The handwriting's on the wall

[DesertFox]

The computer keyboard helped kill shorthand, and now it's threatening to finish off longhand.

When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.

And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive.

Many educators shrug. Stacked up against teaching technology, foreign languages and the material on standardized tests, penmanship instruction seems a relic, teachers across the region say. But academics who specialize in writing acquisition argue that it's important cognitively, pointing to research that shows children without proficient handwriting skills produce simpler, shorter compositions, from the earliest grades.

More (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001475.html)

[Rhino]

My cursive sucks, always has. That's why I often print instead, even before PCs were invented.

[Lazarus]

This is just another sign of our decaying culture... I realized by reading this that the writer is 100% correct - I too print far more often than I write in longhand... And I am now committed to writing in longhand more...

It is a matter of personal development - one of the signs of a high culture just like good manners, precise diction, knowledge of history, and a broad vocabulary, all of which are rapidly disappearing from our crumbling society...

I refuse to be part of this decay...

[Book]

We're evolving, embrace it or not it doesn't change the simple fact of it. Our modern society doesn't require that one have handwriting skills to succeed. Thus handwriting becomes obsolete. Typing is now far more useful.

[Rhino]

It works better here.

[Lazarus]

We're evolving, embrace it or not it doesn't change the simple fact of it. Our modern society doesn't require that one have handwriting skills to succeed. Thus handwriting becomes obsolete. Typing is now far more useful.Why am I not suprised to see the resident liberal take that tack...

We are rearing a generation of uneducated barbarians... And the world they bring with them isnt this golden age of technology - this fantasy Scifi world... It is a world of ignorance... They dont enunciate their speech - they simply mumble and slur... Which is just as well since their vocabulary is limited to the gutteral utterances they hear on the street... In their world their women are referred to as their bitches, and remarkably their women are perfectly willing to answer to such a name...

Our culture is not evolving - it is decaying - rapidly... Concepts like vocabulary, sentence structure, good manners, knowledge of history, and intelligent civil debate are disappearing, and with them goes the thinking man...

This new world of advanced technology that you seem to think we are evolving to is not self-sustaining... No technology is... It requires thinking human beings, and this herd of barbarians who are coming behind us lack even the basic motivation to achieve personal excellence...

Thus this fantasy world is already dying... I refuse to be part of this brave new barbarism...

[Rhino]

But what will we all do when global warming kills all our computers?

[Lazarus]

We will be doing what they already do in theird world countries... We will be burning computer circuit boards to get the silver and copper...

[DoctorDoom]

I don't recall the last time I wrote in longhand. It has to be at least forty years ago. If I want to go that route, I'll use a script font in Word. ;)

[DesertFox]

I seldom write in cursive because it's so hard to read. Nearly everything I write gets printed, and most gets poked up on the puter.

[Lubbock]

I guess I'm the odd duck here.

I still communicate in longhand, by snail mail.

I do use e-mail, of course, but for corresondence with friends, I prefer to "write"; for business, certainly it's WordPerfect (MicrosoftWord is the worst word processing program on the planet).

[Book]

Why am I not suprised to see the resident liberal take that tack... What tack? I see a duck I call it a duck.

We are rearing a generation of uneducated barbarians... And the world they bring with them isnt this golden age of technology - this fantasy Scifi world... It is a world of ignorance... They dont enunciate their speech - they simply mumble and slur... Which is just as well since their vocabulary is limited to the gutteral utterances they hear on the street... In their world their women are referred to as their bitches, and remarkably their women are perfectly willing to answer to such a name... Unfair generalisation. Not to mention that every older generation since the stone age has said something similar and yet progress continues...admittedly without the older generation.

Our culture is not evolving - it is decaying - rapidly... Concepts like vocabulary, sentence structure, good manners, knowledge of history, and intelligent civil debate are disappearing, and with them goes the thinking man... Strange you would say this on a forum(on teh interweb no less) which clearly doesn't appear to be suffering from decay.

This new world of advanced technology that you seem to think we are evolving to is not self-sustaining... No technology is... It requires thinking human beings, and this herd of barbarians who are coming behind us lack even the basic motivation to achieve personal excellence... oooh I bet you're the type who sits on his porch chewing tobacco, cursing every young whipper snapper who passes by for having a life.

Thus this fantasy world is already dying... I refuse to be part of this brave new barbarism... Not to worry mate, it's leaving you behind anyway :thumb:

[Lazarus]

I guess I'm the odd duck here...Me too... quack quack...

I do all my personal Biblical research notes in longhand... I have intended for years to transpose those into the puter but have never done so... I have stacks of handwritten notes stuffed in drawers and holes all over my house...

But I still dont write day to day personal notes in longhand as much as I used to... And that is something I intend to reverse...

[Lazarus]

The fact that I said this...
...It requires thinking human beings, and this herd of barbarians who are coming behind us lack even the basic motivation to achieve personal excellence......and you responded with this......oooh I bet you're the type who sits on his porch chewing tobacco, cursing every young whipper snapper who passes by for having a life......pretty much proves my point... Thank you for volunteering as a prime example of "Generation Snotty"... It makes my assertions so much easier to prove when you step up and hop thru the hoop like a good little circus dog...:rolleyes:

[Book]

The fact that I said this...
...and you responded with this......pretty much proves my point... Thank you for volunteering as a prime example of "Generation Snotty"... It makes my assertions so much easier to prove when you step up and hop thru the hoop like a good little circus dog...:rolleyes:
says the man who was snotty first.

Irony seems to be something you don't quite get.:roar: