The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”- Alvin Toffler

LOL, that's priceless!

Sure, the day may come when scans are used whenever a legal signature is required, but it's not here yet. Privacy advocates may protest its use for routine matters (though it's beginning to be required in some places for medical transactions).

I imagine this does vary by state, was glad to read that Michigan still teaches it.

I think it's terrible that teachers have no time to teach things that aren't strictly for the exams. I think daily updates must be quite a lot to manage. And really, is all the effort succeeding? Are 100% of the kids learning what they need to know? Or are the kids from more prosperous neighborhoods learning and the lower-income kids still behind?

It is not my intention to cause negativity, but please open your minds and ponder.

How many of you use a wringer washer or a mangle or even know what they are? I inherited both appliances (not my primary appliances!) and taught myself how to use them. It is amazing how self-instruction can be accomplished when the incentive is there.

Why do I ask this? Just so you can think how the world changes and how things have come and gone from use. I don’t think that many people crank the Model-T in their driveway and miss the experience. Just try to buy a typewriter ribbon---they’re out there, but not readily available like they used to be 40 or so years ago. The world DOES change and we must change as well whether we like it or not. I challenge most of you to text faster than your grandchildren. The relevant and important things in their young lives (and I am not necessarily referencing their personal likes) are probably very different than yours. This is not necessarily good or bad---it is what it is!

Also, as another member noted, what is the problem with parents and grandparents getting more involved in their children’s education? My mother was the person who taught me to count change and my dad taught me how to write a check and manage the checking account among a million other everyday tasks, not a classroom teacher. If something is important to you no matter how inconsequential it appears to be, why not enjoy some quality time and teach your children and grandchildren? (I still fondly remember those teaching session with my parents!) As a retired educator, it is not very often that teachers get the luxury of teaching something when the interest of a student is there...timing is everything!

P.S. I heard that children may not be learning cursive writing in general, but it is mandatory that they all learn to write their signature...at least until that fingerprint and iris scanner are more common!

Change is tough, isn't it? It is hard to conceive a world of non-writers.

I had a couple of years when teachers actually required us to bring ink and 'dip' pens to school to learn the Palmer Penmanship Method. Rows and rows of circles, rows and rows of slanted lines, don't lay your hand on the paper, stroke with your whole arm!

Look back, way back, and observe Spencerian Script with flourishes and embellishments. You might see some on old signature/friendship quilts.

Anyone miss fountain pens? I used to really enjoy my old Esterbrook. How about ka-ching manual cash registers and clickety, clickety, zip....DING manual typewriters, ##@&* sniff, sniff spirit duplicators, carbon papers and onionskin and those wheel erasers with a brush? Steno pads for the shorthanders? The twentieth century was an era of obsolescence. From buggies to the moon. Gibson girls to flappers to Rosie the Riveter to June Cleaver to Betty Freidan and Erica Jung, the Playboy Bunnies, Roe vs. Wade, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Mother Teresa. What a ride.

Cursive
 

One thing the protesters in Albany N. Y. park are showing is how much we allow the government to control us. We let people run the schools like a business but children are not a product. I taught 12 non readers to read in one year using simple behavior mod and no one asked how I did it but they implemented a reading program at great cost and it did not show improvement in reading. Once we let the government force helmets on motorcycle drivers we were on the slippery slope to government control. After election day we can't get the streets cleaned so why expect government to know how to improve teaching. I taught cursive for 42 years as well as the other subjects. It improves eye hand coordination, gives children spaciality sense, boosts self confidence and is a break from the core subjects which the school day needs. Parents and grand parents need to be vocal with the top administrators. No child left behind was a pain in the behind and president Obama would gain a following if he implemented study of how to motivate children to want to learn and stay in school and created models from teacher imput on how they improve reading and other subjects. Scores on tests are baloney. Try to teach all the kids on your block to golf. None would be of the same skill level and think how frustrated you would be trying to figure which ones would still be golfing at 21 years old. Children are not measurable like they are trying to do. Only one of my teachers knew I wanted to teach snd I was the least likely to because I was shy. Yet I was the best in my area if I do say so myself and my evaluations agree. My point is we need to stop this testing because it hurts kids to take tests they are not ready to pass, and the cost could be going into finding ways to teach the kids. Any good teacher gives pretests she/he makes and can go from there. One big reason for less progress is the decline of respect for teachers and students as evidenced in bullying and assaults in schools. Discipline is needed before a learning community can do its job. Oh I do get carried away on this subject. Thank you for allowing my imput.

One way to be helpful is be a literacy volunteer. Or ask your school administrator if you can go into a local school snd teach cursive to kids once a week. It will be an eye opener for sure. Some kids take to learning something new like a duck takes to water. Others it's like putting silk pjs on a pretty piglet.

DOUBLE AMEN!!!!!! My nieces in HIGH SCHOOL were taught to write English/literature papers WITHOUT correct spelling!!!!! Teachers said the CONTENT was more important than the spelling. They could spell the words like they texted also. SUCH A SHAME! We were taught that spelling was important in any paper and correct punctuation had to be used also. How many of us got papers back where red marks were made to correct the spelling and punctuation??????!!!!!

So how do they sign their name now? All my legal docs are signed in cursive. Are we headed toward a thumbprint or barcode ID?

Years ago a teacher sent home a note saying "Your son be not a good student. He make the others laugh too much. He be a troublemaker in class." And this woman was suppossed to teach my kid? No wonder he was laughing. Unfortunately our schools are not a laughing matter.

Besides all of the practical reasons already mentioned for learning cursive, there is research that learning cursive helps your brain function better. One of the techniques in Educational Therapy is rhythmic writing, which is repeating common cursive figures over and over on a chalkboard. Rhythmic Writing helps to strengthen attention, processing skills, and handwriting. It's helping my dyslexic DD in many different ways.

I was showing my son's girlfriend (in her 20's) some old pictures from our family one day and she could not read my handwriting on the backs...she kept asking me what it said. She is not dumb just not educated in cursive.

I had a German friend who wrote in an older style cursive and I had to really work at reading her letters because the letters were different from what I learned. So, it evolves to printing now - Sad...I wonder if one day we will have to have a tablet or cellphone to write for us! LOL

I like to write cursive. I also took a class on calligraphy. That improves your penmanship (haven't used that word in a while).

The elementary school my GS attend will begin cursive writing in January. It IS part of the schools second grade curriculum, and there is accountability for the students.

I do genealogy and have found the old time handwriting very difficult to read, with all the calligraphy loops and swirls. I think that writing evolves over time. My printing is much easier to read then my writing. I don't know that cursive writing is really that important of a skill now a days. I do believe that kids should be able to at least read cursive.

We just made out new wills. Our cursive signature in a legible signature was required. Apparently if it hadn't been legible then more than 2 witnesses and the usual legal testament was required.

I personally like knowing that when I want to read a copy of a historical document, or a family Bible birth and death section, or handwritten archives in some dusty government storage room that I can do it. I don't have to rely on a computer to translate. Reading old records from past centuries is slow but very doable. I definitely appreciate that I was taught to read my own language in whatever form I encounter it. Everything the older generations learned is not passe. Many people are going back to that knowledge and calling it "going green". Some people can still drive a stick shift vehicle, sew a garment, cook from scratch and grow food and raise animals. Most can't. Too bad for us.

I disagree. I think we all need to be able to do basic arithmetic in our heads. I have seen so many kids do problems on their calculators, accidentally miss-enter something, and have no clue that the answer showing on the display makes no sense.

I am a boomer who has printed since I was a teen. I had lots of penmanship drilled into me during my school years, but it is unfair to expect everyone to have good handwriting. My cursive is very slow and often difficult to read. I actually write for a living, I am scribe to a physician, I am able to print more legibly and quicker than cursive.
My son has also always had poor penmanship and his teacher told us early on that some children just don't do well, he was taught cursive and it was required on all his papers until this year. I for one am glad that he no longer has to worry over his writing skills when being tested. These kids are learning things we never even heard of, I won't fault them for not being able to write neatly.

My comment is that while you were being taught a skill that you chose to not use, others in your class may have chosen to use it. Since the whole class was taught, the whole class had the choice. If you were taught to write it then I assume you can read it when you choose to do so. We want the education process to give everyone the ability to choose which skills they use, not limit their choices. I'm, curious though, what things are your son learning that you had not heard of?

I taught my older children traditional cursive, not the modified printing, but when they hit college teachers want them to print. People can no longer read cursive so it forces my children to print. I used to teach them printing in 2 nd grade incase they have to fill in forms. Right now with my children no.13 and no.14, I am teaching them printing and will most likely teach them cursive in 2 nd grade. I found that teaching my children cursive before printing helped with their reading and writing skills. These last two are the first ones I am reversing it because indeed cursive seems to be a lost art and also it is very hard for me to find material that teaches cursive in the lower levels so I end up having to modify everything or create my own curriculum.

I am 47 and learned to write with a an ink pen and built in inkwell in the desk. This was in first grade. After that we wrote with a pen, not a pencil. I was only taught cursive. I feel like a dinosaur. LOL

I disagree too. Too often I have customers who need to ask how much 2 yards of $1.99 fabric will cost and, of course. the more difficult question how much will 3 yards of $2.99 fabric cost. Never mind that they don't know how many feet are in a yard nor even have a general concept of how long a yard is. There's nothing wrong with using a calculator, but there's something right about being able to pull out the information you need from your own mind.

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.

Please run for the school board in your district!

This is probably why if the younger generation do "write", it's actually more like chicken scratching. Regardless of the fact that they don't necessarily have to write checks, etc., there are many instances where you DO need to know how to write.Not everything can be done on the computer, what a shame.

I'm the college class of 2014, and most of the students in my class cannot handwrite, unless it's printing. I can do handwriting, but I'm also about 3 to 5 years older than my classmates (I'm 23). It's not always legible, but that is only when I'm writing quickly. I plan on teaching my children when I have them and my niece too... I think it's a valuable asset to have.

Yet one more reason to homeschool. :o

Our schools still teach writing. After hearing the no cursive writing in the schools on the news, I was surprised that ours were being taught it.

My cursive writing is a LOT more legible than my printing! I asked our 6-yr-old great-niece if cursive is being taught in our small county school here, and she said no, not anymore. Such a shame, but she is so intelligent and ready to learn, that I think we can teach her here when she visits (she gets to spend one or two nights with us on most weekends. We have so much fun with her, and since we never had any children, we think of her as our granddaughter!)

They started teaching me when I was in 2nd grade. I think cursive is a required feature of schooling.

Our granddaughter has learned cursive in school. She writes very neatly and reads it very well. They have their computer labs, etc too and I sometimes have to ask her for computer help. She's 11 now but learned cursive 2 or 3 years ago.

The problem with reliance on a calculator is that there are times when no calculator is available or it is extremely inconvenient to use one. At times like that, knowing the formula is useless unless you can do the math that you need to learn before you get to the formula.

Last year, my now 8 year old grandson, who is very bright, very advanced academically, and who I was homeschooling, told me he was smarter than me. Then he offered to prove it IF I would only give him the calculator. My response? "That will tell me how smart the calculator is!"

He was shocked. I wrote out some math addition problems, starting with adding 2 single digit numbers like 9 + 5, then went to adding 2 double digit numbers, like 25 + 37. He did fine on the single digit numbers, but without fail started adding the double digit numbers from the left most column. When I told him his answers were wrong and why, he asked me for the calculator so that he could show me that he was right.

He got the second shock of the morning. The calculator agreed with MY answers, not his! We spent the afternoon learning how to add from right to left and then checking his answers with the calculator.

The next day we had an almost identical learning experience with subtraction!

The next week, he again told me that he was smarter than me and didn't need to do schoolwork. I considered that for about 1/2 a second, then asked him, "If you're smarter than me, then why am I teaching you?"

Stunned silence. Then, resigned to his fate, he started the school day.

Many of my 7th grade students cannot read cursive. Most of them can't write it correctly. I understand the paperless world we live in, but I believe being able to write their names in cursive, is still necessary.

I am a firm believer that your children get out of school exactly what you put into it. You need to support what the teacher is doing. If you don't show respect for the teacher, your child will not either. If you don't show interest in what you want your child to know, they won't either. If you want your child to learn to write, ask them to write for you. My parents were readers, they expected us to read. So my sisters and I had reading lamps in our bedrooms. My dad was an engineer and designed airplanes, he made sure that we understood the math we did and the importance of knowing how to get the right answer. Our mother taught us to sew, cook and clean. Since my sisters were older, they came home from school and taught me what they learned that day. So by the time I started school I could read, write, add, subtract and multiply.

My sister would tell me that her youngest son is a genius and smarter than his teachers. Really? So why has he never held a job that his parents didn't get for him? Why is he 28 years of age, been unemployed for over 2 years and only able to attend college on the internet in his bedroom, taking only 2 classes at a time? Being a genius may be nice, but putting it to use in the real world is another issue.

As parents and grandparents we need to teach our children the importance of learning and using what we learn to better our lives. My high school history teacher once said, "Nothing is relevant to an ignorant person". We need to have a diverse education to understand and live in this ever changing world.

I have great respect for all teachers. You don't have to put a child into a private school to get a good education, but you do have to be a part of the education process. It's too easy to blame teachers, administrators and others for Johnny not being able to read. But we really need to look into the home, after school care and family.

As you can see that I am rather passionate on the issue, too many people want to push their responsibility on to others and that really bothers me.