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I learned about party lines back in the mid-80's. I was probably 8 & visiting visiting a great aunt & uncle and got in a ton of trouble for answering the phone. I later learned with the other ring tones, my great aunt would wait about 15 seconds and then pick up the phone with the mouth piece covered so she could listen in.
The cabin we rent for vacations in the Texas Hill Country has a party line, so they still exist. So my kids know about them even though most of their peers aren't familiar with the concept of even having a landline.
They may not NEED to learn cursive but it would help if they did. I've noticed that they can't even print either. I find the demise of writing to be frightening. Back to caveman days. We've had writing for a long, long spell of human existence.
If they ever need to read something historical or do some research or know much about anything they are going to encounter writing--and not always machine printed. Anyway, as a former teacher, it's no big deal to teach someone to write. Teaches coordination too. If they can't use a pencil, will they be able to use a paint brush if they wanted to become an artist? Or is art going to be done by machine too? Seems that it will be extremely limiting to not know how to use a pen or pencil and to be able to write even a word.
They may not NEED to learn cursive but it would help if they did. I've noticed that they can't even print either. I find the demise of writing to be frightening.
You got me thinking of a young acquaintance I know at the local horse racing track.
If you've ever been to a racetrack, you know that horseplayers are scribbling and scrawling all over their programs/Racing Forms. They're circling speed figures, workout figures, and the trouble line; and most importantly, they're noting their own commentary: "Not at today's distance," "Drops in class," "Should finish in money," "Tab for later," "Subject to bounce?" and similar.
My acquaintance is probably about early to mid-30s, and well-educated, as I understand things from our chats when we choose not to play a race. Yet while I (almost 60 years old) easily make notes such as the above, he struggles to do the same thing. He notes his program with what looks like a child's attempt at printing, and it seems to be an effort for him to do so. Often, he falls back on simple symbols, such as a question mark, or a checkmark.
As I said, he is intelligent and educated, but he cannot write with a pen or pencil to save his life. Given his age, I don't know if he is of the generation where "keyboarding" in school was emphasized over handwriting, but it would not surprise me. Writing easily by hand is something we should all be able to do, especially when quick notes must be made.
I've heard that cursive is actually easier for people with fine motor challenges and/or dysgraphia. I HATED cursive myself, but it was interesting to hear that for individuals whose fine motor skills are less developed, the continuous motion is less difficult than the start and stop motion of printing.
I've heard that cursive is actually easier for people with fine motor challenges and/or dysgraphia. I HATED cursive myself, but it was interesting to hear that for individuals whose fine motor skills are less developed, the continuous motion is less difficult than the start and stop motion of printing.
Cursive is considerably faster than printing. It is critical for taking notes. I can still write a little faster than I can type, but printing? Maybe 1 20th the speed.
Houston now had self-driving Pizza delivery and grocery delivery and Texas Southern University is rolling out a self-driving Bus.
Doesn't do much good when you want to go somewhere other than Texas Southern University. These pilot projects are proof of concept only and don't represent mass availability of self-driving vehicles to a typical consumer. Other cities may start to have self-driving ubers/taxis, but again you and I cannot BUY a self-driving car. This is troublesome to those of us who saw just how much product quality, longevity, and reliability have deteriorated after cable boxes and versions of Windows started being things that we cannot own and are thus forced to rent. We are already in a very damaging culture of "Upgrade now, OR ELSE....".
They may not NEED to learn cursive but it would help if they did. I've noticed that they can't even print either. I find the demise of writing to be frightening. Back to caveman days. We've had writing for a long, long spell of human existence.
Caveman days?
Agriculture, domestication of animals, and cities - all developments well after 'caveman days' - were present many thousands of years before the first writing was developed (Egypt and Sumeria, about 5000 years ago). After that, writing remained the domain of a minority of people even in the most advanced societies until the last several hundred years.
Anyway, literacy matters. The ability to convey content in messages matters. The means of the creation of those messages? Not so much. Lots of ancient scripts were not flowing (ie, cursive). The original of Beowulf, dating to around the year 1000, is not in a flowing script but in hand-printed individual letters. Neither Sumerian cuneiform nor Egyptian heiroglyphs were cursive.
Finally, what was the entire point of cursive writing? Speed. Not having to constantly life pen from paper allowed a scribe to produce more words per minute. The reason cursive has fallen by the wayside is that keyboarding does the same thing - it allows vastly faster input than writing. Writing changes. The Romans abandoned allcaps (before they invented lower case letters, they used only what we know call capital letters). The Germanic peoples abandoned their various runic alphabets in favor of the Latin alphabet. We've abandoned the quill in favor of the pen. None of these things were dire portents of linguistic collapse.
There's simply no need for cursive.
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