… cursive writing?
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Man, I hated that.
It was designated time in each class in elementary school to just work on our handwriting. I had probably the worst handwriting and practicing it over and over seemed to just make it worse. The class was done with ink and not pencil which added a whole different level of frustration.
My Mom had the most beautiful handwriting; my Dad had nice handwriting but his claim to fame was that he could whip out whatever he was writing in a hurry. Working with money as he did, he had an impeccable skill with writing numbers.
But, I struggled. To make things worse, we had fountain pens and that meant working very carefully to make sure that it wasn’t smudged. Thank goodness I wasn’t left-handed.
I had a collection of pens that I’d pick up from everywhere looking for the pen that would make me better. I’m still looking …
I do have two prized possessions from two friends who are wood turners and they made me a custom pen and case for a retirement gift. Sadly, that didn’t improve my cursive writing either. But, they are gorgeous and are proudly displayed on the bookshelf here.
I do have a few things that were created by cursive writing and they’re kind of embarrassing.
One of the biggest things that changed my world was taking a course in COBOL programming. Cursive wouldn’t work but printing was required to make sure things were in the right place. As I look at my notebooks from times after that, I notice that I did all my notes in printing. They’re not bad for readability.
As you can see, creating something in cursive is difficult for artificial intelligence.
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It doesn’t take long on social media to read the recommendation for school systems looking to improve can do so by bringing cursive writing back.
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For a Sunday, your thoughts?
- did you study cursive writing as a separate subject in school?
- are you smarter because you know cursive? Will teaching cursive writing improve things for today’s student?
- have you ever written with a fountain pen that required drawing ink from a bottle? Did you have smudging issues?
- have you written with a fountain pen that uses an ink cartridge?
- did your elementary school classroom have cards with all the cursive characters on display around the room to help the cause?
- on those cards, there was one letter that could be written in two different ways, one being a number. What letter was this?
- was it those awful computer keyboards that forced cursive out of the classroom or something else?
- are you left-handed?
- do you use cursive today? Or, is it just reserved for signing documents?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this? Please do so in the comments below.
This is a regular Sunday thing around here. You can check out all the previous posts here.
If you have an idea for a future post, please reach out and let me know.