Lack of Practice

[mezmo]

I absolutely could not disagree more with this rant. We don't make buggy whips anymore either, or muck out horse stalls to keep the family transportation healthy.

Ignorance is not recognizing that knowledge is cumulative, not repetitive. We move on, we learn new things, we don't continue to repeat the same thing over and over again.

You absolutely missed the points I was trying-to/making in my prior post on the subject [
http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?p=992094#p992094 ] and this last one. Which are - cursive/handwriting
can [and does in my opinion] helps one learn and think, it is faster and easier than printing, once learned,
and not teaching it is denying access to knowledge and a valid means of communication. It is a basic skill
that needs to be perpetuated in my opinion - if you don't agree, that's you prerogative. Cursive writing is a
means, not the end in itself - although it can be a very beautiful art form if one wants to take it to the
calligraphy level. If you can't access knowledge, then you can't accumulate it. It is in the same category
to me as basic math skills - if you can't do them well enough for yourself, you are at a disadvantage.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

[rowerwet]

Handwriting develops more than a lost art, hand eye coordination, brain function and spatial relationships. just look at all the money and time spent on therapy for people on issues related to their mom not letting them develop the skills we learn during the crawling stage.

my mother is a public school teacher with a masters degree in education, I'm also married to an Elementary ed teacher, they've both seen the fads (whole language, schools without walls, spiraling, etc.) and the research that continues to prove how much of a waste they are.

[jstrubberg]

I absolutely could not disagree more with this rant. We don't make buggy whips anymore either, or muck out horse stalls to keep the family transportation healthy.

Ignorance is not recognizing that knowledge is cumulative, not repetitive. We move on, we learn new things, we don't continue to repeat the same thing over and over again.

You absolutely missed the points I was trying-to/making in my prior post on the subject [
http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?p=992094#p992094 ] and this last one. Which are - cursive/handwriting
can [and does in my opinion] helps one learn and think, it is faster and easier than printing, once learned,
and not teaching it is denying access to knowledge and a valid means of communication. It is a basic skill
that needs to be perpetuated in my opinion - if you don't agree, that's you prerogative. Cursive writing is a
means, not the end in itself - although it can be a very beautiful art form if one wants to take it to the
calligraphy level. If you can't access knowledge, then you can't accumulate it. It is in the same category
to me as basic math skills - if you can't do them well enough for yourself, you are at a disadvantage.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

I didn't miss your point, I disagree with your point.

Handwriting does not allow you to access anything. Reading allows you to access knowledge. Whether that knowledge is in cuineform, pictogram, cursive or block print makes no difference at all. The question is, can you comprehend it?

You aren't denied access to anything by not being able to write in cursive. Typing is just the newest way to preserve and pass along knowledge. Try not learning to type. Tell me if that leaves you at a disadvantage.

You want to know what connects us to the past? It's the ability to pass along what we have learned. The ability to learn from those before us and move on, rather than do the same thing over and over again.

[wagondude]

I absolutely could not disagree more with this rant. We don't make buggy whips anymore either, or muck out horse stalls to keep the family transportation healthy.

Ignorance is not recognizing that knowledge is cumulative, not repetitive. We move on, we learn new things, we don't continue to repeat the same thing over and over again.

You absolutely missed the points I was trying-to/making in my prior post on the subject [
http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?p=992094#p992094 ] and this last one. Which are - cursive/handwriting
can [and does in my opinion] helps one learn and think, it is faster and easier than printing, once learned,
and not teaching it is denying access to knowledge and a valid means of communication. It is a basic skill
that needs to be perpetuated in my opinion - if you don't agree, that's you prerogative. Cursive writing is a
means, not the end in itself - although it can be a very beautiful art form if one wants to take it to the
calligraphy level. If you can't access knowledge, then you can't accumulate it. It is in the same category
to me as basic math skills - if you can't do them well enough for yourself, you are at a disadvantage.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

I didn't miss your point, I disagree with your point.

Handwriting does not allow you to access anything. Reading allows you to access knowledge. Whether that knowledge is in cuineform, pictogram, cursive or block print makes no difference at all. The question is, can you comprehend it?

You aren't denied access to anything by not being able to write in cursive. Typing is just the newest way to preserve and pass along knowledge. Try not learning to type. Tell me if that leaves you at a disadvantage.

You want to know what connects us to the past? It's the ability to pass along what we have learned. The ability to learn from those before us and move on, rather than do the same thing over and over again.

So what do the non-writers do when the grid crashes rendering their electronics useletypewritersre are no manual typwriters left that work (no ribbons anymore)? How will they communicate long distance? Whether used commonly or not, it is a basic skill that should be learned.

[Greg M]

So what do the non-writers do when the grid crashes rendering their electronics useletypewritersre are no manual typwriters left that work (no ribbons anymore)? How will they communicate long distance? Whether used commonly or not, it is a basic skill that should be learned.

Starve and suffer like 99% of the rest of North America. The modern world is so integrated that losing power would essentially be the end of civilization for many many years. Look at New Orlreans in the aftermath of Katrina. Things fell apart, period. And that was just a relatively small region, with the rest of an extremely wealthy country unaffected. Multiply that by all of North America and shudder.
Knowing how to read an write cursive is not a skill that would help in that situation.
On the plus side, the very integration that makes modern civilization work also provides a great deal of robustness to those same services. It's pretty unlikely that that particular doomsday scenario will happen.

[GerryS]

I didn't miss your point, I disagree with your point.

Handwriting does not allow you to access anything. Reading allows you to access knowledge. Whether that knowledge is in cuineform, pictogram, cursive or block print makes no difference at all. The question is, can you comprehend it?

You aren't denied access to anything by not being able to write in cursive. Typing is just the newest way to preserve and pass along knowledge. Try not learning to type. Tell me if that leaves you at a disadvantage.

You want to know what connects us to the past? It's the ability to pass along what we have learned. The ability to learn from those before us and move on, rather than do the same thing over and over again.

Try reading the constitution or bill of rights without cursive. You can find it types or digitally but then you are trusting the one who transcribed it. Bad practice to rely on a convenience record, when researching you should always refer to source documents and not reference.

But I think that's the point. Dumb down the population to a collection of illiterate and numb drones who look to a nanny state to take care of their every need .... In exchange for their freedom.

I have talked to high school seniors who think the president had absolute power and "can do whatever he wants....congress can't tell him what to do....he just needs to invite the, to be...you know, polite".

My grandparents math skills are amazing....now kids are given calculators in grade school....ridiculous

When the grid stops "students" of today are as good as dead. Technocrats be warned, you have to know the basics....

[jstrubberg]

First, we aren't discussing people who can't WRITE, we are discussing people who can't write in cursive. We also aren't talking about people who can't READ. Obviously literacy is critically important.

Cursive is not.

Second, if the zombiepocalypse is your argument, well, there's no argument. History says it doesn't work that way. Even the fall of the roman empire took hundreds of years.

[wagondude]

First, we aren't discussing people who can't WRITE, we are discussing people who can't write in cursive. We also aren't talking about people who can't READ. Obviously literacy is critically important.

Cursive is not.

Second, if the zombiepocalypse is your argument, well, there's no argument. History says it doesn't work that way. Even the fall of the roman empire took hundreds of years.

Your second point is true. The first, though, may be a little muddy. While the origional point was about cursive, you will find that not teaching cursive will soon devolve into not teaching any writing at all. Case in point being my own experience earlier posted with my son. Writing at all is on the decline (at least in this country) in favor of the electrinic means.

[jstrubberg]

It is, but if you think that's the end of communication, try going back and reading an original of Shakespeare's work. I guarantee you will struggle. The forms of communication changing isn't a new phenomenon, nor is it a tragedy. Do any of you read Greek? Ever read the writings of Homer, the Iliad, etc.? Language changes every single day, and communication changes with it. We don't scratch on papyrus anymore, nor do we use a chisel to record events.

Also, I will go out on a limb here and say that kids today READ more than any in the past...they just don't realize they are doing it.

We aren't in any danger of losing communication or transfer of knowledge. The only difference between now and fifty years ago is that a lot of knowledge isn't on a piece of paper anymore. It's being distributed wider and deeper than any piece of paper, ever. Digital media is a good thing. One person at a time can read a book. Many, MANY people can access the same knowledge in a digital format, from very diverse locations.

Heck, look at this board? Are you willing to make the argument that what Mike has put together here and what most of you have contributed to hasn't resulted in more knowledge transfer than the last fifty years of small trailer building outside of the internet?

[CarlLaFong]

The Sky Is Falling!!!!!!!!!!!! The Sky Is Falling!!!!!!!!!!!!
As a people, we are becoming stupider and stupider. Just reading some of the drivel that people post, on the various sites that I haunt, makes me say, "Hmmmmm?!?!?". Poor spelling has become the norm, in spite of spell check, which is free and easy. Idiotic sentence structure renders some posts so ponderous and unreadable that I pass them over. How often do you see, or hear, these gems? "Me and Joe went to the store." "I seen this car today." "I don't got any money." "I have some for sell." "I could care less." "Bob and myself built it." AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!
I, barely, made it out of high school. Low C average, yet I believe that my use of the language has to be in the upper percentile. I do hope that we are producing enough "smart guys" to offset the dumbasses that the educational system is handing diplomas to every year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMe3WDmxBEI

[nevadatear]

Those bug me as well. The "i got some for sell." Is a new one, but the rest i hear more than once a day. And i work at a school! If i could just get my iPad to replace "i" with "I" without replacing all my other words with weird substitutions my post might actually look like my degrees say they should!