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Do you write in cursive?
SpeedySwaf
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
When I was in elementary school, one of the big things being taught to us was how to write cursive:
We would be given these assignments to do where we would have to write down so many letters so many times in cursive to get the habit of it, while being told that when we grew up, this would be the way we would have to write as adults.
Now fast forward a couple years, and I took notice that despite being the "adult way" of writing things, few teachers actually wrote in cursive (and most of them were English teachers). And on any assignments requiring you to write out a page of paper or so, you were often encouraged to write in print instead. The importance of "cursive" writing more or less disappeared mid-way through Junior High, if not sooner. Now in days, the only time I use it is when I sign my name on a form or check.
So, did anyone else go through a similar time in school with the idea that cursive is the "one-and-only" way to write when you grew up, and do you still use it to some extent?
We would be given these assignments to do where we would have to write down so many letters so many times in cursive to get the habit of it, while being told that when we grew up, this would be the way we would have to write as adults.
Now fast forward a couple years, and I took notice that despite being the "adult way" of writing things, few teachers actually wrote in cursive (and most of them were English teachers). And on any assignments requiring you to write out a page of paper or so, you were often encouraged to write in print instead. The importance of "cursive" writing more or less disappeared mid-way through Junior High, if not sooner. Now in days, the only time I use it is when I sign my name on a form or check.
So, did anyone else go through a similar time in school with the idea that cursive is the "one-and-only" way to write when you grew up, and do you still use it to some extent?
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Now? I don't even fucking remember it. They just stopped it in 6th grade.
Yes; no. I never understood why cursive was grown-up writing, anyhow. It has extraneous lines and looks nothing like the letters in books? Awesome! Not. Get with the times, oldsters.
Now, my handwriting is pretty severe and the letters look more like letters in print, but I string them all together so that each word is written without lifting the pen, cursive-style.
But yeah, when I was in Elementary school, it was a big deal in like third grade through fifth to learn to write in cursive, but then nobody cared after that.
Not that I'm bitter or anything. My signature has degraded to the point where I don't even bother pretending I'm doing anything but writing a couple of scribbles.
Also, they are still teaching it. My little brother was still learning it last year.
My Backloggery
Then I moved, and in 7th grade I was in a school where no one but me wrote in cursive, and in fact they had a great deal of trouble reading anything I would write, so I ended up switching to print for a while. It probably didn't help that my handwriting has always been atrocious, but all of those kids were taught "whole language" in grade school anyway, so a large portion of their English skills were fucked up to begin with.
Now I very rarely write anything down that anyone but I will see, and when I rush I come up with a kinda hodgepodge of script and print, due to having had to switch back.
Print is only relevant for filling in forms, and writing for others if your penmanship is lacking.
what does that mean?
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Honestly, they tried to teach me with phonics later, and I could not learn that shit. There's nothing wrong with whole language; it's just different from phonics. Some kids learn better with one, some learn better with the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
I've never actually looked it up before, but what I knew about it from the people with which I went to school was that it meant they spelled everything phonetically, and the teachers were not in fact allowed to tell the students that they were spelling words wrong. Which I guess might be reasonable in theory, but it makes you look like an idiot if you have to communicate with another person through text.
From what I could tell, most of the students had recovered, but then I only really knew other kids in honors and AP classes.
Assuming that whatever I write would need to be at least legible to myself, I'm about as fast either way; perhaps faster with print since that's what I'm used to.
(and I can type faster than either)
Yeah, fuck that shit. That time could have been spent teaching me Russian or something.
o_O
I do remember, however, that rather than not telling me I was spelling words wrong, I would be told that I was spelling things wrong but never told how to spell them correctly.
"It wasn't actually a huge deal, except we don't know how to make sentences that work correctly of which."
http://machall.com/view.php?date=2005-11-08
We were forced to use it for about a week, then the teacher said: "If you don't like it, you can switch back to print now". About half the class kept using it, and the other half dropped it immediately. By the end of the year, almost nobody was using it.
This was back in the mid-1980s. I'm surprised they even bother with it at all these days.
My handwriting is atrocious and each time I sign my name it looks different. I break out into a sweat whenever I have to sign a credit card receipt because I know it will look nothing like what's on the back of the card. Never been asked for ID yet though...
Agreed. It's not as important as it once was, but it is a better way to write. Being able to write quickly (and reasonably legibly) was/is necessary for taking notes in a lot of my classes and being able to perform well on AP tests.
I don't think they should be hardasses about the specifics, though- it likely wouldn't be unreasonable to take some of that time and put it toward typing classes. Who knows how long it will be before we can take all of our tests with a keyboard, anyway?
I really hate how slowly I write with my handwriting, but writing purely cursive would only slow me down further, I think. Plus, I like how my handwriting looks, and people don't have trouble reading it.