content before the form. In our society we rarely write in cursive and most people adopt some hybrid form between cursive and print anyways.
There are a lot of things that are nice, but they can't be all mandatory. I would expect the curriculum in our modern day society to be different than the one in past generations. The world is different and we need different skills than our parents and grandparents, so naturally the educational tools may be different.

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Originally Posted by sicboater

How many are aware that a single space after periods and other concluding punctuation is now becoming standard? MLA states that it is preferred and the Chicago Style Manual says it's standard. It has to do with the fact that most fonts are no longer monospaced.

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Well it does make sense if the fonts are not monospaced. In reality I use a typesetting system (LaTeX), so it really doesn't matter what I do :)
I still use double space at the end of a sentence just because I write in emacs and typesetting it on the fly while writing is just too much. But I can imagine that with better computers someday emacs can start doing it, although the constant jitter would likely be quite distracting.

It's one of those insidious things. Calculators instead of mental arithmetic. Microsoft spell checkers instead of Dictionaries and Thesauruses. Google instead of an Encyclopaedia or learning how to use a library properly.

There was a time when learning something from "first principles" was deemed necessary and important.

I do not know whether cursive is important in the grand scheme of things. But I do know that this move to sideline it is indicative of something a lot more disheartening.

James.

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Originally Posted by jockeys

Also, I only use a fountain pen, so I pretty much have to use cursive. We used fountain pens in school when we were learning, as well. Doing cursive with a ballpoint (or any writing) sucks.

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Haha, not as much as printing with a fountain pen.

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Originally Posted by fccexpert

When i write, I print. I can print as fast as I can write cursive and it is much clearer and easier to read. I reject the premise that you can tell anyting about me or anyone else based looking at their handwriting.

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Ahh, but with a little practice you could write much faster (and with less effort) than you could ever print. Strictly due to the mechanics/ergonomics involved.

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Originally Posted by Quick

Ahh, but with a little practice you could write much faster (and with less effort) than you could ever print. Strictly due to the mechanics/ergonomics involved.

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Which is the whole point of cursive. My parents writing is a lot nicer than mine, my grandparents writing(before they became old) was art work, and they had never made it past 8th grade. Soon kids wont have to know how to write they will just use the speak/write machine as in Orwells 1984.

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Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

It seems to me that people in general got a more comprehensive (read better) education in the 1920s and '30s then in the 1970s and onward. A steady decline IMO. This is a personal observation based on talking to my parents and other people from the different age groups over the years.

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Thank you Jimmy, these are my experiences as well, up until a few years ago my grandfather could recite whole poems by Longfellow.

Ya know, now that I'm thinking about it other than sign my name I can't remember the last time I used cursive. I'm not even sure I remember how.

Another thing they don't teach anymore in the U.S is how to tell time on an analogue clock. Most kids can't do it.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Another thing they don't teach anymore in the U.S is how to tell time on an analogue clock. Most kids can't do it.

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Ha ha. I can understand a generation of young people not having the best cursive writing skills due to lack of education and practice, but if a kid can't figure out an analog clock... he's just dumb.

I can't believe they've entirely nixed it, but I'm honestly glad they aren't pushing it on them. Try being in data entry and looking at forms all day where people who should know how to write (teachers) attempt to fill these things out in cursive. Instead, it comes in an almost unreadable scratch that barely resembles any sort of language. I would rather the schools focus on legible print, as that's hard enough to get these days.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Ya know, now that I'm thinking about it other than sign my name I can't remember the last time I used cursive. I'm not even sure I remember how.

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When you take notes in a meeting?

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Another thing they don't teach anymore in the U.S is how to tell time on an analogue clock. Most kids can't do it.

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Mine can. I've always felt pretty pretty strongly that you just can't get a feeling for the passage of time on a digital watch/clock. We have big analog clocks on the wall and I got them those time teaching analog watches. Of course kids don't wear watches but they have to get them out of their drawer and get quized when they want something :)

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Originally Posted by Blade Wielder

Ha ha. I can understand a generation of young people not having the best cursive writing skills due to lack of education and practice, but if a kid can't figure out an analog clock... he's just dumb.

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Actually it's very different. They could read the numbers off a digital a long time ago but they didn't really have feeling for what time it was.