this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Because there's lots of old documents and letters written in cursive, so it's a useful skill for anyone interested in history.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Any historically significant document has been / will be transcribed so it’s not so much “useful” as it is a niche “novelty.” That would certainly make it a fun learn for history geeks who want to read historical documents in their original form, however that doesn’t make it a very practical skill to teach the majority of school students across the country.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Being able to read my not-transcribed great-grandmothers letters to my mom is a nice perk of being able to read cursive. And it's really not hard to learn, and takes little class time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I don’t think it’d be prudent to add cursive to standard curriculums across the nation so that the nations children can read your great-grandmothers letters to your mom. That’s a good case for an extracurricular lesson or two perhaps, for you personally.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, cause I'm the only person out there with ancestors.

Are you being purposefully dumb?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Of all the challenges our education system needs to improve on, from basic financial literacy to appropriate and sex and health education, your suggestion is to take up valuable classroom time that’s in short supply as it is to teach kids across the nation to be able to read their great grand parents love notes that may or may not exist? If we’re throwing the word dumb around…

Maybe if you personally have a treasure trove of ancient ancestor love notes that you need to be able to read so badly, you could engage in extracurricular cursive learning? And save our nations children’s valuable class time for something that’s more applicable to their daily life than one niche use case?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You are massively overestimation how much time it takes to learn cursive.

Also I learned cursive in first grade, when classes on basic financial literacy and sex education are entirely useless.

You really are just being dumb. Learning cursive is a useful skill, and takes almost no class time at an age when advanced subjects will just be forgotten or not at all understood.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You are massively overestimating how useful of a skill cursive is. The only use case you could come up with was “reading ancient family letters” as if that warrants literally any time in the US education system.

What you don’t seem to understand is that we used to teach cursive in school. It was determined that reading great grand dad’s love letter to great grand mom was not useful enough to continue teaching it. We have adults today who never learned cursive and objectively speaking absolutely nothing of value was lost. So if you want to make the case that it’s worth teaching again you’re going to have to come up with a whole host of much better reasons. There are many things that take varying levels of time and effort to teach in schools of all grade levels, and I don’t think cursive can beat out any of them. American society as a whole disagrees with your entire premise and I’m inclined to agree with them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And what other skills can we effectively teach six year olds that we aren't already teaching them at that age? Skills they can actually understand and remember.

And it's being able to read any historical documents, family letters are just one example I gave. And being able to read documents yourself means you either transcribe it yourself, or verify others transcriptions. If no one can read cursive, you can;t trust the accuracy of previous transcriptions.

So yeah, it's still somewhat useful, and a lot more useful than most things we can get 6 year olds to remember.

Man, you are dying on dumb hill here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We are currently teaching six year olds skills they need, without cursive. I don’t think any of them are good candidates for removal. And if we were to add more, cursive would certainly be at the bottom of the list.

And we’ve already gone over historical documents, they’ve been transcribed. Some irrational fear of transcription isn’t a good reason to teach cursive. There are far more historical documents that exist in other languages, than there are in modern English cursive, so in your scenario we’d have to teach every kid to read and write in every single language that currently exists or used to exist just so that every single person in the country can verify the authenticity of every transcription ever made? If you can’t trust ANY historian or educator to relay information accurately then what are we supposed to do, abolish the school system entirely? Nobody can learn anything from anybody else because nobody can trust anyone but themselves? Ok bud you keep your tinfoil hat on?

It’s unlikely I’m on the dumb hill since I’m on the hill that has already prevailed. I stand on this hill with the rest of American society and educators who seem to be doing just fine… you can die alone on your hill I guess.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Name them. I learned cursive and a bunch of other subjects at 6, and I don't feel like cursive needed to be replaced by anything.

And by your logic we should just stop teaching history, because it's already been studied. Let's stop teaching math because we already created calculators. Let's stop teaching second languages, because other people have already translated things.

American society and educators who seem to be doing just fine

hahahahaha, American education is garbage these days, no wonder you're stuck on dumb hill.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Name them

Cursive has been replaced by keyboarding and computer skills. Both far more useful and relevant in the age we live in.

And by your logic we should just stop teaching history, because it's already been studied.

Uh, that would be your logic. Because you don’t trust somebody who studied history to teach it to you, because in your mind you can only trust things you’ve seen yourself, remember? We teach history out of books that were written by historians and educators, just like we study historical documents transcribed by historians and educators.

Let's stop teaching math because we already created calculators

Calculators don’t do math for you. You have to understand math to use a calculator.

Let's stop teaching second languages, because other people have already translated things.

We don’t learn second languages in order to transcribe things which have already been translated. You learn a second language to speak a second language.

hahahahaha, American education is garbage these days, no wonder you're stuck on dumb hill.

Maybe I’d be less dumb if I didn’t waste so much time learning cursive?

And maybe if you wasted less time learning cursive you could have learned how to follow your own thread of logic? You’re literally all over the place and you’re devolving into more and more nonsense. It’s shocking how much energy you’ve wasted championing a dead and buried art for absolutely no reason.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

replaced by keyboarding and computer skills.

I took those as well as cursive. Plenty of time for both.

just like we study historical documents transcribed by historians and educators.

And it's always better to have the skills to read them yourself. And being able to read cursive opens up lots of interesting documents, many of which have not been transcribed.

And once again, cursive is extremely easy to learn.

You learn a second language to speak a second language.

And to read in that language, and to translate from that language. Learning cursive is like learning a language, yet it is extremely easy to learn.

if I didn’t waste so much time learning cursive

What time? Cursive takes almost no time to learn. I learned it at the same time as learning print writing. It added almost no time to our writing classes, and I have the ability to read and write in both.

Why are you wasting your energy on this then? You could have shut up many comments ago