Hand writing, in my opinion, is alot easier to learn and retain information with. If your taking notes by hand, retaining information is alot easier rather than typing it with a keyboard. Im really lazy when it comes to taking notes in school, sometimes i cant even read my own hand writing. But most people have their style of note taking and they prefer their own way.
I feel like there are times when I need to reach for a pencil and paper to hand-write ideas because I have an easier time brainstorming when I'm not restricted to the format of a traditional .txt document.
I honestly bring a little notebook around with me wherever I go, because its so much faster and more fluid to write something down as opposed to opening up a word-app on a phone and punching it in, so lifeless
That said, you can actually tell if someone has above-average intellect by the way they write. The ones that tend to have fast writing and more sporadic/scribbly are the ones that have so much going on in their brain that their hands can't keep up with how fast they want to express it. All of my profs have noted this phenomenon, and its quite something. Slow, neat writing is common to those who, frankly, have the spare mental capacity to care about how neat it looks, while geniuses are just concerned with what they have to say because that in itself is the selling point, not it's looks.
While I don't think learning cursive should be a necessity in school I can see where studying it would be useful. I remember a lot of people I knew who had more basic handwriting had a lot more trouble deciphering teachers' scribbles (and a number of times had more trouble reading in general, class readings of Shakespeare were a nightmare) than my friends with more... "flamboyant" handwriting. Some of these people who have beautiful handwriting are also some of the most creative people I know.
I also have a lot less control when handwriting with a tablet device than I do with a pencil. Though I'm not against the idea of using technology to teach kids their alphabet, I think they should learn to write and refine their motor skills/ideas on paper.
Even though writing notes by hand takes a lot more time than typing them out on computer I get the added muscle memory that comes with writing things down/drawing thumbnails and you come up with short form terms that make the task quicker and studying easier and they also make me focus more in lectures. For me, cursive was an integral part of growing up and helped me with my organizational skills. My notes also look like fancy old-timey letters.
i'm completely against it.
i had a bitch 4th grade teacher who made us write everything. in fact in elementary school we were forced to write everything.
i have a crater in my skull right around where fine motor skills should be. it was extremely evident that i couldnt and still cannot handwrite for shit. even so everyone kept telling me i was just doing a shit job and slacking off. my god if i could shoot everyone in the face who told me i was slacking off when i was trying my best... SLACKING OFF WITH MY PENMANSHIP? I'M EITHER RETARDED OR IMPAIRED TO BE ABLE TO WRITE IN A SCRIPT SO MESSY YOU'D THINK THEY WERE ALIEN FUCKING GLYPHS. but no, teachers don't know the difference between dysfunctional and slacking off. and even at that don't know when to draw the line about being such a strict stuck up ignorant bitch about everything.
[editline]13th February 2013[/editline]
i actually had a teacher once who was walking the new TA around the room in 3rd grade and we were all assigned to color a ball of yarn. as in color inside the lines.
the cunt teacher walked right up to my desk with the TA, both of them towering over me as i was in 3rd grade and the teacher puts her finger with an audible "thud" right down on my work (obviously shitty, it looks like it was done by someone with parkinson's) and says "this is an example of an F"
i think i hated elementary school the most. it was a bunch of insanely mundane bullshit, harassment, getting my ass kicked, and puking at least twice a week. i dunno about you but it's surprising to me that a 2nd grader would even know to call someone a fag, even if they didn't know what it meant (ironically i did).
I don't like handwriting stuff, but I still believe that it is important to learn handwriting and that it is necessary for certain things. So I believe that handwriting is still really needed anymore.
[QUOTE=FoodStuffs;39572488]i'm completely against it.
i had a bitch 4th grade teacher who made us write everything. in fact in elementary school we were forced to write everything.
i have a crater in my skull right around where fine motor skills should be. it was extremely evident that i couldnt and still cannot handwrite for shit. even so everyone kept telling me i was just doing a shit job and slacking off. my god if i could shoot everyone in the face who told me i was slacking off when i was trying my best... SLACKING OFF WITH MY PENMANSHIP? I'M EITHER RETARDED OR IMPAIRED TO BE ABLE TO WRITE IN A SCRIPT SO MESSY YOU'D THINK THEY WERE ALIEN FUCKING GLYPHS. but no, teachers don't know the difference between dysfunctional and slacking off. and even at that don't know when to draw the line about being such a strict stuck up ignorant bitch about everything.
[editline]13th February 2013[/editline]
i actually had a teacher once who was walking the new TA around the room in 3rd grade and we were all assigned to color a ball of yarn. as in color inside the lines.
the cunt teacher walked right up to my desk with the TA, both of them towering over me as i was in 3rd grade and the teacher puts her finger with an audible "thud" right down on my work (obviously shitty, it looks like it was done by someone with parkinson's) and says "this is an example of an F"
i think i hated elementary school the most. it was a bunch of insanely mundane bullshit, harassment, getting my ass kicked, and puking at least twice a week. i dunno about you but it's surprising to me that a 2nd grader would even know to call someone a fag, even if they didn't know what it meant (ironically i did).[/QUOTE]
So in other words, handwritting is unnecessary because you had shitty teachers in grade school and you personally are incapable of it?
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;39574908]So in other words, handwritting is unnecessary because you had shitty teachers in grade school and you personally are incapable of it?[/QUOTE]
really i think that there should be a giant focus taken away from it. if it's anything like it was when i was a kid it's fuckin kafkaesque to some kids.
[editline]13th February 2013[/editline]
oh yeah and cursive is such bullshit. it's generally harder to read than normal block lettering and much easier to be sloppier than block lettering.
[QUOTE=FoodStuffs;39578074]really i think that there should be a giant focus taken away from it. if it's anything like it was when i was a kid it's fuckin kafkaesque to some kids.
[editline]13th February 2013[/editline]
oh yeah and cursive is such bullshit. it's generally harder to read than normal block lettering and much easier to be sloppier than block lettering.[/QUOTE]
I find it much easier and faster to read cursive.
Every teacher I've had thus far, and everyone I've talked to(sure, anecdotal evidence, still) prefers reading proper cursive to block.
I don't think handwriting should ever be removed. There's a lot more personality and feel to a handwritten paragraph.
When I was studying at university one of my professors (a fantastic physical chemist) was quite an old school lecturer. There were no handouts, no powerpoint presentations to download, just him and three roll down blackboards. You'd tend to fill about 9-10 A4 pages per lecture with notes and mathematical equations - if you didn't have good handwriting when you came back to review your notes you'd have absolutely no idea what was going on!
[QUOTE=mike;39578622]When I was studying at university one of my professors (a fantastic physical chemist) was quite an old school lecturer. There were no handouts, no powerpoint presentations to download, just him and three roll down blackboards. You'd tend to fill about 9-10 A4 pages per lecture with notes and mathematical equations - if you didn't have good handwriting when you came back to review your notes you'd have absolutely no idea what was going on![/QUOTE]
couldn't he possibly get fired from that? not being able to use the school's equipment to the fullest or something?
[editline]15th February 2013[/editline]
teaching's a challenging job..
Advanced math would be fucking impossible without handwriting.
No it is not. Nobody I know uses it, nobody I know even does big written tasks with a pen anymore.
I take it all back, I agree with the post above, Mathematics can be done very easily on a computer, and comes out looking nicer too
[editline]16th February 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=EcksDee;39578193]I find it much easier and faster to read cursive.
Every teacher I've had thus far, and everyone I've talked to(sure, anecdotal evidence, still) prefers reading proper cursive to block.
I don't think handwriting should ever be removed. There's a lot more personality and feel to a handwritten paragraph.[/QUOTE]
Here's some anecdotal evidence for ya, i hate reading fucking cursive, and I love writing in block capitals.
"To each his own"
My handwriting looks pretty terrible, but it helps that I want to be a doctor in the future (Doctor signatures, AKA, scribbles). I really prefer to type rather than write.
Yes, it is really needed. For instance, if you're getting your drivers license, you must sign your signature. If you order a package from UPS that requires a signature, how else would you sign for it if you don't have good handwriting, not everyone can understand the illiterateness of a bunch of lines drawn around, pretending to be letters. .
[thumb]http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/994/signature14cec8hm5.jpg[/thumb]
Quick-hand writing was designed in the times of no technology vis-a-vis printing. The only reason it was created was to speed up the writing process. Text like that which we find right in my post here takes a much longer time and is unfeasible when doing mass amounts of work or transcribing.
In conclusion: We still need to know the alphabet, but handwriting is obsolete as it's only practical purpose is quick-hand. Calligraphy will survive on with the arts along with hieroglyphs as their only purpose now is aesthetic.
[editline]22nd February 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Stopper;39517022][t]http://i.minus.com/iytlcYG7mxfiV.jpg[/t][/QUOTE]
This in my opinion is not so much 'Hand-writing' as it is 'Hand-written'.
I have very neat handwriting, but at the same time it's really tiny.
Yeah...
it's bad enough if a kid doesn't even learn cursive.
I'm kind of curious as to why cursive has died out to the extent it has. My dad is astonished that people my age don't use cursive.
When I was in first and second grade, they made us practice cursive constantly, and insisted that when we grew up we'd be using cursive all the time for everything. Pretty much everyone my age has the same memory. But none of us uses cursive. What happened?
[QUOTE=digigamer17;35215577]I don't write often but only when I need to write a password down or sign something. As others said it won't leave.[/QUOTE]
Hand writing will never die out, people use it every day more than you think. I would not be impressed by someone who has terrible hand writing skills/couldn't at all.
[QUOTE=TH89;39817452]I'm kind of curious as to why cursive has died out to the extent it has. My dad is astonished that people my age don't use cursive.
When I was in first and second grade, they made us practice cursive constantly, and insisted that when we grew up we'd be using cursive all the time for everything. Pretty much everyone my age has the same memory. But none of us uses cursive. What happened?[/QUOTE]
It was the way it was taught.
I think when we learnt it we only did it in year five and six, then when you got to high school the teachers just didn't care if you did print or cursive. If they persisted with teaching it then yeah I can imagine a lot of people using it. Cursive is good, if you know what you're doing you can make it look good, readable, and be able to write it fast too. It's a shame not too many people use it and I have to deliberately tell myself to write in cursive because by my nature I just use print.
I think cursive, being much faster to write with, should be taught.
It is useful as fuck for note-taking, being able to write faster when computers aren't permitted.
Regular handwriting is definitely necessary. We can not always assume we'll always have electricity available, or computers and typewriters. Anything from making food lists, writing letters, writing post it notes, speech in drawings/comics, documents, signatures... etc.
I don't think the lack of cursive writing is a big issue though. I think one of the biggest reasons cursive has dies out so much is because, depending on the person, it can be nearly impossible to try and decipher it. It's probably good for making notes for yourself and such, and I reckon one can probably do this a lot more efficiently and fast if cursive comes natural to you. However cursive is just much harder to read than letters kept separate, especially when you add people's handwriting into the equation, and how fast they've had to write. Even normal handwriting can be hard to read because of the way some people write, but also cursive it can become a whole mess of nothing more than squiggly lines cluttering up pages.
Its been a while since i even used a pen. And I'm in the middle of a research degree.
Edit: I tell a lie i had to sign my name a few days ago
definitely necessary. you can't rely on technology, etc. the only one you can trust is yourself, really.
I went to a public school and my handwriting/Cursive looks like complete crap. I type all of my assignments and such just so I don't face the humiliation of it.
It serves almost no purpose with all in our modern world, even legally where signatures can be forged easily.
I learned cursive. Never used it again. But yes Handwriting will no longer be used in the next 10-20 years. I just know it.
Why do i still have to look at this thread on the home page of facepunch? In two days it will be a year, and we still have people talking about something as senseless as handwriting? Of course you will still need hand writing. People will always need to leave notes, messages, and explanations. I use handwriting every single day at work.
elephants are learning now...
they'll carry it on.
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