pretty much...
Posted on 06/17/2012 5:25:54 AM PDT by SMGFan
The bulletin board at the front of Melissa Balzano’s classroom in West Orange is decorated with hand-written lists her students wrote in September, expressing their "Hopes and Dreams for Third Grade." For at least half the children in Balzano’s class at Mount Pleasant Elementary School, learning cursive topped the list. "It’s fancy writing," said Naomi Toms, 9. Cursive was once a mainstay of elementary schools, where children practiced the "tripod" pencil grip and the looping strokes of the letters. But these days little classroom time is spent teaching cursive writing, crowded out of the curriculum by the demands of an increasingly complex world.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Your point about make large swaths of knowledge inaccessible is an important one that is often overlooked. How many families have the journals and letters of their ancestors and without the ability to read cursive their wisdom would be completely lost to their descendants....but...Hey! That is probable exactly what the Marxists who control education in the U.S. want.
The CLASSICAL way to write is to print it without spaces and no punctuation ~ just the way the Romans and the Greeks did the job.
Even easier if the signature is just the first letter and a squiggly line
It is a classic cursive English letter that I posted above at #45.
Thank you for your kind words! :-)
Cursive is antiquated and useless, it’s a different letter set that looks nothing like what you’ll see in books or on computers. There’s no reason to teach kids 2 versions of all the letters, there really never was.
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It is **PLAINLY** evident from these two sentences above that you were NOT properly taught how to either print or write in cursive.
If printing is **properly** taught the transition to cursive is seamless, absolutely effortless, and take no time whatsoever. Why? Because the formation of the letters in printing is **exactly** the same way cursive letters are made. There are **not** two sets of letters.
If you believe that there two versions of letters ( cursive and print) then I can understand why you would be completely frustrated with cursive. I am sorry your teachers mistreated you in this manner. Personally, I believe that the PTB ( the highest most powers that be) in education WANT citizens to be cut off from the wisdom of their past and this is exactly what will happen when they are unable to read the journals and letters of their ancestors.
What an interesting idea! :-)
I bet you are fun guest to have over for dinner! :-)
USPS owns software that can read any font, writing, or whatever ever devised anywhere at any time.
The machines won!
I do too, and have know many over my six decades of living. Absolutely **every*** one of these great kids have parents who are, and have done, significant amounts of **afterschooling** and **preschooling** IN THE HOME.
Personally,...I began to take an interest in this some decades ago when homeschooling first came on the scene. I began to the question the many parents of academically successful children who were patients in my office. I noticed that there was NO difference in the values, home habits, and the **amount** of time spent in formal and informal study IN THE HOME between academically successful children who were institutionalized for their schooling and those successful children who were schooled at home.
My conclusion:
Government schools do little or **no** actual teaching. They are merely sending home a **very** expensive curriculum for the parents and the child, himself, to follow IN THE HOME. The real work is being done by the parents and the child IN THE HOME.
The** only*** real work done by government schools is organize a curriculum, administer tests of knowledge acquired IN THE HOME, and grade projects done IN THE HOME.
IF anyone objects to my conclusion then please send me a link to the studies proving me wrong. You likely won't find any because no studies have ever been done that separate out what has been learned in the classroom as compared to that learned IN THE HOME. I doubt the Powers that Be will ever allow these studies to be done because it would immediately delegitimize every tax dollar wasted on compulsory government schooling.
The machines won!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Thankfully, I won’t need to buy one.
Our entire family, ( children and grandchildren) are able to fluently read the letters and journals of our ancestors, and can leave a completely legible note on the door of anyone without the need of a carrying a printer in the glove compartment of our cars.
Those who denounce cursive ( and even all manual printing) are vehement and even insulting in their condemnation of it.
Those who defend cursive, say **mild** things such as, “It's a nice skill to have.” or” It isn't time consuming to teach. What's the big deal in teaching it? “
My conclusion: There are psychological issues at work here, not pedagogic ones.
Evidently, I am not the only one who has a negative opinion of government schooling.
I fully agree with BobL. What we see going on in the government schools is **INTENTIONAL**!
pretty much...
It’s **PLAINLY** evident from your post that you were NOT properly taught how to interact with people.
Really. Can all the ** and condescension and try again. Or don’t because every part of your post is wrong. It’s not a believe they ARE different sets of letter, cursive IS useless and not learning cursive doesn’t cut off anybody from anything.
Now if your next post is going to be a festival of condescending ** don’t bother to make it.
Yea, like you, I didn’t bother with the ‘enrichments’, I taught my kids to read, and taught them math (using goddam paper and pencil...to the point of using trig and log tables).
They got ahead 6 to 8 years...which, essentially, meant that they were a year or two ahead of average kids some 100 years ago in this country. It was very easy, EXCEPT, the kids didn’t enjoy it, at the time - for it’s much more fun to watch movies, or play with ‘appliances’, than it is to have to use one’s brain, and actually remember something.
WOW whinertime this person really has you pegged after one post. And they rebutted you with a concise cogent argument as well.
Well....You're reaction to my very mild statement above makes me think that there is more going on that just one’s opinion about cursive.
I honestly believe that your feelings about cursive have a lot to do with how it was taught to you. There are not two different versions of lettering, but very minor changes between the two that make using a hand held writing implement easier and more efficient to use. Honestly, these **minor** differences can be pointed out to a child in less than a minute or two.
And...If printing is taught properly, the transition to cursive is seamless. Really it is.
So...Therefore, it **is** plain to me that your teachers did not approach the subject in a proper manner. If they had taught you properly you would not think that there are two versions of lettering. I am genuinely and sincerely sorry that this happened to you.
Go check out these links.
Notice how the letters in one are different than the letters in the other. Is there a logical progression from one to the other? Yes. But you know what HAS to be true about two objects that have a logical progression linking them? THEY MUST BE DIFFERENT. And that’s what makes cursive stupid and why it’s dying, and all sane people are rejoicing at the death of a stupid post dated idea.
Oh and it’s plain to everybody that you’re a freaking nutter. You’re condescending, and kind of dumb. bye now.
On the contrary, it's an efficient way of writing because it doesn't require you to spend time constantly lifting the pen off the paper. And the letters don't look significantly different from printed letters—they basically just have tails added to join them together.
But who writes by hand anymore? Really other than grocery lists. And they look different enough that it has to be learned how they relate to the printed letters one will see in 99% of the text one reads in life. It’s an old form made for dealing with a specific style of technology (quills) that’s post dated. If anybody wants to learn it on their own great, but as for spending taxpayer money teaching it to kids there’s many more useful things to have in the curriculum.
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