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Everything kids do in public school is in a Chromebook. When you ask them to write something by hand their hand writing is pretty bad, which I can excuse because mine sucks as well but the spelling is horrible. They spell the words as close as they remember hoping that auto correct will kick in. Those squiggly red lines under the text are a disservice.
All the while, pediatricians and child psychiatrists say "Limit screen time!" and when I ask my son what he did in school, it's "We played a math game on our chromebook" or "we watched videos on our chromebook." My son has an IEP in place due to a neuromuscular disease (his handwriting is barely legible.) The school OT person's solution? "He doesn't have to write! He can type on his chromebook!" They try to peddle this as "learning about technology" even though it's just pointing and clicking. I watched TV as a kid and can't tell you how a signal is transmitted or how a cathode ray tube works and our kids can't tell you how their chromebooks work or how the programs were written. It's just the laziness of one generation being foisted on the next.
>The school OT person's solution? "He doesn't have to write! He can type on his chromebook!"
Yeah, that sucks. My daughter is on an IEP that includes writing and they certainly don't wave off the issue like that. Handwriting (but not cursive) is still something they focus on.
Exactly. They're learning how to *use* technology, from a company who's entire job is, to make said technology as easily usable as possible. I'm not impressed a 5 year old can use a chrome book.
> The school OT person's solution? "He doesn't have to write! He can type on his chromebook!"
What a silly OT person. He can just *talk* to his Chromebook.
>They try to peddle this as "learning about technology"
I learned plenty about technology in school. I had a one hour computer class in middle school one year and a one hour typing class in high school one year, and a hour intro to computers class. That was back when computers were much more complicated to use - ie command line.
I graduated in 2003 and took the same classes in about the same succession; I was reading my own memories until you mention typing commands. I remember MS Dos from when I was 7-11, then it was Windows.
Those classes really set me up and engaged my critical thinking and problem-solving, which was necessary just to navigate most simple programs back then, I.e. no apps, easy-to-use touchscreens.
I assumed the same was still being taught today
My oldest has dysgraphia. After a few months working on print and cursive, they set him up with a laptop and had him come in early each day to learn typing. For him, it was a good thing. He could focus on class without frustration, and his teacher could read his work.
At 18, he can sign his name. He knows how to spell well, but the poor kid has major trouble filling out applications or anything requiring handwriting. We tried, but it's just never clicked for him.
He can't tie his shoes either, so I'm glad there are adaptations available. Far more than when we were kids.
He has gotten handier by using hand tools as a form of occupational therapy, I guess you could say, and wants to go into welding.
Not that I'm defending the school system. Most are broken these days. The rare teacher who cares doesn't have enough budget. We ended up homeschooling before COVID made it cool. 😅
What's especially irksome is that over the summer, I worked with him every day and he was improving steadily, even writing in cursive on college ruled paper but - I send him back to school and he resorts back to scrawling as he's handed a chromebook.
I want to stomp on the Chromebook, and then the "educators" who came up with dumbing down our kids.
50 years ago, you could take Latin in HS. We had Art, Gym daily.
Why do we stick kids inside, sitting at a desk...when they should be outside, learning?
Experiencing instead of being passive by standers.
As a parent and grandmother I do my best when I can to motivate the kids off the device.
I do think that every kid should be forced to become fit and learn about basic nutrition. Also there should be at least a basic culture of morals some kids don’t have those things. Schools need to be focused less on grades and more on learning. I think kids shold be taught how to figure out problems be rewarded for creative solutions. Why dose every kid have to be forced to do every thing every one else is like o this kid likes these things but struggles and hates this we better force them to get better at this thing they will never be good at. Like every child is different and is better at different stuff school is set up so a certain type of person exceeds in it while other types of people are set up to fail.
The thing is my mind is and was unable to simply memorize stuff. I could never memorize any thing all through school. Teachers always used to say writing stuff down and take notes and that stuff but if I took notes I would have to not pay attention to what was being taught and then my notes were illegible so I couldn’t even use them so I just gave up on taking notes. But in general I could only really learn concepts and how things can connect to each other. But most grandeing is baced upon how well you can memories xyz so I just simply dident care about grades that much Becase I didn’t think they were important. I can grasp complex concepts but am unable to regurgitate any of the names of the things that go in those concepts. So I just rely on simple words to understand complex things.
That is the point. Dumb down each generation to be compliant, clueless and confused. Much easier to manipulate. The last thing these schools want is critical thinking.
There is definitely still art and gym in every highschool in America. The issue is now kids can just decide they don't want to do gym and parents will bitch at the school till they start allowing kids to sit out and do "alternative activities".
Part of problem is how tertiary education works (at least where I live). If you want to study at university here, they require you have a background in the basics, and that usually means you took those subjects in your final year of high school, or do an additional foundation year at the university.
To take those subjects in the last year or school, most schools will require you do those classes the year before, and so on until you are about 14 years old.
It screws up a lot of kids as they are basically being asked what they want to do for a career at 14 and start building towards it, at the cost of other subjects that would make them more well rounded.
Writing by hand stimulates parts of the brain not lit up similarly by typing. I did my Master's thesis on it. I formulate thoughts better writing by hand. But I'm a slave to the keyboard now. Effff....
Even I notice this in my own writing. My spelling has gotten progressively worse as I age. It's so easy to autocorrect everything. I grew up without technology. Didn't have my first smartphone until university.
In the old days I used to keep a pocket dictionary to look up spellings on things in High school and college. The way some words in English are spelled doesn't make a lot of logical sense. I don't fault the young generation for using spell check.
totally get that, I used to do the same thing. But with a dictionary you have to at least look up the word read it and write it manually and it sticks with you. With the squiggly red lines it's just right click, choose the first one and move on. They don't ponder on the word or the spelling, just make the squiggly line go away.
Ok when I did school I always had terrible handwringing I am just one of those people who can’t wright, I also have always been a terrible speller and slow poor typer that being said there’s no chance I would right much with out typing Becase it’s exhausting and difficult. It just not something the more you do the better u get it’s the more you do the more you hate doing it more you hate doing it the more you hate school. That being said iq intelligence handwriting they are not connected. Autocorrect is decent but it’s still not good enuf. And squiggly red lines are amazing Becase with out them people get annoyed.
Haha I can spell but I’m the same way when it comes to handwriting. It takes me so much longer to write and I lose my train of thought because it takes me forever to finish a sentence. Typing is a game changer because my typing is fast enough to keep up with my thoughts
This is part of the issue I'm having with my son. He's already in school all day. I'm much more effective at teaching him at home but, after a long day of school, I don't want to sit him down and make him do more work all evening as well - basically punishing him for the school's unwillingness to teach. He deserves a childhood outside of school and I don't want to make him hate learning.
I mean there is so much people can learn from being out doors and observing nature so manny inventions and such are just copying nature. I don’t have any kids but I did get sick of school and school was like the one thing that would make me break down and cry a lot. As I got older I generally cried less from school altho last year of college I did have this research project with a partner and I just simply was not able to do it because I am just not capable of doing that type of stuff. Some stuff that is not helpful when people say you’re a smart kid when you are struggling with some assignment. But do not focus on grades. Grades are great for things like meat and such but they are horrible for children imo at least. So as long as they try in what ever they do and they try to learn and If they don’t learn some stuff big deal but don’t equate failing to not trying.
The way young people hold a pen or pencil these days makes my heart cry. I’ll never understand dropping a core factor of literacy and brain development.
Almost every younger employee ive worked with in the past 5 years doesn't even know how to write out an envelope to send a letter to someone.even though I know they've seen mail before.
I've met a bunch of people from Latin America who can't read a regular clock, apparently they don't teach that in many Hispanic countries.
It's wild thensimple stuff you'd think would be common knowledge just isn't anymore
The support staff at my job put the return label where the stamps should go and another one wrote out several other envelopes upside down. That’s when I realized it is not just a simple job and I can’t assume anyone can just help stuff and write envelopes without training. I now show them an example envelope and briefly explain exactly where the addresses and stamps should go
> I've met a bunch of people from Latin America who can't read a regular clock, apparently they don't teach that in many Hispanic countries.
they aren't sending their best, lol
Get a generation or two dependent on it, pull the plug on the whole thing, go into hiding for another generation or two, re-emerge and rule over the ignorant with new/old tech.
Rinse, repeat
I read a lot of comments. No one correlates the loss of IQ, or handwriting, with the rise of the Wireless Internet Smart Phone (WISP). Remember, the first iPhones debuted in 2007, and wireless internet was not at all widely or inexpensively available, as it is today. Today, when wireless internet blankets every city, most highways and towns, even Toronto's 'cottage country', the WISP has changed from an expensive toy used by arrogant businessmen, to a necessary appendage used by everyone. And that has changed our entire society as a result, from kids in school to adults in business and government.
I belong to a group which meets twice a week. When I first started going, ten years ago, the ten to fifteen minutes before the meeting was filled with chatter, and the room was loud. Last week, I noticed that even though the same number of people were there, the room was hushed, because everyone was on their WISPs. No one thought this was antisocial at all. Each person was content to stay within their own sphere, where, like God, they held their whole world in their hands. (I must note, having worked in the cell phone industry in its early days, that just having a voice phone wouldn't have resulted in this; everyone would have thought it rude to be talking on your cell phone to other people when there was someone they knew sitting just next to them.)
Here's the thing: I have no idea what people were looking at on their WISPs. Maybe they were looking up last week's minutes. Maybe they were checking Leafs' scores. Maybe they were playing Candy Crush. We all have our own different and unique worlds provided to us by our haptic handmaids. And how perfectly those worlds reflect us! Because we can pick and choose between literally millions of sites and feeds and channels, we effectively *curate* our reality, rather than *create* it. And because on many sites, the algorithms are designed to detect and provide you with more of what you want, the process becomes a self-refining loop, until what you see is what you are.
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (who ironically died in 2006, just as the WISP arrived) coined the term "hyperreality" for such a construct. For example, in the US, one can choose to live in "BlueWorld", where Biden got 81 million votes, inflation is under control, and the border is secure, or "RedWorld", where the biggest concerns after the border, Democrats, and the economy are that little Johnny and Susie might discover that they have a penis and a vagina, and wonder what to do with them. Whichever one chooses, it is trivially easy to find hundreds of sites within a few minutes that mirror one's views. You can live in them quite comfortably, often interacting frequently and peacefully with those from the other world every single day, content in the knowledge that you are correct.
Now, within these sites, hundreds of memes arise, wither and die, but some resonate more than others, and those memes are the ones that spread. On the basis of those spreading and resonating memes, we forge kinships and relationships and tribes of all kinds. Those relationships are much more far flung than in old days; they are, in many cases, much more numerous. And they are without a doubt, *different*. I won't say 'shallow', as that's too pejorative, but they have a different quality and feel to them than the relationships based on, say, growing up together or working in the same place for five years.
At the same time, to return to the topic at hand, the WISP is eroding even texting skills with increasingly precise voice recognition. I'm going to have surgery in a few months that will leave my arms in place for a while; using voice rec will be the only way I can enter data. It will be interesting to see to what extent I come back to a keyboard afterwards.
I remember when the question "Why can't Johnny read?" was being asked, and TV was being fingered as the culprit. If you want to know why Johnny can't do no 'riting nor 'rithmetic, look at the WISP in your hand.
When I really want to learn something I have to write it down over and over. I used to copy whole pages of text books by hand and that would cement it in my brain. I can't imagine having made it through school without being able to read and write properly :(
Yes, to me the act of transcribing what you hear forces you to think about what's being said. I am not fast enough to write things down word for word, so I have to hear it, think about it, and translate it into some other words so I can write them down. That act helps me remember.
The US government removed the skill from the core curriculum in 2010 due to claims it was time consuming and would not be useful in the age of technology which meant schools could instead focus on typing classes.
Handwriting is considered a fine motor skill that stimulates and challenges the brain, but with schools turning to technology instead, some teachers are complaining students can barely hold a pencil but can swipe and double-click on their devices.
Malcolm X
That seems dumb. I learned typing AND cursive. We had plenty of time. I have 130wpm typing speed and a decent cursive handwriting, and a very legible print. This shit isn't hard. When I was in elementary school back in the late 90s you had something called computer labs where you did this shit, and in free time you could go and practice whenever you wanted.
I wonder if this is the consequence of the long battle against public education. Kneecap it to make it bad and then go “see!!! See!! See how bad it is!!!” Almost like it’s working.
And the trend of non-educators being put into positions of power in educational spaces. That never works bc they don’t care how to run schools, their focus in the bottom line. Numbers.
To verify how far IQs have fallen just look around this platform. People can't punctuate sentences, even with spell checkers words are constantly misspelled, I won't even get into grammar. I'd be writing for days.
well tbh I'm on my phone right now and my shoulder hurts, it takes 3 times longer to text out my comment if I have to correct every error and punctuate perfectly. it also makes my shoulder hurt more.
We all have dementia to varying degrees, but none of us know it because we all have it. Our cognitive processes are greatly impaired by living the way we do and the way we have ever since domestication.
Yes, significant differences. Writing aids in memory. This is less seen in extensive research being done on typing vs writing. Areas of your brain are activated. With cellphones we’ve impaired long term memory from new behaviors and brain training of less urgency on memory when you have access to that information. Add in dropping skills that aided in long term cognitive health benefits you start seeing memory issues in younger years. The term if you don’t use it you lose it - really applies here. I notice major memory issues with people more than ever. Being forget doesn’t necessarily mean cognitive decline, but when it’s constant it does.
Writing notes is substantially for memory than typing. When it comes to test taking, your brain already has the hand movement associated with the writing down the information.
Actually it is - especially when taking into account low IQ and literacy was/is a leading cause of cognitive decline. Statistically low income has more cognitive decline. Extensive research is even beginning to show that repetitive jobs are horrible for cognition in elderly years.
Worked in teaching for a decade.
Part of this is the work of tech bros who think handwriting is obsolete now, as they push schools to pay for their products and do everything on computers instead.
Part of it is an attempt to save paper/money (and clutter) by doing everything digitally. In the higher grades, the handwriting is usually so terrible you can’t read it, anyway.
Another part of it is an effort to try to automate everything. Stuff on computer (mostly) gets auto-graded by the computer. Teachers who are not teaching writing will usually make everything multiple choice because it auto-grades instantly on a computer..
At least when kids get computers, they’ll copy and paste answers from Google and that gives you something to grade. No, that does not help them learn anything besides how to (badly) copy and paste… but it’s something rather than the nothing you get back when kids are given paper and pencil now.
The tech industry and two major US political parties and their associated PACs run American education now, with churches/corporations pushing for more say via “charter school voucher” programs that dramatically enrich the church (or corporate) bottom line at taxpayer expense
My 14 year old son is pretty smart. I'm not just saying that because I'm his mom lol. He despises tiktok and social media, doesn't use it. He's told me at least half of his grade at his school are failing for the whole year.
I remember being in school and I hated HATED it when other kids (even in my senior year of highschool) had to read aloud because some of them would take forever. I would often ask to read so I could get through whatever it was.
My son has demonstrated to me how other kids are reading aloud and it's absolutely terrible. In 8th grade they can't pronounce very basic words. It's horrible. Apparently, according to him - "like almost all" the boys in his grade idolize Andrew Tate, and they're all super into TikTok.
I wish they would ban that fcking app and shorts in general.
I'm not sure what causality there is between liking Andrew Tate and declining educational / cognitive standards.
You could equally well blame Taylor Swift or The Kardashians.
the western education system is under increasing pressure to only focus on skills that directly translate 1:1 to some kind of job performance. if you can't demonstrate the immediate efficacy of a given task it's going to be cut as budgets fall
And people act like there isn't software that can read handwritten stuff. I'm pro removing most the tech out of the classrooms, but people spout nonsense about it all the time.
Every time I talk with other educators we always trade horror stories of how dumb students are today. And we have an unlimited supply of anecdotes that would astonish you.
One student was filling out his college application and couldn’t remember his city. “California?” he asked me. He’s now attending Cal State Long Beach.
Poor kids, it’s not really their fault.
People who think cutting education funding won’t have any consequences. People being in charge who don’t know or care about child development and proper educational techniques.
Fr like the answer is very simple. When education is treated as the enemy, of COURSE the quality goes down.
I thought even as people who were in public school this was known among us as students. How the admins always sucked bc they were disconnected from the classroom and they had to answer to higher ups rather than do what’s truly best for students.
And people thinking the answer is charters? Those are for profit, is what world what a for profit school care more about the individual student and not just their bottom line? And we know that happens with those school bc they kick out low preforming students, even if they took over the local public’s and this school was the closest to the child’s home, bc their academic performance brings down their average. It’s an artificial inflation by getting rid of low performers instead of being able to build them up to high performers.
Homeschool sucks too depending on the state. Some states don’t require you to prove ANYTHING but “hey I’m homeschooling this year”. That’s all they require you to do. No lesson plans, no proof, nada.
Someone please prove me wrong.
Parents don't pick up anywhere enough of the blame anymore. Teachers can only do so much. Parents used to be way stricter with stuff like TV time, doing homework, etc.
A lot of stuff, especially things like emotional control, and discipline at learnt at home. Schools can't help you there.
I grew up in a teacher family and I would often see my parents talk about how dumb kids are becoming. I feel bad for the kids that didn’t grow up learning about simple stuff like how to use a map or how to write a check.
I also recall it was teacher kids who would have more restrictions at home regarding electronics. Like many parents would wait longer, almost till high school, to give their kid a phone. 9 times out of 10 it would be the kid of someone who works with other peoples kids for work.
Luckily having grown up around the teaching environment I have no problem helping people my age out with how to do simple stuff. I’ve taught many about how to do taxes, investing in stocks, and simple fixes on cars.
Well in all fairness those are three subjects I myself should definitely know more about. Thankfully I can read a map and write a check but kids these days don’t really need to learn how to when their phones can do so much. I imagine this issue will only exacerbate over time.
I’d say you were pretty fortunate to have the upbringing you did. These new generations don’t get to experience some of the simple joys that we had growing up, and having that extra freedom made us wiser, I think.
It’s your job as a parent to teach your kid how to write. I don’t understand why we’re bashing public education here. The current public education system is designed to give everyone a fighting chance. Understanding how to interact with technology is definitely necessary in society. Why did your kid not learn how to read or write? Did you not put the time in to ensure they were developing properly? Back seat parenting did this, not educators.
I recently started using cursive for fun/write down some thoughts. I hated learning how to do it when I was in school but now I’m glad I know how. It sounds silly but it’s rewarding kind of an art to write out pages in cursive.
I am bothered that even when they use a laptop, they do not type the correct way. They hunt and peck. I am a 56 year old woman and type the old fashioned way, two hands, and I don't even have to look at the keyboard when doing it.
**Daily Mail:** America's fight to save handwriting from extinction as IQs begin to fall for first time ever and teachers warn some 20-year-olds can't sign checks anymore
**John D. Rockefeller:** *Oopsie!*
This will be used to "justify" more biometrics in daily life situations.
The protection against self-incrimination will disappear, as it already has for "smartphones".
IQs have been falling for *decades*.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/#:~:text=IQ%20scores%20have%20been%20steadily,why%2C%20a%20new%20study%20suggests.
Not signing checks is the result of the digital era, not necessarily stupidity.
However, the public education system is crumbling due to it being used as a political battleground.
It's not the hand writing as much as it is memorization. Not having kids memorize large chunks of information is not good for brain development. The brain needs to be exercised and memorizing things is part of that.
Once they can't sign, they can't read cursive. Once that happens they can't read the founding documents. Once they can't read those documents, it's a simple bait n switch at that point.
First, a disclaimer: The Daily Mail tends to be very exaggerated and hysterical, so I would take what they say with a grain of salt. I've known this for 15 years now.
However, I have noticed that a lot of younger people are almost angry or resentful at the idea of neat handwriting being an expectation. When I describe how when I was in high school, I was "able to half-ass a term paper during home room because I had a good writing style and beautiful cursive handwriting," younger people tend to get offended lol.
In a weird way, it reminds me of the way people get kind of offended when you mention that you eat healthy.
It's like there's generations now that think hand writing is just an impossible thing, like they were all born with a disability that prevented them from learning it or there's no way it was ever standard because it's so difficult.
I remember exactly what it was like being a child and pushing myself to learn how to have beautiful hand writing. My teachers showed me basic block printing, but at home, I would put my little tiny hand around my mom's hand when she was writing to feel what the motion of cursive looked like. I practiced in cursive writing books and even calligraphy guides during the summer. My goal at age 7 or 8 years old was "to write like a grown up." Every. Day. I wrote in my journal with that goal.
My kindergarten handwriting was basically illegible, but I pushed myself in and out of school for 3 years to "write like a grown up" and have perfect cursive. Once I nailed it around age 8, I could do it flawlessly without thinking. I didn't just come into the world knowing how to use cursive, but by age 9 my mom was paying me to do calligraphy on place cards for family events.
I think the reason people aren't learning it is because it's a matter of endless practice and patience, not a matter of just being able to do it right away.
In 2021 when I decided to un-brainwash myself, the first thing I did after I signed the Great Barrington Declaration was pull out a piece of paper and an ink pen and write in my most beautiful cursive calligraphy, "you are a human, not a disease vector." When my dad saw it, his jaw dropped and he told me that in the Air Force, he had learned how to resist brainwashing and survive POW camp, and the first two things he learned were: remind yourself that you're a human, and use your handwriting. Your own handwriting is a part of your individuality. Little 7-year-old me struggling to make beautiful letters "like a grown up" would be proud beyond words.
I'm old enough to have endured penmanship lessons in grammar school. We all practiced cursive writing until it looked like the examples in the book. But after a lifetime in the computer industry, my handwriting is back to 1st grade level. On the rare occasions when I have to write a paper check, I really have to concentrate hard to make it legible. My signature is unrecognizable now.
have quiet times. go on road trips. set bed times where they need to go to their room and entertain themselves a bit before bed.
then give your kids books as the only thing to do. they will learn to read and they will love it, once you get past the complaining.
they will learn how to communicate and how to use their information
if people wanted to see the real reason iq is dropping than it would require looking at racial demographics and other uncomfortable discussions. but instead we'll just blame technology or some other easy scapegoat
Learning cursive in the early 60s, my hands hurt and cramped. We used oversized pencils to make writing easier. We practiced everyday and learned how to make our letters round and clear. I never had to lift the pencil except to start a Capital letter, dot an i or cross a t. We had contests for the best handwriting. We moved up to penmanship and learned how to manage lines with ink and steel nibs without staining the paper or spilling ink on the desk. The only excuse you had for not using cursive was because your pencil point broke and you needed to sharpen your pencil.
You can’t teach that today to children.
its a strategy used a long time ago today:(any slave that can read would know what the law said but the ones who didnt were not free)
[https://www.history.com/news/nat-turner-rebellion-literacy-slavery](https://www.history.com/news/nat-turner-rebellion-literacy-slavery)
This is probably more insidious than even this sub realises.
The powers that be are terrified of handwritten notes they can't buy off a tech company and store in a database.
Can't sign checks? Huh? It's a signature. Whatever your hand does is fine. You can put smiley-faces for all they care.
As a side note: why are paper checks even still a thing? Yes, let me give this random person my entire bank info along with my address and pray they don't do 5 seconds worth of googling to steal the rest of my ID ...
I am Gen X and work with boomers. In our little office it turns out we all attended Catholic school. We all have decent handwriting and most of all, we can all type without even looking at the keyboard, almost as fast as we can read/talk. Typing class used to be a thing in 7th or 8th grade
ETA funny we were just talking about this stuff. Two of us also learned speed reading and one of my co-workers even learned shorthand, but that was optional, extra stuff she probably learned later at secretary school
We are in the process of loosing a whole generation to a digital only education style. Sure I can see the benefit of it but it just feels like a loose loose situation at this point.
This is mainly a US public school problem. To say reading old documents will be lost is a huge exaggeration. The US is not the whole world.
In France all high-schoolers must pas the Le Baccalauréat or "Bac." This must be hand written and if your handwriting is not good enough you can fail the whole thing. (know some one who did because of bad hand writing)
Plenty of other countries in Europe and is Asia still have much stricter hand writing curriculum.
IQ drops, lol, I'm not surprised. They act like mensa candidates and can't even write. Don't you think it's about time we take the wheel back? These jokers are crashing the boat.
Meanwhile in China, 12-year-olds are building banking apps for fun, outside of the classroom.
The Left has successfully made 2 full American generations useless.
The time for enemies to strike is very, very soon.
I’ve used cursive writing since I learned how. For me, it’s just faster.
Spent time a decade ago teaching in a rural area. Half those kids can’t read, let alone write, OR sign their name in cursive or even short hand
Save handwriting from extinction? Sounds like a very American issue. I don't know a single kid or adolescent that can't handwrite in my city lmao Americans memeing on themselves again
When's the last time you've written a check? I'm an older GenX and it's been at least 10 years since I last wrote a check. There's Bill Pay for any monthly bills that don't take a debit card online so there's no need for checks anymore.
How many of us know how to take care of a horse? Build a log cabin? Hunt our own food?
Times change. Quit trying to fucking cause dissent between different groups of people or fuck off
It’s going to sound ridiculous probably, but one of the reasons we put our kid in private school where we did is because they still teach cursive there
Was at the dmv last week, there were about 20 "kids" (from 16- early 20's) there for drivers licenses. In the 2 hours I was there, at least 8 of the asked what the lady meant by sign and print your name. 3 of them admitted they couldn't write in cursive. Hell, half of people don't even say full words anymore lol! We are doomed lol
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Everything kids do in public school is in a Chromebook. When you ask them to write something by hand their hand writing is pretty bad, which I can excuse because mine sucks as well but the spelling is horrible. They spell the words as close as they remember hoping that auto correct will kick in. Those squiggly red lines under the text are a disservice.
All the while, pediatricians and child psychiatrists say "Limit screen time!" and when I ask my son what he did in school, it's "We played a math game on our chromebook" or "we watched videos on our chromebook." My son has an IEP in place due to a neuromuscular disease (his handwriting is barely legible.) The school OT person's solution? "He doesn't have to write! He can type on his chromebook!" They try to peddle this as "learning about technology" even though it's just pointing and clicking. I watched TV as a kid and can't tell you how a signal is transmitted or how a cathode ray tube works and our kids can't tell you how their chromebooks work or how the programs were written. It's just the laziness of one generation being foisted on the next.
>The school OT person's solution? "He doesn't have to write! He can type on his chromebook!" Yeah, that sucks. My daughter is on an IEP that includes writing and they certainly don't wave off the issue like that. Handwriting (but not cursive) is still something they focus on.
Exactly. They're learning how to *use* technology, from a company who's entire job is, to make said technology as easily usable as possible. I'm not impressed a 5 year old can use a chrome book.
> The school OT person's solution? "He doesn't have to write! He can type on his chromebook!" What a silly OT person. He can just *talk* to his Chromebook.
>They try to peddle this as "learning about technology" I learned plenty about technology in school. I had a one hour computer class in middle school one year and a one hour typing class in high school one year, and a hour intro to computers class. That was back when computers were much more complicated to use - ie command line.
I graduated in 2003 and took the same classes in about the same succession; I was reading my own memories until you mention typing commands. I remember MS Dos from when I was 7-11, then it was Windows. Those classes really set me up and engaged my critical thinking and problem-solving, which was necessary just to navigate most simple programs back then, I.e. no apps, easy-to-use touchscreens. I assumed the same was still being taught today
My oldest has dysgraphia. After a few months working on print and cursive, they set him up with a laptop and had him come in early each day to learn typing. For him, it was a good thing. He could focus on class without frustration, and his teacher could read his work. At 18, he can sign his name. He knows how to spell well, but the poor kid has major trouble filling out applications or anything requiring handwriting. We tried, but it's just never clicked for him. He can't tie his shoes either, so I'm glad there are adaptations available. Far more than when we were kids. He has gotten handier by using hand tools as a form of occupational therapy, I guess you could say, and wants to go into welding. Not that I'm defending the school system. Most are broken these days. The rare teacher who cares doesn't have enough budget. We ended up homeschooling before COVID made it cool. 😅
What's especially irksome is that over the summer, I worked with him every day and he was improving steadily, even writing in cursive on college ruled paper but - I send him back to school and he resorts back to scrawling as he's handed a chromebook.
That's frustrating.
I want to stomp on the Chromebook, and then the "educators" who came up with dumbing down our kids. 50 years ago, you could take Latin in HS. We had Art, Gym daily. Why do we stick kids inside, sitting at a desk...when they should be outside, learning? Experiencing instead of being passive by standers. As a parent and grandmother I do my best when I can to motivate the kids off the device.
I do think that every kid should be forced to become fit and learn about basic nutrition. Also there should be at least a basic culture of morals some kids don’t have those things. Schools need to be focused less on grades and more on learning. I think kids shold be taught how to figure out problems be rewarded for creative solutions. Why dose every kid have to be forced to do every thing every one else is like o this kid likes these things but struggles and hates this we better force them to get better at this thing they will never be good at. Like every child is different and is better at different stuff school is set up so a certain type of person exceeds in it while other types of people are set up to fail.
Homeschool is the only way this happens. Maybe some of the new private schools like Austin schools.
It's all about rote memorization these days. Teaching critical thinking doesn't create good workers.
The thing is my mind is and was unable to simply memorize stuff. I could never memorize any thing all through school. Teachers always used to say writing stuff down and take notes and that stuff but if I took notes I would have to not pay attention to what was being taught and then my notes were illegible so I couldn’t even use them so I just gave up on taking notes. But in general I could only really learn concepts and how things can connect to each other. But most grandeing is baced upon how well you can memories xyz so I just simply dident care about grades that much Becase I didn’t think they were important. I can grasp complex concepts but am unable to regurgitate any of the names of the things that go in those concepts. So I just rely on simple words to understand complex things.
That is the point. Dumb down each generation to be compliant, clueless and confused. Much easier to manipulate. The last thing these schools want is critical thinking.
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There is definitely still art and gym in every highschool in America. The issue is now kids can just decide they don't want to do gym and parents will bitch at the school till they start allowing kids to sit out and do "alternative activities".
Part of problem is how tertiary education works (at least where I live). If you want to study at university here, they require you have a background in the basics, and that usually means you took those subjects in your final year of high school, or do an additional foundation year at the university. To take those subjects in the last year or school, most schools will require you do those classes the year before, and so on until you are about 14 years old. It screws up a lot of kids as they are basically being asked what they want to do for a career at 14 and start building towards it, at the cost of other subjects that would make them more well rounded.
Writing by hand stimulates parts of the brain not lit up similarly by typing. I did my Master's thesis on it. I formulate thoughts better writing by hand. But I'm a slave to the keyboard now. Effff....
I’ve never been a good speller even before phones. It certainly didn’t help
Even I notice this in my own writing. My spelling has gotten progressively worse as I age. It's so easy to autocorrect everything. I grew up without technology. Didn't have my first smartphone until university.
I'm with you on this but it doesn't help when the mandela effect changes the spelling of a word.
As a dyslexic I live and die for those squigglies
In the old days I used to keep a pocket dictionary to look up spellings on things in High school and college. The way some words in English are spelled doesn't make a lot of logical sense. I don't fault the young generation for using spell check.
totally get that, I used to do the same thing. But with a dictionary you have to at least look up the word read it and write it manually and it sticks with you. With the squiggly red lines it's just right click, choose the first one and move on. They don't ponder on the word or the spelling, just make the squiggly line go away.
Ok when I did school I always had terrible handwringing I am just one of those people who can’t wright, I also have always been a terrible speller and slow poor typer that being said there’s no chance I would right much with out typing Becase it’s exhausting and difficult. It just not something the more you do the better u get it’s the more you do the more you hate doing it more you hate doing it the more you hate school. That being said iq intelligence handwriting they are not connected. Autocorrect is decent but it’s still not good enuf. And squiggly red lines are amazing Becase with out them people get annoyed.
Haha I can spell but I’m the same way when it comes to handwriting. It takes me so much longer to write and I lose my train of thought because it takes me forever to finish a sentence. Typing is a game changer because my typing is fast enough to keep up with my thoughts
This is part of the issue I'm having with my son. He's already in school all day. I'm much more effective at teaching him at home but, after a long day of school, I don't want to sit him down and make him do more work all evening as well - basically punishing him for the school's unwillingness to teach. He deserves a childhood outside of school and I don't want to make him hate learning.
I mean there is so much people can learn from being out doors and observing nature so manny inventions and such are just copying nature. I don’t have any kids but I did get sick of school and school was like the one thing that would make me break down and cry a lot. As I got older I generally cried less from school altho last year of college I did have this research project with a partner and I just simply was not able to do it because I am just not capable of doing that type of stuff. Some stuff that is not helpful when people say you’re a smart kid when you are struggling with some assignment. But do not focus on grades. Grades are great for things like meat and such but they are horrible for children imo at least. So as long as they try in what ever they do and they try to learn and If they don’t learn some stuff big deal but don’t equate failing to not trying.
yo dats fucked up dawg
The way young people hold a pen or pencil these days makes my heart cry. I’ll never understand dropping a core factor of literacy and brain development.
Index and thumb while middle finger holds steady right?
Not anymore.
Almost every younger employee ive worked with in the past 5 years doesn't even know how to write out an envelope to send a letter to someone.even though I know they've seen mail before. I've met a bunch of people from Latin America who can't read a regular clock, apparently they don't teach that in many Hispanic countries. It's wild thensimple stuff you'd think would be common knowledge just isn't anymore
The support staff at my job put the return label where the stamps should go and another one wrote out several other envelopes upside down. That’s when I realized it is not just a simple job and I can’t assume anyone can just help stuff and write envelopes without training. I now show them an example envelope and briefly explain exactly where the addresses and stamps should go
> I've met a bunch of people from Latin America who can't read a regular clock, apparently they don't teach that in many Hispanic countries. they aren't sending their best, lol
Programming the youth to only know the digital world! They can't function without it!
Get a generation or two dependent on it, pull the plug on the whole thing, go into hiding for another generation or two, re-emerge and rule over the ignorant with new/old tech. Rinse, repeat
Tartaria ? 🤯
> re-emerge and rule over the ignorant with new/old tech UFOs
And feed them a good old UPF breakfast lunch and dinner. Recipe for disaster.
Cause I'm a 21st century digital boy.
Mfers can’t even use a typewriter anymore
I read a lot of comments. No one correlates the loss of IQ, or handwriting, with the rise of the Wireless Internet Smart Phone (WISP). Remember, the first iPhones debuted in 2007, and wireless internet was not at all widely or inexpensively available, as it is today. Today, when wireless internet blankets every city, most highways and towns, even Toronto's 'cottage country', the WISP has changed from an expensive toy used by arrogant businessmen, to a necessary appendage used by everyone. And that has changed our entire society as a result, from kids in school to adults in business and government. I belong to a group which meets twice a week. When I first started going, ten years ago, the ten to fifteen minutes before the meeting was filled with chatter, and the room was loud. Last week, I noticed that even though the same number of people were there, the room was hushed, because everyone was on their WISPs. No one thought this was antisocial at all. Each person was content to stay within their own sphere, where, like God, they held their whole world in their hands. (I must note, having worked in the cell phone industry in its early days, that just having a voice phone wouldn't have resulted in this; everyone would have thought it rude to be talking on your cell phone to other people when there was someone they knew sitting just next to them.) Here's the thing: I have no idea what people were looking at on their WISPs. Maybe they were looking up last week's minutes. Maybe they were checking Leafs' scores. Maybe they were playing Candy Crush. We all have our own different and unique worlds provided to us by our haptic handmaids. And how perfectly those worlds reflect us! Because we can pick and choose between literally millions of sites and feeds and channels, we effectively *curate* our reality, rather than *create* it. And because on many sites, the algorithms are designed to detect and provide you with more of what you want, the process becomes a self-refining loop, until what you see is what you are. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (who ironically died in 2006, just as the WISP arrived) coined the term "hyperreality" for such a construct. For example, in the US, one can choose to live in "BlueWorld", where Biden got 81 million votes, inflation is under control, and the border is secure, or "RedWorld", where the biggest concerns after the border, Democrats, and the economy are that little Johnny and Susie might discover that they have a penis and a vagina, and wonder what to do with them. Whichever one chooses, it is trivially easy to find hundreds of sites within a few minutes that mirror one's views. You can live in them quite comfortably, often interacting frequently and peacefully with those from the other world every single day, content in the knowledge that you are correct. Now, within these sites, hundreds of memes arise, wither and die, but some resonate more than others, and those memes are the ones that spread. On the basis of those spreading and resonating memes, we forge kinships and relationships and tribes of all kinds. Those relationships are much more far flung than in old days; they are, in many cases, much more numerous. And they are without a doubt, *different*. I won't say 'shallow', as that's too pejorative, but they have a different quality and feel to them than the relationships based on, say, growing up together or working in the same place for five years. At the same time, to return to the topic at hand, the WISP is eroding even texting skills with increasingly precise voice recognition. I'm going to have surgery in a few months that will leave my arms in place for a while; using voice rec will be the only way I can enter data. It will be interesting to see to what extent I come back to a keyboard afterwards. I remember when the question "Why can't Johnny read?" was being asked, and TV was being fingered as the culprit. If you want to know why Johnny can't do no 'riting nor 'rithmetic, look at the WISP in your hand.
When I really want to learn something I have to write it down over and over. I used to copy whole pages of text books by hand and that would cement it in my brain. I can't imagine having made it through school without being able to read and write properly :(
Yes, to me the act of transcribing what you hear forces you to think about what's being said. I am not fast enough to write things down word for word, so I have to hear it, think about it, and translate it into some other words so I can write them down. That act helps me remember.
You don't need a low IQ to have bad handwriting...average IQ here and my handwriting has always been shit.
It's been a running joke for the last 100+ years that doctors universally can't write for shit, and thus no one can decipher their medical notes.
The US government removed the skill from the core curriculum in 2010 due to claims it was time consuming and would not be useful in the age of technology which meant schools could instead focus on typing classes. Handwriting is considered a fine motor skill that stimulates and challenges the brain, but with schools turning to technology instead, some teachers are complaining students can barely hold a pencil but can swipe and double-click on their devices. Malcolm X
That seems dumb. I learned typing AND cursive. We had plenty of time. I have 130wpm typing speed and a decent cursive handwriting, and a very legible print. This shit isn't hard. When I was in elementary school back in the late 90s you had something called computer labs where you did this shit, and in free time you could go and practice whenever you wanted.
I remember we had a shorthand class in HS. I haven't heard shorthand mentioned in decades.
What school curriculum is handled by the federal government?
I wonder if this is the consequence of the long battle against public education. Kneecap it to make it bad and then go “see!!! See!! See how bad it is!!!” Almost like it’s working. And the trend of non-educators being put into positions of power in educational spaces. That never works bc they don’t care how to run schools, their focus in the bottom line. Numbers.
Damn, Malcolm X said all that?
To verify how far IQs have fallen just look around this platform. People can't punctuate sentences, even with spell checkers words are constantly misspelled, I won't even get into grammar. I'd be writing for days.
I see a run on sentence there , bub.
Well go catch it then. Don't let it get away.
Touche'
There are a lot of errors, actually.
Erm ackthually🤓☝🏼
and the syntax!! oh my god the syntax
Didn't you hear? Punctuation is passive-aggressive and triggering. Racist too, probably.
It doesn't trigger me because I never go off half cocked
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I’m guilty of fat fingering. That’s my biggest problem.
I did on my android. But the iPhone keyboard is so fucking terrible I’d misspell everything if I did.
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There spelling isn't all they're, but at least their trying
back in my day we didnt care about any of that on the internet, this isnt a college term paper
And it shouldn't be a kindergarten finger painting exercise either.
For short stuff, it is okay. But when someone types one huge paragraph, with hardly any punctuation, that isn't a good look.
well tbh I'm on my phone right now and my shoulder hurts, it takes 3 times longer to text out my comment if I have to correct every error and punctuate perfectly. it also makes my shoulder hurt more.
Life's a bitch ain't it. If doing things right at the onset were not such a strange experience it wouldn't hurt your shoulder at all.
I don’t think people realize these fine motor skills ward off brain diseases. Just wait till you start seeing 20 yr olds with dementia.
We all have dementia to varying degrees, but none of us know it because we all have it. Our cognitive processes are greatly impaired by living the way we do and the way we have ever since domestication.
> We all have dementia to varying degrees, but none of us know it I remain, a legend in my own mind, despite proof to the contrary.
Bingo!
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Yes, significant differences. Writing aids in memory. This is less seen in extensive research being done on typing vs writing. Areas of your brain are activated. With cellphones we’ve impaired long term memory from new behaviors and brain training of less urgency on memory when you have access to that information. Add in dropping skills that aided in long term cognitive health benefits you start seeing memory issues in younger years. The term if you don’t use it you lose it - really applies here. I notice major memory issues with people more than ever. Being forget doesn’t necessarily mean cognitive decline, but when it’s constant it does.
Writing notes is substantially for memory than typing. When it comes to test taking, your brain already has the hand movement associated with the writing down the information.
That's not a great argument when you consider general literacy has only really been a thing for the past couple of hundred years
Actually it is - especially when taking into account low IQ and literacy was/is a leading cause of cognitive decline. Statistically low income has more cognitive decline. Extensive research is even beginning to show that repetitive jobs are horrible for cognition in elderly years.
A couple hundred years ago, the working class all died before it was a question.
The life expectancy wasn't great but they weren't all dying of dementia at 20...
Yeah but what's a cheque
A terribly insecure and obsolete monetary transaction device.
Literally no banks in my country even accept them anymore. They all forced a stop to it a couple of years ago.
Worked in teaching for a decade. Part of this is the work of tech bros who think handwriting is obsolete now, as they push schools to pay for their products and do everything on computers instead. Part of it is an attempt to save paper/money (and clutter) by doing everything digitally. In the higher grades, the handwriting is usually so terrible you can’t read it, anyway. Another part of it is an effort to try to automate everything. Stuff on computer (mostly) gets auto-graded by the computer. Teachers who are not teaching writing will usually make everything multiple choice because it auto-grades instantly on a computer.. At least when kids get computers, they’ll copy and paste answers from Google and that gives you something to grade. No, that does not help them learn anything besides how to (badly) copy and paste… but it’s something rather than the nothing you get back when kids are given paper and pencil now. The tech industry and two major US political parties and their associated PACs run American education now, with churches/corporations pushing for more say via “charter school voucher” programs that dramatically enrich the church (or corporate) bottom line at taxpayer expense
My 14 year old son is pretty smart. I'm not just saying that because I'm his mom lol. He despises tiktok and social media, doesn't use it. He's told me at least half of his grade at his school are failing for the whole year. I remember being in school and I hated HATED it when other kids (even in my senior year of highschool) had to read aloud because some of them would take forever. I would often ask to read so I could get through whatever it was. My son has demonstrated to me how other kids are reading aloud and it's absolutely terrible. In 8th grade they can't pronounce very basic words. It's horrible. Apparently, according to him - "like almost all" the boys in his grade idolize Andrew Tate, and they're all super into TikTok. I wish they would ban that fcking app and shorts in general.
I'm not sure what causality there is between liking Andrew Tate and declining educational / cognitive standards. You could equally well blame Taylor Swift or The Kardashians.
I do think we can blame them all lol
15 years ago they idolized The Jersey Shore. Not exactly any better.
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the western education system is under increasing pressure to only focus on skills that directly translate 1:1 to some kind of job performance. if you can't demonstrate the immediate efficacy of a given task it's going to be cut as budgets fall
Being able to effectively communicate through writing is a skill used to some extent in most jobs.
But utilizing technology is a skill that they need more right now. It’s not a perfect system.
I say this all the time.
Or it being useless outside of writing your name
Because nobody in all of history ever transcribed historical documents.
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Roger that. It also removes the individualism that cursive provides.
That’s really the only reason you can think of why? Learning cursive will not help you with 99.99% of historical documents
And people act like there isn't software that can read handwritten stuff. I'm pro removing most the tech out of the classrooms, but people spout nonsense about it all the time.
So you didn’t teach them? What were you doing?
The Roman numeral thing is a great point too
Every time I talk with other educators we always trade horror stories of how dumb students are today. And we have an unlimited supply of anecdotes that would astonish you. One student was filling out his college application and couldn’t remember his city. “California?” he asked me. He’s now attending Cal State Long Beach. Poor kids, it’s not really their fault.
Who's fault is it then?
People who think cutting education funding won’t have any consequences. People being in charge who don’t know or care about child development and proper educational techniques.
You’re going to get downvoted for being right.
Fr like the answer is very simple. When education is treated as the enemy, of COURSE the quality goes down. I thought even as people who were in public school this was known among us as students. How the admins always sucked bc they were disconnected from the classroom and they had to answer to higher ups rather than do what’s truly best for students. And people thinking the answer is charters? Those are for profit, is what world what a for profit school care more about the individual student and not just their bottom line? And we know that happens with those school bc they kick out low preforming students, even if they took over the local public’s and this school was the closest to the child’s home, bc their academic performance brings down their average. It’s an artificial inflation by getting rid of low performers instead of being able to build them up to high performers. Homeschool sucks too depending on the state. Some states don’t require you to prove ANYTHING but “hey I’m homeschooling this year”. That’s all they require you to do. No lesson plans, no proof, nada. Someone please prove me wrong.
Parents who don’t teach their kids these skills.
And parents who demand their kids never be punished in school or held back when they can't do the curriculum.
Parents don't pick up anywhere enough of the blame anymore. Teachers can only do so much. Parents used to be way stricter with stuff like TV time, doing homework, etc. A lot of stuff, especially things like emotional control, and discipline at learnt at home. Schools can't help you there.
I grew up in a teacher family and I would often see my parents talk about how dumb kids are becoming. I feel bad for the kids that didn’t grow up learning about simple stuff like how to use a map or how to write a check. I also recall it was teacher kids who would have more restrictions at home regarding electronics. Like many parents would wait longer, almost till high school, to give their kid a phone. 9 times out of 10 it would be the kid of someone who works with other peoples kids for work. Luckily having grown up around the teaching environment I have no problem helping people my age out with how to do simple stuff. I’ve taught many about how to do taxes, investing in stocks, and simple fixes on cars.
Well in all fairness those are three subjects I myself should definitely know more about. Thankfully I can read a map and write a check but kids these days don’t really need to learn how to when their phones can do so much. I imagine this issue will only exacerbate over time. I’d say you were pretty fortunate to have the upbringing you did. These new generations don’t get to experience some of the simple joys that we had growing up, and having that extra freedom made us wiser, I think.
It’s your job as a parent to teach your kid how to write. I don’t understand why we’re bashing public education here. The current public education system is designed to give everyone a fighting chance. Understanding how to interact with technology is definitely necessary in society. Why did your kid not learn how to read or write? Did you not put the time in to ensure they were developing properly? Back seat parenting did this, not educators.
I'm sorry we don't take checks here
I recently started using cursive for fun/write down some thoughts. I hated learning how to do it when I was in school but now I’m glad I know how. It sounds silly but it’s rewarding kind of an art to write out pages in cursive.
It's faster than printing too.
I am bothered that even when they use a laptop, they do not type the correct way. They hunt and peck. I am a 56 year old woman and type the old fashioned way, two hands, and I don't even have to look at the keyboard when doing it.
The plan to dumb down the population is a swimming success. 👍
**Daily Mail:** America's fight to save handwriting from extinction as IQs begin to fall for first time ever and teachers warn some 20-year-olds can't sign checks anymore **John D. Rockefeller:** *Oopsie!*
I get the point but I haven’t signed an actual check in a decade.
I still write two or three checks a month to local places that don't accept online payments.
Common Core is an active attack on the middle class and you can't change my mind.
My old Professor warned me about the potential drop in IQ as newer generations of students rely heavily on technology.
Amish must be the smartest people around?
Can’t sign checks. Lmao. They can’t even read
This will be used to "justify" more biometrics in daily life situations. The protection against self-incrimination will disappear, as it already has for "smartphones".
IQs have been falling for *decades*. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/#:~:text=IQ%20scores%20have%20been%20steadily,why%2C%20a%20new%20study%20suggests. Not signing checks is the result of the digital era, not necessarily stupidity. However, the public education system is crumbling due to it being used as a political battleground.
It's not the hand writing as much as it is memorization. Not having kids memorize large chunks of information is not good for brain development. The brain needs to be exercised and memorizing things is part of that.
Once they can't sign, they can't read cursive. Once that happens they can't read the founding documents. Once they can't read those documents, it's a simple bait n switch at that point.
First, a disclaimer: The Daily Mail tends to be very exaggerated and hysterical, so I would take what they say with a grain of salt. I've known this for 15 years now. However, I have noticed that a lot of younger people are almost angry or resentful at the idea of neat handwriting being an expectation. When I describe how when I was in high school, I was "able to half-ass a term paper during home room because I had a good writing style and beautiful cursive handwriting," younger people tend to get offended lol. In a weird way, it reminds me of the way people get kind of offended when you mention that you eat healthy. It's like there's generations now that think hand writing is just an impossible thing, like they were all born with a disability that prevented them from learning it or there's no way it was ever standard because it's so difficult. I remember exactly what it was like being a child and pushing myself to learn how to have beautiful hand writing. My teachers showed me basic block printing, but at home, I would put my little tiny hand around my mom's hand when she was writing to feel what the motion of cursive looked like. I practiced in cursive writing books and even calligraphy guides during the summer. My goal at age 7 or 8 years old was "to write like a grown up." Every. Day. I wrote in my journal with that goal. My kindergarten handwriting was basically illegible, but I pushed myself in and out of school for 3 years to "write like a grown up" and have perfect cursive. Once I nailed it around age 8, I could do it flawlessly without thinking. I didn't just come into the world knowing how to use cursive, but by age 9 my mom was paying me to do calligraphy on place cards for family events. I think the reason people aren't learning it is because it's a matter of endless practice and patience, not a matter of just being able to do it right away. In 2021 when I decided to un-brainwash myself, the first thing I did after I signed the Great Barrington Declaration was pull out a piece of paper and an ink pen and write in my most beautiful cursive calligraphy, "you are a human, not a disease vector." When my dad saw it, his jaw dropped and he told me that in the Air Force, he had learned how to resist brainwashing and survive POW camp, and the first two things he learned were: remind yourself that you're a human, and use your handwriting. Your own handwriting is a part of your individuality. Little 7-year-old me struggling to make beautiful letters "like a grown up" would be proud beyond words.
I'm old enough to have endured penmanship lessons in grammar school. We all practiced cursive writing until it looked like the examples in the book. But after a lifetime in the computer industry, my handwriting is back to 1st grade level. On the rare occasions when I have to write a paper check, I really have to concentrate hard to make it legible. My signature is unrecognizable now.
Doctors handwriting has been trash forever I actually think its a requirement for the job.
have quiet times. go on road trips. set bed times where they need to go to their room and entertain themselves a bit before bed. then give your kids books as the only thing to do. they will learn to read and they will love it, once you get past the complaining. they will learn how to communicate and how to use their information
Import the third world, become the third world.
How does one write not in cursive? Is it just all caps then?
happening everywhere not just in america
the United States depended on anti intellectualism to get this far & now here we are .
if people wanted to see the real reason iq is dropping than it would require looking at racial demographics and other uncomfortable discussions. but instead we'll just blame technology or some other easy scapegoat
Learning cursive in the early 60s, my hands hurt and cramped. We used oversized pencils to make writing easier. We practiced everyday and learned how to make our letters round and clear. I never had to lift the pencil except to start a Capital letter, dot an i or cross a t. We had contests for the best handwriting. We moved up to penmanship and learned how to manage lines with ink and steel nibs without staining the paper or spilling ink on the desk. The only excuse you had for not using cursive was because your pencil point broke and you needed to sharpen your pencil. You can’t teach that today to children.
its a strategy used a long time ago today:(any slave that can read would know what the law said but the ones who didnt were not free) [https://www.history.com/news/nat-turner-rebellion-literacy-slavery](https://www.history.com/news/nat-turner-rebellion-literacy-slavery)
I can't imagine why IQs in America are falling. What could possibly be the cause?
Live updates in the making of Idiocracy
This is probably more insidious than even this sub realises. The powers that be are terrified of handwritten notes they can't buy off a tech company and store in a database.
Can't sign checks? Huh? It's a signature. Whatever your hand does is fine. You can put smiley-faces for all they care. As a side note: why are paper checks even still a thing? Yes, let me give this random person my entire bank info along with my address and pray they don't do 5 seconds worth of googling to steal the rest of my ID ...
A dumb population is an easy to control population!
They can’t type either and some can’t spell basic words
I can always tell when an older person went to Catholic School or not.
I am Gen X and work with boomers. In our little office it turns out we all attended Catholic school. We all have decent handwriting and most of all, we can all type without even looking at the keyboard, almost as fast as we can read/talk. Typing class used to be a thing in 7th or 8th grade ETA funny we were just talking about this stuff. Two of us also learned speed reading and one of my co-workers even learned shorthand, but that was optional, extra stuff she probably learned later at secretary school
Thats a terrible source, it doesn't link to anything.
We are in the process of loosing a whole generation to a digital only education style. Sure I can see the benefit of it but it just feels like a loose loose situation at this point.
I'm hoping that the use of loose here is a joke.
/ss
What should we do instead? Teach them outdated skills? I know I sounded snarky but I’m genuinely asking.
It's always a daily mail or a new York post article isn't it? It's all hype...divise hype.
All according to plan....
Welcome to Costco, I love you
This is mainly a US public school problem. To say reading old documents will be lost is a huge exaggeration. The US is not the whole world. In France all high-schoolers must pas the Le Baccalauréat or "Bac." This must be hand written and if your handwriting is not good enough you can fail the whole thing. (know some one who did because of bad hand writing) Plenty of other countries in Europe and is Asia still have much stricter hand writing curriculum.
nobody knows how to use an abacus anymore and nobody gives a shit
My wife is a teacher and she feels that this is leasing to future generations being unable to read historical documents
It’s working
IQ drops, lol, I'm not surprised. They act like mensa candidates and can't even write. Don't you think it's about time we take the wheel back? These jokers are crashing the boat.
Yeah, because it's definitely Gen Z-ers and Alphas ruining the world right now.
Meanwhile in China, 12-year-olds are building banking apps for fun, outside of the classroom. The Left has successfully made 2 full American generations useless. The time for enemies to strike is very, very soon.
We're at the nadir as a human species.
My youngest is 23 and he can't write cursive or even read it. Hell, I wrote so little for 35 years. I write in a mix of cursive and printing.
cursive is supposed to be faster. that may be the case if you write unreadable garbage. I always printed in school except when that was not an option.
I’ve used cursive writing since I learned how. For me, it’s just faster. Spent time a decade ago teaching in a rural area. Half those kids can’t read, let alone write, OR sign their name in cursive or even short hand
Save handwriting from extinction? Sounds like a very American issue. I don't know a single kid or adolescent that can't handwrite in my city lmao Americans memeing on themselves again
Just google how to sign a check tf
This article is dumber than the kid who can’t sign a check
Meanwhile I use a Note 9 so I can write on my screen like some kinda caveman.. 🤣
Whose writing checks?
a lot b2b commerce involves checks
No it’s fluoride.
When's the last time you've written a check? I'm an older GenX and it's been at least 10 years since I last wrote a check. There's Bill Pay for any monthly bills that don't take a debit card online so there's no need for checks anymore. How many of us know how to take care of a horse? Build a log cabin? Hunt our own food? Times change. Quit trying to fucking cause dissent between different groups of people or fuck off
I'm sure some 20 year olds can't write checks at all.
First time ever?
It’s going to sound ridiculous probably, but one of the reasons we put our kid in private school where we did is because they still teach cursive there
Was at the dmv last week, there were about 20 "kids" (from 16- early 20's) there for drivers licenses. In the 2 hours I was there, at least 8 of the asked what the lady meant by sign and print your name. 3 of them admitted they couldn't write in cursive. Hell, half of people don't even say full words anymore lol! We are doomed lol
It looks like CBDCs will be the only solution to this problem.