random poll

[rm]

Super busy. Am suddenly curious about this. Apparently most kids entering college in the US this year don't know how to write in cursive. I suspect this is less a sign of the apocalypse than it feels like to me.

So, tell me things (as usual, poll is un-scientific and reflects my biases and experiences (and 49-year-olds can choose which age category they like better!) -- if the boxes don't work, my apologies and comments super welcome.):

[Poll #1607173]

Comments

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Oh! I also learned cooking, sewing, basic tool use, camping, and many other things in Camp Fire. I think a lot of people who participated in youth groups of that kind learned those sorts of skills. 4H got more animal related skills, of course.

My mom and grandma taught me to crochet, but I suck, and I never did get the hang of knitting.

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

We learned "print script" in my first elementary school. Most of our teachers were from British Commonwealth countries (the school was then operated by the Episcopal diocese in Boston) -- we were also taught British spellings, something which I didn't let go of until after university for some odd reason.

When we moved to the suburbs, I was enrolled in parochial school. Cursive writing only. Can't remember how many times I had my hand slapped with a ruler because I just couldn't "get it".

Public junior high. Home Ec was segregated -- cooking/sewing for the girls, woodworking for boys. I was bored beyond tears, having been taught to sew/cook at home. Nope, couldn't take woodworking. "But it looks like so much fun!"

Never took typing classes because I'd learned it at home. Driver's ed was after school. Back then nobody offered electives like electronics or metalworking. But I still print script.

[annissamazing]

I learned cursive, typing, cooking, sewing, and wood working in a typical classroom environment. Drivers ed was taught in a regular classroom at my high school, but it was taught after school and I had to pay an extra fee to take it, so I didn't count that one.

I'm a 31 year old college freshman. I didn't know kids weren't still being taught cursive. That may explain the odd looks my handwriting gets.

[idunn.livejournal.com]

College students who don't know cursive? Really? We were actually forced to use cursive from 4th through 6th grades on all our assignments. Those who didn't got their work back ungraded or flunked. By the time middle school was in full swing and I was allowed to write in print again, I was so used to script that it had stuck, and that's how I've been writing ever since.

[killerweasel.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, they no longer teach cursive any more because people don't write, they type. For a while, they were teaching this kind of printing/cursive thing, which was a mash of both styles, but they've stopped that.

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

I'll propose you're more likely to use cursive if you are taught in elementary school.

I just talked to both my cousins, who are about 8 years behind me. They know cursive, but were taught it later than I. They use print, while I mostly use cursive, or a mash of both.

[98.livejournal.com]

Not to frighten you further but I have heard that with the advent of velcro straps on shoes tying a bow is becoming a rare skill. For a time I thought that runners, requiring a snug fit, would preserve the art but now there is this barefoot craze.

But who am I to throw stones? I can not knap flint.

Yet.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

flintknapping has been a popular program item at Loscon in past years.

[skelody.livejournal.com]

I learned to sew in art class as a wee kiddie as well; by the time home ec-type stuff was available, it was optional. And everyone at my high school had to take a tech class, which involved an electronics unit...

[billijean.livejournal.com]

I learnt to sew, cook and some woodworking basics at home, however; I did have to take home-ec in grades 7 and 8. I did not learn a single new thing (oh, except that part where if you hit puberty early and fast, the home ec teacher accuses you of making out with boys you've never met, because big tits make you dirty even when you're twelve. That was new to me.)

I learnt to drive at age 22, in private lessons I spent grocery money on, so I could get away from my abusive boyfriend.

I have never learnt to type. This was a conscious decision I made in grade 10 so that I wouldn't take the easy route and become a secretary or something. I had very high scores in the maths and sciences and wanted to study science at university, but the guidance counsellors at my blue-collar high school that was kind of absurd and why put all that work in for a crazy 4-year degree when I could go to college for two and have a decent job. Sheesh. So, I refused to learn to type or to take any accounting etc classes in high school. The not typing thing is kind of a handicap now, of course, and I've considered learning. But ehh.

As for cursive . . . you may remember some of my musings on this as I remember that you weighed in on some of them. Since J was so reluctant to learn to write, I had to be very careful of my approach. I read a lot and asked around a lot and this is what I discovered: cursive is easier than printing, faster and it solves problems kids have with printing letters backwards. Some homeschoolers keep printing instruction quick and move on to cursive a year or two before it is traditionally done.

J found this to be true and was relieved because he found printing tedious and difficult (mostly because he hated the idea of it, I think). Once he learned cursive, he stopped printing altogether. Also, he still does most of his schoolwork by hand, on lined paper, even though he learned to type before he learned to print and is good at it. But maybe I'm old fashioned and fussy ;)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Oh! Now there's a thought. I wonder if dyslexia is worse in people who haven't become comfortable with cursive?

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

I was writing cursive with a fountain pen by the time I was nine or ten.

I went to an all-girls Catholic convent school in the UK which, in retrospect, was very much about challenging gendered learning. We rotated through different modules as part of a "Technology" class that involved Resistant Materials (woodwork/metalwork), IT, Graphics, Food Tech, Textiles and a bit of electronics thrown in. I remember programming in BASIC, soldering circuit boards and sawing stuff. The Textiles and Food Tech components were less useful, and I learnt nearly all my useful cooking from my mum.

[strollerman.livejournal.com]

I hated kindergarten mostly because of the following:
1) While I understood the concept of sharing, it mostly didn't make sense. Case in point, why share the few legos I have when there's a whole tub next to me.
2) Being ambidextrous was "showing off".
3) Being able to write in cursive with both hands was "showing off".
4) Being able to understand algebra was "showing off".
5) My only friend was the drooling special kid (I know it's shallow, but I was 5).

I grew up as unmedicated ADHD, and that was really only a problem in terms of keeping me still. I enjoyed the teachers that could harness my thirst for knowledge, and hated the rest.

While being able to touch-type, I took typing in eighth grade for an easy A and was bumped to the advanced class. 108WPM then, about 75 on a good day now.

Learned to sew in art class, around fifth grade.

By the time I reached HS, driving class had been gone for about twenty years. I wasn't into the metal/wood shops. Electronics was introduced in seventh grade. I attended public school, but was in a gifted program from third grade until graduation.

[newsbean.livejournal.com]

I feel sort of like I cheated filling out your poll since I was homeschooled. However, I did go to a regular school in third grade and I did learn how to write in cursive by a teacher who was not my dad.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I was homeschooled and I didn't fill out the poll. It really, really didn't feel like it applied to me.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

What an interesting set of choices... Here are the details of mine, for what they're worth.

I started cursive writing in the 3rd grade at St. Benedict's school in Highland Park, Michigan (an inner city of Detroit) in 1962-63

I learned typing in business typing class at Salpointe Catholic high school in Tucson, Arizona, in 1970-71.

I learned to cook and sew first from my grandmother, and later in the boy scouts. The only time I ever had a class in school that involved cooking was a high school senior class called "marriage" which was intended to prepare us for married life. The cooking for boys part of that consisted of buying a can of Campbell's soup, looking at the recipe on the back, getting everything else needed to cook that recipe, and then doing it in class. (Actually a very good life lesson, and one I've used quite a few times.)

My father taught me to drive, but I had to take a driver's education class in school too.

I took a class in "electricity and electronics" in 9th grade, at Salesian (all boys) Catholic high school in Detroit.

Never took woodworking or metalworking classes because those were for people on the "skills trades" track. I was in the "college prep" track. I did learn some metalworking skills from my dad, who also taught me auto mechanics. (I was one of the first ASE certified auto mechanics in the US.)

Gender had a LOT of influence on what I was and wasn't taught in school. Fortunately I had a grandmother who had very firm ideas about boys being able to make do for themselves, no doubt based on her experience running a boarding house for miners in Butte Mt. So I knew how to do all sorts of basic cooking and mending by the time I was 10.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of a marriage class! Or rather, a "life skills/relationship skills" class, where one might learn budgeting, effective communication, household management...

[yarram.livejournal.com]

I was "taught" block writing in 1st grade and cursive in 2nd & 3rd grade. I learned to write in kindergarten and taught myself cursive from the chart on the wall in 2nd grade before the teacher actually got around to teaching it to the rest of the class.

This should have been a clue that there were going to be... issues... with educating this particular disabled child, but did the school actually pay attention? No. And that is a rant for a different post...

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I haven't commented because you mentioned American - would non-Americans filling the poll skew it?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Nah, I tried to actually be neutral about it. I think the only thing that would skew it hard is people who grew up in countries where their dominant schooling language doesn't have cursive and print varieties, but since we fail at science here anyway. Have at.

[sinonmybody.livejournal.com]

To clarify question 2, though I took sewing not woodshopy type things, it was just because that was what I was into. There were guys in my sewing class and there were girls in the shop classes.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

My teachers told me in grade school that high school teachers didn't accept papers if they were written in pencil, or if they were in script rather than cursive.

So yeah. We learned cursive, because we were told the alternative basically was to fail at everything forever.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

What does "script rather than cursive" mean?

[mercurybard.livejournal.com]

I hit "submit" and then realized I had lied about my answer to #1. I never took a typing class per se (hence, I don't use the standard finger configurations taught), but took a test that proved I was fast enough to keep up in order to take a CompSci class.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

I learned to write in cursive but haven't used it since sometime in middle school? My cursive is absolute crap.

I also took shop in middle school, where I learned to draft and made a very wobbly stool with pride. Home ec was not offered before high school.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I'm in the 40-49 age range and I checked most of those boxes, but "up to age 17/18" isn't accurate: Handwriting lessons stopped after the fifth grade, home ec and shop (cooking, sewing, woodwork) took up a couple of years in junior high and I took a semester of typing in high school. There was also a "computer room" with some first-generation Macs and they might have offered some rudimentary computer classes, but I never took any.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

We learned cursive in second grade. I never really used it that much, though. I went to two schools for elementary school and one for jr high and high school and none of them ever graded for penmanship.

I also marked that I learned typing, sewing, and cooking in school, but I meant more that I took the classes rather than that that was where I learned them.

In my sixth grade class, we had typing like once a week for a while (not the whole school year, I don't think), but I know I had turned in some typed reports before that, so I didn't learn it then.

In 7th grade, we had home ec. It was nominally an elective, but there weren't any other electives available for 7th graders, so there was no other choice. We had one semester of cooking and one of sewing. I already knew how to cook, so I didn't actually learn anything there, and the sewing part we didn't actually sew. For part of the semester we did cross stitch and for the other part we made pillows, but when it came to actually sewing the pieces together, the teacher did it on a sewing machine.

In all these cases, there were no options for girls vs boys. Everyone took the same course.

I went to a small high school, so it didn't offer driver's ed or any sort of shop classes.

[citrinesunset.livejournal.com]

I definitely learned to write in cursive as part of my actual schooling. Same with typing. I didn't check any of the other options since cursive and typing were the only two that I learned as part of a structured curriculum. But since I was homeschooled, I think the cooking and sewing I learned at home count. I didn't include them, though.

I don't think gender really played a role in what I learned, but it's hard to be objective on that. There's no way of knowing if my parents would have done things differently if I'd been raised male.

To be honest, I don't use cursive very much. I mainly use it when I'm writing personal notes or working on a story by hand. In class, I print most of my notes. The only exception is math, where my handwriting and style is more varied, with some cursive thrown in.

[wordswoman.livejournal.com]

My daughters--ages 17 and 19--were taught cursive in elementary school, but they rarely used it thereafter, and they never write in cursive today. By the time they reached middle school, they routinely used a computer to type their papers, and so did most of their classmates. A handwritten paper was unheard of in their high-school years.

[elliemurasaki.livejournal.com]

I attended a whole bunch of schools (yay USAF) and I can't remember a single one that offered woodworking, metalworking, or electronics to anybody, and I have vague memories of one of them having home ec classes, which definitely involved cooking and I have no idea if it involved sewing or if there was any gender-related influence on who took the course. And once I got out of third grade nobody gave a damn whether I wrote in print or cursive as long as it was legible (which for me means 'typed'), so I don't think I can do cursive for more than just my name.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, on reflection, if gender influenced things.  I learned to type proper (home keys!!) because Mom didn't want me to be a hunt-and-peck typer like Dad.  I learned cursive because everyone learned cursive; when would gender get involved there?  And I still remember this tic-tac-toe thing I made in shop, aw.

Also, I took a few computer science courses; I assume that != electronics.