With their realities being protruding by arising concepts of mental conditions, such as A.D.H.D. this becomes understandable. They lack the ability to focus and expand thought. This can be fixed with meditation and other calming remedies. Basically their mind needs to be put to work other than mindless entertainment. Letting the imagination run wild can help thought processing.
To be honest it would not take long to learn how to sign your name or certain documents. Personally I think it is a bit silly anyway that we can't just print our names instead of using cursive. Sure it looks more professional but that's about it. I think the bigger issue is not the fact of how well we can actually write the letters but about what we write about and how we use them.
I do think that being able to actually write in cursive is a very important thing, We are losing many of our sklills in America. People used to be craftsmen, and knew how to make things. We had blacksmiths, and silversmiths, and leathercrafters, and all sorts of other specialized skills. Now, not only can many people even plant and grow a garden; they can't read, write, tell time, or make change from a dollar bill. Most of us are totally dependant on having everything done for us, and much of that even comes from other nations, like China. So, even if it is not necessary for us to have to write every day anymore; I think that it is a basic skill that everyone should be able to do.
I am no longer proud of myself. I read every post including the thread and having done so I am now suffering a complete and utter meltdown. A lot of what I learned when I was younger is now considered useless. (by some) So much wasted time, so many worries over getting good grades, and so many teachers pulled their hair out trying to teach a bunch of nearly illiterate kids the three R's and now I find out I didn't really need to learn most of what has classified me as a useful, educated person with a measure of perspicacity. What I know now is no longer needed, ergo, I can teach our young nothing, except how to fish. I used to practice my handwriting like grandma practicing her embroidering. Everything had to be perfect and beautiful. Now, it was for nothing it seems. Yes, thumbprints and using the checkbox is accepted but will you accept the ID shot that is coming up? They do it on animals and are experimenting with GPS for kids so guess what's next. I would rather be able to sign my name than take that particular government overseen shot. I hated diagraming at first, but when I started taking Deutsch I found out very quickly that the diagraming I was learning in English was also applicable in foreign languages. It comes in handy to be able to tell a participle from a pronoun, unless of course all you are doing is learning phrases by rote. Which, by the by, if you are learning a language in that fashion you are not thinking in the language, therefore cannot truely express the language with all of the emotions and artistry that come with it. Civics, Gym, American history, geography, penmanship are all studies that are no longer taught or on the way out. Math is almost a thing of the past. How many cashiers do you know who can make change by using their heads and not the keyboard on a cash register? Learning has given way to key punching. If we ask the right question, out pops the answer. Why learn anything except how to punch a computer? I think I shall now light my pipe, then take my almost archaic self with nearly nil acceptable education and try to remember the days of getting hand written letters with just a touch of perfume on the paper. Or maybe the time I hand wrote (using cursive writing) a book report on the novel, "Great Expectations." Or maybe I shall just take pen in hand and write about anything that comes to mind. Why? Because I know how to, and there are so few of us left, who can.........
I suppose we could all "outsource" our writing needs...everything is! It is really pathetic that we are losing our abilities due to technology. Kids and even some adults working in restaurants can't even make change without the help of a computer. What is next?
I think the truth is that hand written communication is a dying art. It will soon be relegated to the history books like quillmanship, and clay tablet carving. Technology is rapidly taking up all the hand written tasks. The more serious issue though is the breakdown of grammar. Just look at any of the question sites (like Question.com / Ask.com / and many more - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_question-and-answer_websites ) and see kids asking for their homework answers in the poorest grammar. I live in Thailand and English is very poorly taught here, but even so I often see less flawed English text here than I do online from supposed native English speaking teens! Twitter and texting is partially to blame with the need to shorten text.
Talking about education standard - I found an old A Level Mathematics practice booklet - with past papers - from the 1950s. I struggled doing some of the questions (for fun)! It was seriously hard (the pre-decimal money and imperial measurements are hard for me having been brought up in the metric system). I have taught the same level today from curriculum and there simply is no comparison - much reliance on scientific calculators.
It's yet another symptom of a failing system when even other countries know that the American student is lacking compared to the rest of the world. Now, here's the question: What do we do about it? I enjoy other discussion groups and when the topic of education comes up everyone seems to know what the problem is, but no one has the answers as to how to stop the trend of the functionally illiterate. Is the American educational system too far gone to repair and are we indeed spawning a full generation of key punch operators? The true measure of shame in our schools, is the comparison of our military veterans versus the young civilian population. A person entering into the military does not expect the type of educational experience they will receive. It is strict, well balanced and has a purpose which all entrants soon realize no matter what the subject matter might be. The civilian school system in both lower and higher levels cannot say the same thing. It is permissive, mediocre, and without any realization of the future. When there is no incentive to aspire to greater intellectual heights there will be no initiative to rise to those heights. When making bread, it's the leavening that makes the other ingredients rise. Our youth has little or no leavening. How do we solve the problem, and when will we start if there is a solution? If we do not teach our young how to hunt, the villiage will starve!
Wow, there's a lot of opinions on lost hand writing skills! I went through the same handwriting lessons that everyone else did in school and frankly I always had awful penmanship. Maybe there are too many Doctors in my family. From High School on up I printed when I wrote. I had great printmanship skills. I'm glad you can type everything now. It's much faster and you don't have to worry about how the writing looks. Everyone's writing looks the same and it's more based on content.
Howdy John,.....It is true that typing is faster and all that you said. I do believe though that the point has been missed by a few of our seniors here. It isn't an argument as to the merits of either one when it comes to the personal preferences of individual tasks. It's about the loss. The same school and grade I went to taught me how to type and also demanded hand written (cursive) reports and homework. Later, there was some concession made for those who had a typewriter at home but when a piece of typed material came in it had to be absolutely perfect in all ways. (no white out, correct type or paint jobs) The thought concerning losing cursive writing is pretty simplistic. It is soooo yesterday. We do not need it any longer. Or, do we? Some of the ramifications have been written in past replies so I need not repeat them. A loss, is a loss, is a loss. We do not need to add or subtract in our heads any longer because the cash register does it for us. We do not need how to look at a thermometer because the weather channel is on my computer. We do not need to know how to park a car because there are cars that can do it without my help. We do not need to know how to cook, Souffers is good at it. Get rid of art classes, the computer does a better job and in 3D! The digression goes on and on. Think about it, what else do you not need to know how to do just because you might not have been the best at it or might never be? I found out when I was a kid that if I could not do something I would have to find and pay someone else to do it for me. And guess what? On almost all legal paperwork there is a place for someone to represent and witness for those who cannot write. It's not just a dieing art, it is a dead necessity, because we have gotten lazy and complacent and can no longer see the need for something because it takes some effort to learn how to do. Which, by the by, is a legacy we choose not to pass on to our children and grandchildren, and they too will find something they can be lazy about and not teach their children and grandchildren. Hmmmmm.......Ya know? I used to be able to tell a whole lot about a girl before I took her out, just by looking at her hand writing. Extrovert or Introvert? Perfectionist or not? Artistic or not? Steady and thoughtful or not? Forceful or mild? Now, I'd have to look at the type of keyboard she has. Wow!! she has a pink keyboard, and she almost never hits the delete button!! Yup, she's a keeper!! These opinions are not necessarily shared by this station and cannot be held responsible for it's content. IMHO
I think I will have to weigh in on the subject just one more time. While I was watching the news tonight they showed a hand written apology from A-Rod to his fans. It was in script and easily read. Then it hit me. I can read it! The reason I can read it is because I was taught how to write it. If you do not know how to write in the cursive style, how can you read it? There are of course, some of the letters that look almost like the printed version, but over all, there are enough differences that the untrained reader would have a difficult time. The full impact might make itself known when a group of present day students might perchance have the opportunity to see our Declaration of Independence, or the Magna Carta. "See," would be the operative word here because "read" is almost a thing of the past. Okay, so you can get a printed version. Isn't it kind of like getting the information second hand? When I read something important I like to read the original,if it is possible, and am never content until I do. Why? Because I can. I hate it when I have to say, "I do not know how!!"
Good points. Actually I never considered that some people could read print, but not cursive writing. Maybe so. For instance, I do know that in some foreign languages I have an easy time reading the modern print versions, but it's still difficult to read the older (hundreds of years) versions with archaic type fonts and slightly different spellings.
The reason why most of the teenager nowadays can't write is because they don't read books except from school lectures and that's why they can't write properly. It's very sad to come across such things.
While I do imagine that not reading very much does have an effect on one's writing abilities in general; I don't actually see where it has much to do with the topic of this thread, which is that schools no longer are teaching penmanship to children in grade school. We learned how to print letters in the first year of school, even as we were learning how to read. However, by the time that they actually taught us cursive writing, reading was already a basic skill. Regardless of how many books that I did or did not read after that; I knew how to write in cursive. If penmanship was not taught, we would have only been able to print letters, which is all that many of the young people of today can do.
Well SOMEONE out there was taught to write cursive. Are they our generation only? Because when our generation dies out, will there be archaeologists who will be the only ones to interpret our "archaic" legacies? Is our cursive leavings going to be laboriously pored over to decipher what it says? Are our cursive writings going to be considered the modern day hieroglyphics? Will our cursive become the same as Latin--a dead language? Who is it that is going to translate and save it and print it out to the digital world? Will our cursives be lovingly stored in museums, behind special glass and in climate controlled environments? If our posts were preserved and presented to a university class 50 yrs hence, would any of them even understand what these rants refer to?