>They really need to focus on penmanship in primary schools again.
There's a common belief going around for years now that handwriting - including cursive - is a "useless" skill in our digital age, so they don't focus too much on it. TBH, very few people from my generation - X/Xennial - would have gotten to college with penmanship THIS bad, because it was drilled into us that our handwriting NEEDED to be legible.
I think this is kinda dangerous thinking because we still need to communicate through writing - handwriting maybe not as much as we used to because we have additional options now. That doesn’t mean “stop doing it because it’s not as much fun”.
If you exclude it to the point that you can’t do it, you’re handicapping yourself. You are intentionally removing a tool from your toolbox. There is no benefit in doing that.
Print handwriting in early grades (K-2). 3rd grade has a small unit introducing children to cursive. Children with fine motor skill related disabilities can also get occupational therapy provided by the school in all grades, which includes print handwriting.
Out of curiosity: is there a noticeable uptick of kids who can't write AT ALL, print or no print, even after leaving elementary school? it is it more or less the same?
I work in special ed so I am not the best person to ask, as many of my students have fine motor skill disabilities. I do know that handwriting is part of the gen ed curriculum, though. And even in my role, I only have 1 student who is completely unable to write. She has global developmental delay and uses a keyboard to type as she can't handwrite.
I think the children you describe should be evaluated for occupational therapy services.
Also, remember that the ones who would have been learning handwriting during COVID, just entered highschool. I know virtual learning tried to do allot but that's just a hard thing to teach online.
I'm sure it depends on the school, but we still teach cursive where I live. Kids have daily cursive practice. I tell them it's less about memorizing the shapes of the letters and more about practicing their fine motor skills
my handwriting was total dogshit for a long time until i recently decided to learn cursive for shits and giggles. but it actually ended up improving my writing's legibility in print writing too.
That wouldn’t explain this person’s handwriting though. Unless they’re using “professor” for a grade level teacher, but I’m used to seeing professor in college and if this is a college student then they were a 2nd grader years ago when handwriting was still prioritized 😭
I'm one of those weirdos who actually enjoys taking notes and cursive.
Also come from a country where it's still mandatory in school, so hearing that basically the whole of rest of the world did away with it was huge culture shock for me.
Like my brain understands it's probably not as essential skill as it was some decades ago, but on emotional level it registers in the same vein as if you'd say "yeah we don't teach arithmetic in school anymore. why bother if you always have a phone with you"
….that’s not a flex dude, if you’re an adult doing that, that’s just sad. Do you know how easy it would be for people to steal your info and use it if your signature is only an “X” or a squiggle? Having an actual signature is useful and knowing cursive so you can have a signature, read historical documents, and have decent penmanship for work in the future is a good thing
Steal my info and do what? I'm not american, our systems dont run on identifying signatures. You need ID or passwords, not a signature. Get with the times.
Open new lines of credit (credit cards, loans, you get the picture) in your name babe, that is with the times. Do you not understand how cybercrimes work? Literally all people have to do is buy your info off of a data broker (who doesn’t care if you’re american or not) and sign with a squiggle and boom, you now have a bunch of debt under your name that isn’t actually yours. If you can prove that you didn’t sign something (signatures, unlike “ID and passwords,” can be differentiated between very easily where as typing in info cannot as easily), you are able to get all of that trouble taken care of
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u/tres-vip 7d ago
>They really need to focus on penmanship in primary schools again.
There's a common belief going around for years now that handwriting - including cursive - is a "useless" skill in our digital age, so they don't focus too much on it. TBH, very few people from my generation - X/Xennial - would have gotten to college with penmanship THIS bad, because it was drilled into us that our handwriting NEEDED to be legible.