Writing in cursive, the great lie of my education!

This bad boy:

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For anyone in the construction trades, they would appreciate this tidbit of humor. As a joke, I sent a house plan to my rep at the lumber yard. Thought for sure he would give me the what the heck phone call, since its pretty tough to order lumber on metric scale.

I got pricing back about 2 weeks later – in Pound and an alternative option in Yen. To make it funnier, he sent me a Tacklife tape measure for Christmas – Yep, in Metric.

As simple as it is me us to draw in CAD in Metric scale, his software converted everything to imperial, and could cross reference just about any cost conversion. Someone still had to learn how to write the software to convert.

suzuki wrote:

Cursive capitol Q. Begin.

A funky 2.When I was in school,we were graded on cursive.I did ok on penmanship,probably would fail these days.

I see people everyday calculating something, and it all goes back to figuring out those pesky formulas. Some are simple and some are more complex, but people do more math than they ever thought they would.

I have to disagree with that……..most retail people behind a cash register can only swipe a card. Asking them to count change is like throwing cryptonite to superman. That’s a fact because when I was at a Kwik Trip in Redwing this fall and attempted to reduce the amount of coin change that I was to receive, I gave the counter person a quarter to take the 25 cents of my transaction out of to eliminate the 75 cents that I was about to receive. The preppy college kid responded he could not do it because it was “already in the system”. I just about blew a gasket. Really had to bite my lip…math skills at it’s finest.

I agree with what everyone is saying but something to remember. Cursive is not math or science.

Math and science have many every day applications even if we don’t realize we are using them. Not the case with cursive.

Steve Root wrote:

Right now at work I’m involved in a side project….transposing written records into a computer. Most of it is cursive, and completely unintelligible. It looks like the seismograph before the earth quake happened. The other person wrote in big circles and all the characters overlap. Wonderful.

I remember how hard they hammered spelling into us. Then along came spell check.

SR

I think more often than not this is true.

Phy-ed.

Steve Root wrote:

I still want to meet the guy who thought it was a good idea to mix Imperial and Metric hardware at random under the hood of a car. Yup, I want to meet him and slap him a bunch of times.

SR

X2 When your done with him SR, send him my way and I’ll finish slapping him till he’s silly!!!

sjhauge wrote:

.most retail people behind a cash register can only swipe a card. Asking them to count change is like throwing cryptonite to superman.

This is nothing new SJ. We started giving applicants math tests in the ’86’s because the “new” generation couldn’t figure out how to make change.

1. If Joe’s bill came to $5.20 and Joe gives you a $20. bill, what would you give Joe back for change?

sjhauge wrote:

I see people everyday calculating something, and it all goes back to figuring out those pesky formulas. Some are simple and some are more complex, but people do more math than they ever thought they would.

I have to disagree with that……..most retail people behind a cash register can only swipe a card. Asking them to count change is like throwing cryptonite to superman. That’s a fact because when I was at a Kwik Trip in Redwing this fall and attempted to reduce the amount of coin change that I was to receive, I gave the counter person a quarter to take the 25 cents of my transaction out of to eliminate the 75 cents that I was about to receive. The preppy college kid responded he could not do it because it was “already in the system”. I just about blew a gasket. Really had to bite my lip…math skills at it’s finest.

Funny how they can’t calculate simple math, but can figure out how much money they need a month for Starbucks

I struggle with kilometers to miles. I can whip through meters to yards or meters to feet pretty fast, but I have to use a calculator for miles

A different way to think about this…

About cursive: If a parent saw their 2nd or 3rd grader go thru some exercises at school that utilized focus and process would they think it was a waste of time even if the child didn’t use that particular exercise later in life? Nobody would ever take something they learned and apply it to something else would they?

About Imperial or Metric: Use of measurement is nothing more than a means to quantitatively describe something. Your final perception is the same regarding distance, volume, etc but you’re just using a different “number” to define it. As an example: does anybody spend any time thinking about looking at a computer screen in a RGB color space but printing something in a CMYK color space? After all the two color spaces are using a different “measurement” system to define the color. Is there something wrong or wasteful with one of the systems? Or… Is it more of a case of this system is just like that system only different?

sjhauge wrote:

I see people everyday calculating something, and it all goes back to figuring out those pesky formulas. Some are simple and some are more complex, but people do more math than they ever thought they would.

I have to disagree with that……..most retail people behind a cash register can only swipe a card. Asking them to count change is like throwing cryptonite to superman. That’s a fact because when I was at a Kwik Trip in Redwing this fall and attempted to reduce the amount of coin change that I was to receive, I gave the counter person a quarter to take the 25 cents of my transaction out of to eliminate the 75 cents that I was about to receive. The preppy college kid responded he could not do it because it was “already in the system”. I just about blew a gasket. Really had to bite my lip…math skills at it’s finest.

Basic math doesn’t come easy for everyone. How is it that so many otherwise intelligent people can’t grasp that fact. My ACT math scores were somewhere down in the lowest 10%. In my case, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Understanding math/numbers is something extremely difficult for my brain to do. For instance even before I had my stoke in 2011, I usually had to have someone repeat a phone number to me slowly for me to be able to be able to write it down. It’s like numbers don’t stick in my mind the way words do. My reading comprehension scores on the ACT were somewhere in the high 80’s I think, maybe even low 90’s. If you have the ability to do math in your head be thankful instead of angry when you come across someone who can’t. All it takes is one little bleed or blood clot in the wrong spot and your ability to do it could be gone tomorrow.

Bass Punit, you and I are polar opposites. I’m great with numbers but can read something multiple times and not remember any of it. My wife is more like you so we get frustrated with each other but make a good team in the long run.

It’s estimated 3-6% of the population has dyscalculia.

I agree we shouldn’t judge those with impairments bass pundit, but I think overall everyone here is simply calling out the other 94-97% of the population that doesn’t, and is just to lazy to try to figure it out on their own.

People figuring out change is the least of my worries. Imagination is decreasing significantly in our youth, and that scares the heck out of me.

I remember the green banner above the chalkboard in grade school that had the alphabet in cursive, both capitol and lower case. This was a time when people wrote letters to communicate, long distance phone calls cost too much.

Math and science are important and get used often. I had a English teacher in high school that stressed the importance of a strong vocabulary. Whenever I read outside of school there was always a dictionary within reach.

Most people in my family that are of the age of parents, aunts or uncles still hand write in cursive. This would generally put them in their 70s or 80s. I was noticing this looking over Christmas Cards. I mostly abandoned cursive in high school during the mid 1980s when it was no longer required.

I suppose there may be a time in our near future when people no longer know how to write or type due to changes in technology.

What the ell is a Christmas card??

As an educator I can tell you that we are not given crystal balls to predict the future-or we all would have bought Apple stock or Bit coin years ago and many of us would not be in this biz at all! Cursive could now be seen as a craft like calligraphy and as you learned the craft you were taught vocabulary that you now take for granted. The same thing happens in art class(I am an art teacher)
METRIC-we feared the metric system because it seemed complicated-its not-it seemed complicated because we were exposed to a lot of conversion, conversion is complicated and unnecesarry for most. What you do is pick a day and on that day you switch, you then learn it fast because you have too. Need gas, milk, whatever its in metric. Would be very, very scary but everything would be OK after a few days.

Too much emphasis on college, too true. Have to have some post secondary though.