Should schools write off penmanship?? Part of the dumbing down of America??

[powderman]

Should schools write off penmanship?  By Robert Baier
Published January 13, 2013
FoxNews.com     

•   iStock

  Many school systems in this country no longer teach penmanship, especially cursive writing. I strongly disagree with their decision to discontinue teaching penmanship.
The entire financial and legal system in the United States is based upon signature identification. Your driver’s license, passport and almost all forms of identification require a signature. If you have signed, witnessed and dated a document it is legally binding.
As a forensic document examiner (also called a handwriting expert), I testify in court regularly regarding the genuineness of signatures. I am also called upon to identify the author of anonymous letters by comparing the writing with known handwriting samples.

 

Will the youth of our country revert back 100 years and create an X on a document for identification because they don’t know how to write?

Every adult has handwriting habits that are unique to themselves, especially in their signatures. Handwriting is sometimes referred to as “a fingerprint of the mind.” When multiple actual signatures of a person in a case are collected and examined, document examiners can identify the habits that are common to their signatures. These habits of the writer assist us in rendering an opinion of a signature that is in question whether forged or genuine.
 
Will the youth of our country revert back 100 years and create an X on a document for identification because they don’t know how to write? There must be enough complexity in a signature to be able to make a proper identification of the author. I’m sure everyone has seen signatures that appear to be nothing more than perhaps an “O” and a line.  It is much easier to emulate that person’s writing.
 
Perhaps electronic signatures are the way of the future -- where you sign your name on the small device with the attached stylus after using your credit card at the supermarket, Home Depot or for the UPS driver who has just delivered a package. However, you must still be able to write a signature for proper identification.
 
I was a high school teacher for many years before changing careers and becoming a forensic document examiner. I have seen a number of studies demonstrating that when students take handwritten notes in class, more of the information that was presented is retained.  When I was a student studying for a test I usually took my “rushed sloppy notes” from the class and rewrote them as part of studying the information. I believe it helped me in learning to retain more of the information.
 
Handwriting is a physical act. Some students learn best by listening to what is being taught, some by seeing what is being taught and some by physically writing notes on the subject. It has been demonstrated that the more ways the material is given by the instructor, the more learning will take place.
To me the “handwriting on the wall” indicates that many problems will arise because handwriting is no longer taught in schools. In addition, there will be other unexpected problems.
Robert Baier, a certified forensic document examiner, is author of “Identity Theft Prevention for the College Student.”
 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/13/should-schools-write-off-penmanship/#ixzz2HtzZB9LN

[williamlayton]

With the use of computers, the written word may be on its last leg---If you could see my handwriting, you would break out in applause.
Blessings

[Ranger99]

i believe it's too late for all that.
the use of correct spoken and written
english in this country is almost
held in disdain. witness the use of
slang terms in the printed media
and television such as "rims" instead
of the correct nomenclature wheels, and
"hoodie" instead of hooded sweatshirt.
our american culture has gone to pot,
and i believe we'll have to go ahead
and hit bottom before we can start to
rise again. look around next time you
go out in public and look how many folks
are dressed as if they had just gotten
out of bed. public figures and celebrities
dress like gang punks with backwards caps
and sagging jeans and are applauded
and revered. folks wearing flip-flop sandals
year-round and such. some of my own younger
relatives wear shorts in 30 degree weather,
not for comfort, but as a "fashion statement".
kinda like wearing ankle weights with a life
jacket, don't you think?


shame-shame

[powderman]

RANGER. Good post Sir. POWDERMAN. 

[Conan The Librarian]

Today we write more than ever before and writing has adapted to new efficiencies. I don't think a decline in penmanship is indicative of dumbing down, nor do I lament the demise of the slide rule.

[BUGEYE]

Our county dropped cursive writing because the kids are either too stupid to learn it, or the parents are too lazy to over-see their kids homework.  either way, education was dumbed down.
ebonics is now the spoken language here, and it sounds like greek to me.  I was taught to enunciate, not slur and slobber.
How can these people ever hold a job where something of a technical nature has to be shared.

[scootrd]

I still write letters to my sisters kids. They love it, and write me back.

Math is in other dumbing down area.

I was in a local store last year when power went out. The young lady behind the register could not make proper change for those in line paying for gas because the registers digital display could not tell her how much monies to give back to folks paying for gas , beer , milk etc..

She did not know how to do simple addition and subtraction

[Old Fart]

..., or the parents are too lazy to over-see their kids homework.

Unfortunately that right there is a lot of it. 

[Conan The Librarian]

Cursive was obsolete when I was a kid, and I couldn't understand why anyone would learn it except for the same reasons one learns Latin. One alphabet is quite enough, thank you. Another issue with it was legibility. Most cursive I've seen is at least partially illegible, and that's from good writers.
 
My complaint is that NO KIND of hand writing seems to be taught today. It's common for me to see hand writing from smart people that looks like a small child wrote it.
 
As for dumbing down math. You dang right! It really has happened.

[guzzijohn]

The only cursive a student needs to know is how to sigh their name. 95%+ of written communication in the schools and the workplace is done over a keyboard of some sort. There are so many things that we are expected to teach our kids these days that if we can open up a few minutes a day by dropping something that is totally outdated the better it will be. It is not a needed skill. My brother-in-law can only write his name in cursive but is a nationally recognized forensics psychologist and is the chief forensics psychologist for the state of NC.
GuzziJohn                                                       

[dukkillr]

You know what really bothers me?!?!  OK, I'll tell you!
 
Kids these days don't learn anything.  In my day I got up at 3:30 am to milk the cows, walked uphill to school, spent all day studying important things like Latin, Euclid, cursive, penmanship, and slide rule tactics.  If my eyes strayed I was beat with a switch if I was lucky, a baseball bat if Mr. Martin was the teacher.  Then we walked uphill home in the snow, and without the warm potato in my pocket.
 
Now a-days these kids are learning things like computers (like those will be around when they go to get jobs!) or typing (who needs it?) or programming.  They use calculators, like they'll have those things in the real world when the need to figure out the volume of a function rotated about the X-axis!  I use my best Queen's cursive every day when I write down my answer to the final jeopardy question (so I can prove to my nurse that I'm not cheating!).
 
You know what I else I hate (while we're on the subject)?  I hate it when those damn kids hit that ball into my yard! 
 
I could go on, but it took me 49 minutes to type this and another 83 minutes to check the spelling in my trusty dictionary.

[williamlayton]

My cursive writing went to hades in college---I majored in history and books were only used for research. I took pages upon pages each class, it became a shorthand that was only readable by me----unfortunately this carried over to my business life. It took a secretary a good bit of time to be able to translate my thoughts to type----you should see my signature.
Blessings

[KIMBER45]

Teachers have so much to teach now, mandated by standardised testing, they may not have the time to teach some of the stuff we older students received. I don't know for sure, I'm not an elementary teacher.

[powderman]

Seems like some of you are saying is that learning cursive is too much like work to me. I still say it's all part of the dumbing down process. What about other countries?? Have they discarded cursive too?? I don't know, I'm asking. POWDERMAN. 

[dukkillr]

Seems like some of you are saying is that learning cursive is too much like work to me. I still say it's all part of the dumbing down process. What about other countries?? Have they discarded cursive too?? I don't know, I'm asking. POWDERMAN. 

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.  Thank god they haven't gotten rid of reading comprehension.  Still, allowing others to find a thesis statement for themselves leaves you open to the possiblity that they will find what they really wish you had said, rather that what was actually there, so...
 
There are exactly 24 hours in each and every day, approximately the same as there was in the good old days of, say, 60 years ago.  During that finite amount of time a finite amount of things can be taught.  It is natural that as society changes, the skills we want taught also changes.  I learned cursive and haven't used it in more than 20 years.  I'd rather my kids spend 30 minutes being taught that this outdated form of writing exists called, "cursive" and maybe they could pick up enough to read it.  Then with the free time I just created, I'd like for them to study math, programming, science, or even basic electronics.

[guzzijohn]

Studying cursive penmanship today is kind of like going to a vo-tech in the 1920s to learn how to produce buggy whips.
GuzziJohn

[Ranger99]

yeah g!  straight up dawg!
ize learnin' all that shizzle so
i be makin' bank out in thuh world.


sounds real intelligent doesn't it.

[KIMBER45]

Seems like some of you are saying is that learning cursive is too much like work to me. I still say it's all part of the dumbing down process. What about other countries?? Have they discarded cursive too?? I don't know, I'm asking. POWDERMAN. 

I think China and Japan still use it.

[powderman]

KIMBER. THanks. POWDERMAN. 

[BUGEYE]

My wife does a lot of genealogy research, and if she couldn't read cursive, she couldn't do the research.
Are modern kids more stupid than those in the 40s?
Do kids after kindergarten even own a #2 pencil?
When girls keep a diary, do they type it on their computer and print it off?
I'm glad I'm old.

[KIMBER45]

Some day in the far future, cursive will need a specialist to read. I can see a scene from a future Indiana Jones where he reads something written in cursive.

[guzzijohn]

Quote from BUGEYE:
"When girls keep a diary, do they type it on their computer and print it off?"


They don't even print it off, just paste it on Facebook.
GuzziJohn