Prickly City by Scott Stantis for November 10, 2023

I used to be able to write cursive well. Taking notes in college ruined it because I had to write so fast to keep up. It got to where I was the only one that could read my writing. Now if I want to make sure someone can read what I write I have to print it out.

He’s a coyote Carman, he doesn’t.

If only they would teach the kids to hold a pen/pencil correctly (efficiently). You should be able to hold it with just 3 fingers. Not grip it like a club and move your entire arm to form a letter.

old people and change

I know people my age all miss it, but I honestly don’t know that it serves much purpose anymore. And if you need to write, print works fine.

I wonder if this is an issue in other countries.

If my cursive was that good, and it never was, I might use it more. I nearly failed penmanship in school; I probably should have been a doctor.

Cursive is fluid and IMHO reflects more of one’s personality. Printing is choppy, slow and (often) unattractive, especially signatures. I’m a notary and printed signatures still give me brain-stutter because they look childish. Times change and nothing is gained by being a fuddy-duddy, though I’m glad California is returning this skill to the curriculum.

I was so traumatized by teachers insisting my cursive was unreadable that — except for my signature — I’ve totally lost the muscle memory for it. I print when I write.

If the main value is communication, then typing in some form should be more of the emphasis. We are not all going to be calligraphers.

Teaching cursive is just part of the problem. Most young kids don’t even know how to PRINT properly. They weren’t even taught how to hold a pencil.

Teaching writing is difficult and takes time. Time is a finite resource in the classroom.

Every student is tested at the end of the year. Schools and teachers are judged on how well students do. Teachers are going to spend their time on what is going to be tested. Math, reading, science and social studies.

Students will NOT be asked to write on the year end test. Their proficiency in printing or cursive will not be tested.

Unless you test students on their proficiency in cursive teaching it in the classroom will be a waste of time, money and resources.

In elementary school, one of the grades on the report card was “Penmanship.”

Darn! There goes my secret code.

Won’t be happy til they bring back cuneiform.

I can’t believe they ever did away with cursI’ve. When I use cursive these days I need someone like my wife to tell me what I wrote down since I can’t read what I wrote

What do you want to bet that Carmen’s dialogue was generated using a cursive computer font?

Chill out folks. We have much bigger problems than what will happen to cursive.

I learned cursive but it has been so long since I’ve used it I don’t recall all the letters at this point . And my signature is more design than letters at this point ha

“Now I can break my parents’ code!”

Only result I ever saw from the “Palmer Method” was to make entire generations hate the very thought of writing. It is slow, it is clumsy. Nor is it especially pretty.

In a way it’s kind of like owning a car with manual transmission in the US. That’s a very effective deterrent to having it stolen. In a similar fashion, if you want ot pass on secrets to a similarly knowledgeable friend, cursive is the key!

I can write in cursive just fine. I only needed to do it a couple times, but it’s still a professional way of writing.

Speaking from the other side, I absolutely HATED trying to grade papers where the students had tried to write in cursive in middle and high school. The vast majority had never been taught the proper way to hold a pen, or the direction and order in which the strokes needed to be performed. I finally wrote examples on the board of all the wrong ways that they were writing the letters and even they had to agree that it was impossible to read. I explained that from that point on, if I had to guess what letter they were trying to write, I would assume that it was wrong and they would lose one point off their final grade. Then, when I wrote the actual grade at the top, I would subtract the number of spelling or penmanship errors underneath. It was an English class so I could do that. When the teacher would record the grades, she would give them their actual grade, but we didn’t tell them that. Within a week, there were rarely any spelling or writing errors. Even other teachers began to notice the improvements. No one cared about cursive or printing as long as it was legible.