What was the point of learning cursive in school?

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Schneed10
09-28-2011, 05:33 PM
You have to remember, a lot of historical documents were written in cursive, so it's still important to at least teach kids how to read in cursive. They may find reading these documents would be like trying to read something in a foreign language.

It has also been proven that children with learning disabilities or certain intellectual disabilities, such as Down Syndrome, have benefited greatly from learning to write in cursive. The cursive writing seems to help develop fine motor skills, and has helped those children to understand better how words are formed (since cursive letters are written together) than writing individual letters.

Even though I am in Computer Information systems, I would never want to be a slave to the technology - and I think we are starting to teach ourselves and our children to be just that. That is why I don't buy the excuse that we're doing more and more "writing" on computers which makes cursive obsolete. What about writing signatures? While, yes, we don't always use perfect cursive to write our signatures, cursive does help to establish our identities when it comes to our signatures. It's a heck of a lot easier to copy someone's signature that is written mostly in print than it is a cursive signature. Even though we might be moving into the point of replacing hand written signatures with passwords and thumb prints, you still have to fall back to the good ol' fashion hand-written stuff if your computer system goes down.

So, I'd say even though cursive may not be as important to learn as say math or science, it still serves a very useful purpose in our society.

And I guess we can't transpose historical documents into text to be stored on CPUs? And I guess we can't find other ways to develop the fine motor skills of certain kids?

Cursive's usefulness diminishes with every passing day. Our society makes progress so we don't have to continue doing things that are a complete waste of time.

Schneed10
09-28-2011, 05:35 PM
I can write in cursive but it does not hide my spelling mistakes and poor grammar. For that reason why take Algebra? Never helped me sell insurance.

Sell insurance? Probably not, because a monkey could do that. But to calculate what the term life premium should be on a 45 year old man who smokes and has heart disease? You need algebra and then some.

SmootSmack
09-28-2011, 06:35 PM
Was what Firstdown does for a living just blasted here?...welcome to my world FD

Daseal
09-28-2011, 06:42 PM
Less time posting more helping the 4 letter network come up with ways to keep this skins down!

skinsguy
09-29-2011, 12:59 AM
And I guess we can't transpose historical documents into text to be stored on CPUs? And I guess we can't find other ways to develop the fine motor skills of certain kids?

Cursive's usefulness diminishes with every passing day. Our society makes progress so we don't have to continue doing things that are a complete waste of time.

Sure, you could transpose those documents, but being someone who enjoys history, I absolutely hate the idea of everything being stored on some CPU. I personally like the idea of being able to read every word of the authentic document. To me, it's empowering.

And, in this day and age where our country should think in terms of fiscal responsibility, why should we spend millions of dollars on alternate therapies for motor skills when we already have a cost free solution? My point is, to say cursive is a complete waste of time is sorely an incorrect statement to make.

SirClintonPortis
09-29-2011, 01:22 AM
CPUs do not store things. Their "storage" are stuff like the L1 and L2 caches, which only assists them in processing info, not storing them long term.

SirClintonPortis
09-29-2011, 01:29 AM
Although I haven't written in cursive except for maybe a page or so a couple weeks ago, I say it is much easier on the hands than print. Now, I must have a fine memory because I know how still write every word in cursive(and adhere strictly to the the cursive on the worksheets they gave out).

That said, word processing has supplanted cursive a long time ago.

Daseal
09-29-2011, 08:15 AM
My absolute favorite is when someone (always over the age of 50) sends you an e-mail in a cursive font. I normally either delete it before reading or let them know the next one will be. Shit kills my eyes.

htownskinfan
09-29-2011, 09:10 AM
I love cursive,its so much faster than the other way.

Schneed10
09-29-2011, 09:31 AM
Was what Firstdown does for a living just blasted here?...welcome to my world FD

Suggesting algebra is unnecessary is about as ignorant as a comment can get. The blast was deserved.

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