frauhahn

I taught for many years in SE Michigan, and some students had an absolute fit when I wrote cursive, since they hadn't been taught to read it (or use it). I had absolute fits when they would answer a question on a test misspelling words that were part of the question. Happened all the time! In a one year stint teaching English to 8th graders many years ago, I was called down by a superior for teaching diagramming-I felt it was necessary, since they didn't know a verb from a noun, let alone a pronoun. Their essays were attrocious! I was told that if they could speak English, they could write it. Funny-my grandfather could speak German fluently, but couldn't read or write it. One skill doesn't necessarily follow naturally from another. One often sees the problems this has caused when reading a newspaper. There are run-on sentences that have to be re-read several times in order to glean meaning. I'm coming to the belief that we need to go back to the one room school, where k through 6 would be taught together, the basics would be taught, the older ones would help teach the younger, and technology would be reserved until after the basics had been mastered. Handwriting, grammar and spelling are still necessary to communication, as are basic math skills and a knowledge of history and geography/social studies.