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I've seen articles bemoaning the decision to stop teaching cursive writing In school. But it hadn't occurred to me that this means that younger people literally can't read old manuscripts
How will they interpret the past?
No, most of these history students admitted, they could not read manuscripts. If they were assigned a research paper, they sought subjects that relied only on published sources. One student reshaped his senior honors thesis for this purpose; another reported that she did not pursue her interest in Virginia Woolf for an assignment that would have involved reading Woolf’s handwritten letters. In the future, cursive will have to be taught to scholars the way Elizabethan secretary hand or paleography is today. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...istory/671246/
I've seen articles bemoaning the decision to stop teaching cursive writing In school. But it hadn't occurred to me that this means that younger people literally can't read old manuscripts
How will they interpret the past?
No, most of these history students admitted, they could not read manuscripts. If they were assigned a research paper, they sought subjects that relied only on published sources. One student reshaped his senior honors thesis for this purpose; another reported that she did not pursue her interest in Virginia Woolf for an assignment that would have involved reading Woolf’s handwritten letters. In the future, cursive will have to be taught to scholars the way Elizabethan secretary hand or paleography is today. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...istory/671246/
You can teach someone how to read something without teaching them how to write it. I can read some Japanese but I never really practice writing kanji. They are separate skills. I say this as a former English teacher who left in part because we were spending so much time drilling middle schooler on writing cursive when there were other skills they really needed to learn.
You can teach someone how to read something without teaching them how to write it. I can read some Japanese but I never really practice writing kanji. They are separate skills. I say this as a former English teacher who left in part because we were spending so much time drilling middle schooler on writing cursive when there were other skills they really needed to learn.
Why was cursive taught in middle school? What era was this in? It used to be part of gradeschool education.
I was just thinking about the implications of generations growing up not being able to read cursive, OP. Among other things, it means they wouldn't be able to read a handwritten note on, say, a birthday or Christmas card, or a thank-you note written by someone from an older generation in the family. Cursive now is like a secret code only people above a certain age can decipher.
You can teach someone how to read something without teaching them how to write it. I can read some Japanese but I never really practice writing kanji. They are separate skills. I say this as a former English teacher who left in part because we were spending so much time drilling middle schooler on writing cursive when there were other skills they really needed to learn.
Well then their elementary school failed in THEIR job to teach cursive. We keep passing students who cannot spell, read, write or perform arithmetic at grade level.
I've seen articles bemoaning the decision to stop teaching cursive writing In school. But it hadn't occurred to me that this means that younger people literally can't read old manuscripts
How will they interpret the past?
No, most of these history students admitted, they could not read manuscripts. If they were assigned a research paper, they sought subjects that relied only on published sources. One student reshaped his senior honors thesis for this purpose; another reported that she did not pursue her interest in Virginia Woolf for an assignment that would have involved reading Woolf’s handwritten letters. In the future, cursive will have to be taught to scholars the way Elizabethan secretary hand or paleography is today. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...istory/671246/
I got my best job ever in the US because I can write and read Suetterlin. A rather useless skill generally which 4th and 5yh graders were tortured with. Manager was heavy into geneology. The actual job was a sideline.
This is a relatively niche concern. Not too many people are seeking out old manuscripts to read, or in the position to have to do so. Ruth4Truth's concern has some merit, but you'd think older family members would soon learn to adjust, unless their well wishes are fully contingent on fluency in cursive being demonstrated by the would-be recipient.
This is a relatively niche concern. Not too many people are seeking out old manuscripts to read, or in the position to have to do so.
Only if you are working in genealogy, and then you do all of the time. I volunteered in a state archives office and had to read the cursive handwriting all the time for all sorts of records that people asked for. Most were in English. Some were in French, some in Spanish, some in both. Handwritten records are primary source material -- mostly in cursive.
Then there is often the language problem. Irish church records are scribbled in English and Latin. Priestly cursive is awful.
Fraktur and kurrent, both old German script/print font, are commonly encountered in the same official documents after about 1874. Kurrent is handwritten and based on medieval cursive. German newspapers in the US often used the old German Fractur print font. I don't know if many Germans can read it now. Sütterlin is another later version of old German script.
If you have a cheat sheet you can figure out the letters.
Interesting, I recently was reading a discovered box of old letters of correspondence from my deceased mom, who as a teenager wrote to her older brothers during world war two. The correspondence between them was more eligible than many written things I encounter from work and in everyday life which is printed / written.
The high school she went to had calligraphy and handwriting classes (shorthand) as part of business school coursework.
I think the influence of keyboard with PCs is impacting ability to write cursive as I surmise many children once they learn alphabet, if they have mobile devices / pc's in schools etc... begin printing and writing via a keyboard.
Personally, I think teaching cursive is important to motor skills (manual dexterity) and spatial translation. For example, the ability to write something quickly without looking at what you are doing based on muscle memory from learning the cursive process. On the other hand, the Romans only used printed capital characters so civilization is not dependent on it.
The public school I attended taught printing in 1st grade and 2nd grade we learned cursive. Still remember the large samples of cursive on lined charts which were hanging on upper walls with the alphabet and the numbers showing the proper formation of said characters.
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