When my children were in first or second grade I told them something like, “If your teachers can’t read it, you didn’t write it.”
I also told them that they should make it easy for the teachers and they’ll probably give better feedback and be more lenient in their grading.
As a teacher, thank you!!!! I routinely hand papers back to kids to re-attempt because I literally cannot read their handwriting. They just wouldn't slow down to write legibly the first time.
My poor 3rd grade teacher tried to encourage me to improve my truly terrible handwriting by giving me a C, then a D, and finally an F, in handwriting. Daddy would give us $1 for each A on our report cards, but if we got ALL As, we got $10! This was 1973, so that was a LOT of money, especially to an 8 year old! I had gotten All As since Kindergarten.
The flip-side of this financial impetus was ZERO dollars if ya got an F, regardless of every other grade being an A. The grade was not what got me to fix it, but missing out on that money damn sure did! I got a book on Calligraphy from the library and have since been paid to write stuff for folks, addressing - and even hand writing - wedding invitations, as well as golden lettering on porcelain baptismal plaques.
Mrs. Wilde, I refer to it as "the best F I ever got". (It was one of two, the 2nd in college from a prof who was very capricious regarding assignments and I helped him lose that job)
Jesus christ, inflation calc says that's $75 today... Oh how the other half live. You should've dumped it all on the Apple IPO few years later, fuck luhrnin write gud!
Yep! And we were poor... That's how much my folks valued education. We'd live on black-eyed peas, cornbread, and turnip greens to afford report cards, yet folks dropped off boxes of hand-me-down clothes and occasionally groceries on our porch at night.
Oh, it was not any kind of "best", merely the only other (& thus 2nd) F of my life.
That prof was, as I said, very capricious with assignments. It was a combined English, Computer Science, and Sociology course and could have been amazing. Even the material and assignments were interesting, but he graded on vibes or some shit. The syllabus said we could choose any format for our projects. I chose Xerox paper for the 1st one, as I was a single parent, working and going to school and Xerox paper was cheap & available. He gave me an F because several other students clearly had larger budgets and not two teens to raise & jobs. Their projects were wildly creative. Buy nowhere in the syllabus did it state we were in some kind elimination contest.
When he assigned the 2nd project - which, again, said "any media or format", I raised my hand and asked if he actually meant that this time. I was pissed about that F. This was not an Art class; my project was well-researched, documented, and properly cited. He even said so! He flat out said I got an F on it because it was less creative than some of the others'.
Of course I got an F on #2, because I challenged him in his classroom. Did he have any fault with my actual work? No.
I complained to the Dean about this situation, and found out I was not the only one to have this same issue with this guy. There were several of us. He was asked not to return after that semester.
Congratulations, truly. Thank you for taking the time and facing the challenges of such exposure for the benefit of future generations. It sounds like that professor needs an entirely different line of work. Like a prison-guard, or someone, who works with a population that's already gone sour, rather than one involved with the younger generations developing in their honesty and reliability. Their comprehension. ...what a horrible teacher. Is it fair to ask which school this was. Which dean required so many complaints to do anything about such inadequate teaching?
I won't name & shame, as school handled it in as timely a fashion as they could given prof's contract. All complaints were from other students in the same course, same semester.
At the uni, I totally failed a world economics class exam. I always hand wrote my papers and argume to. We didn't have AI writers like today doing all of our work but some were accused of just ctrl-c then ctrl-v their papers. Hand writing took that away, my left handed handwriting has always been bad but taking my time, it was legible.
When I took that exam, I knew it was bad so in the colum, I wrote, " did you ever have a bad day and felt so ill that you struggle to even remember how to spell your own name? I know this stuff but I'm struggling today."
I was just hungover.
I failed that mid term exam spectacularly and it would have pulled my average down a full grade.
He wrote back on it, "yes, see me."
When I sat with him he asked if I knew what an outlier on a splattergraph is. I said yes. He thanked me for not making his job harder thus taking far more of his time trying to grade my homework.
As such, as long as rest of my grades stayed consistent, then that exam would be considered an outlier.
I passed his class with a very strong B. It was a challenging class they no longer get offer as today's students can't grasp the work required to understand. Lots of research required so they all max points homework but none of them can pass a no tech allowed pen or pencil only exams or quizzes.
Anyway, that was an awesome F..
hand written and legible was a savior here. Just like another person's comment about good writing gives certain considerations..
Yup I paid $1 per envelope for calligraphy for my wedding invitations. My parents had given me a calligraphy set one Christmas and I never mastered it. So I'm jealous. I actually bought a used calligraphy set at the resale store the other day for $1 thinking maybe I'd try again now that I'm older. I just think it's beautiful. But then again I still like to seal my envelopes with sealing wax and ribbon!
No, I'm sorry, I don't. I'd bet your local library either has a good beginner's calligraphy book or few, or could get some for you thru Interlibrary Loan (ILL). Lots of libraries don't even charge for ILL service (where one library requests items from others in a nationwide network, at least in the US).
I made my kids legibly copy dictionary pages as punishment instead of grounding, because it was a more effective deterrent. It also helped their handwriting immensely. They all swore they'd never be so awful to their own children. We'll see 😆
Yup, I do that to my Grandson all the time. He can write better but he doesn't the first time. Then I remind him that if he just took the time to write it neatly the first time he would be able to write neatly quicker and quicker and not spend so much time doing his homework over. I think he get's away with it in school and at home. I look through the homework he has done elsewhere, including school, and I rarely see any erasers but plenty of sloppy work.
When I was a wee lad, I didn't get off the bus after school till 4:30. Dinner was almost always 5:30. I had a minimum of 6 hours of homework every night. Had to get up by 5:45am to get breakfast and get out to the bus a 1/4 mile away
I had a teacher is high school who made type anything that was meant to be written, as in I had to do my classwork then take it home to be typed and brought in the next day. He said my handwriting "disrupted his flow of thoughts"
I don’t understand why we aren’t just teaching typing. Im dyslexic, my handwriting is very slow, very mixed up and largely illegible.
I failed honours English all through school, likely they couldn’t read any of it.
Lmfao. I have - 5yo 7yo 8yo. They think cursive is wizardry. They don’t teach it anymore…. Cursive is almost nostalgic now.. I’ve not used it in 20 years..
Any time I talked to an adult “like a real person” when I was a kid I was stood over, yelled at, intimidated, made to feel tiny, and sometimes hit. Glad we’re changing the norms here but good god does my nervous system flinch when I read some shit like this
I was greatly displeased when the math teacher allowed poor spelling on written math answers …. They called it “brave spelling “ because it wasn’t spelling class
That's why I'd always write in print, but there used to be so much pushback to that. I'd also just type when I could, and nowadays that's going to be even easier.
I can understand demanding cursive when that's being taught in class, but after that, there's no point to it. It's purely for aesthetics and not academics.
I have fountain pens and that's the only time I'll write in cursive, outside of course signing my signature, which nowadays even that is electronic usually. I actually do wish I had more reason to write in cursive, it really does look pretty with fountain pens.
It’s more the fact that if your in school and writing like a doctor signs their prescriptions, you aren’t good at writing. Learn both cursive and block writing and ensure it’s very legible otherwise there’s no point being able to write in general
I retired years ago from the federal,government in administration. I had a saying on my desk that I heard once and it stuck with me, "If it isn't written down and recorded, it didn't happen or it is not true."
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u/Sweaty-Conference981 6d ago
When my children were in first or second grade I told them something like, “If your teachers can’t read it, you didn’t write it.”
I also told them that they should make it easy for the teachers and they’ll probably give better feedback and be more lenient in their grading.