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

[jimmynebraska.livejournal.com]

35, male, suburban. Learned to write in cursive in elementary school; learned to cook, type, sew, woodwork (with power tools) in junior high. We all (male & female) had to take shop, home ec, computer/typing in 6th & 7th grades.

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

Going to school in the 1970s, I had a very gender-neutral education; for example, one of my classes was called Parent Craft. If any of my classes were attended by more of one gender than the other, I'm afraid I was quite oblivious to that. (My gender identity is gender-neutral/androgynous, so I had to train myself, later in life, to pay attention to gender biases.)

I learned cursive in school, and promptly discarded it as soon as I got old enough to realize that I could do so. (I write in my own cross between italic and print.) I taught myself to type at age ten, but chose to take a refresher course in high school. I learned cooking at home and the very basics of sewing. None of those other skills you mention interested me in those days. (No, not even driving.)

I suppose there's some gender bias in my home instruction; my mother taught me to cook and sew, not my father. But my father isn't into woodworking, etc. Instead, he taught me how to do library research, which was infinitely more helpful.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Driver's ed was a mandatory part of the curriculum for sophomores when I was in high school (early 1980s in California). Classes were scheduled during school hours and it was considered a class like any other.

I took typing, yes, on a manual typewriter, in my senior year in high school. It was seventh period, and I was the only senior left in school at that hour.

Cursive I started in third grade.

All my schools were public schools in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Pleasant Hill, Concord, and Orinda, to be precise.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I learned to write in cursive (third grade IIRC), but it was an uphill battle; I am left-handed and a little dyslexic, and my handwriting was never pretty. Even in third grade I thought it might make more sense to learn to type (and even pointed out the cursive font wheel on our household electronic typewriter), to no avail. To this day I cannot write pretty. I can "draw" letters, in the style of an artist or font specialist, halfway decently; but my handwriting is a godawful scrawl that I rarely use, having substituted fast block print for the sake of readability.

It's worth noting that I grew up around enough foreigners who had learned slightly different styles of cursive (Germans notably) and that this also made cursive a difficult process for me. (Hell, it made print tricky; my first grade papers have me making quotation marks on the top AND bottom of the print lines because I'd confused French-style punctuation (which uses a sort of angle bracket instead of a quotation mark) with English, owing to bilingual preschool.

I was actively discouraged from taking "practical" elective classes because I was on a college track. I wanted to take auto shop so I'd know rudimentary car repair and such, and was told it was inappropriate. I took basic aeronautics instead - another shop-like class but with planes instead of cars - for about a week, but the teacher was a sexist bastard and told me there was no place for women in the industry other than as flight attendants, so I switched to something else. Ironically, I dropped Home Ec for similar reasons, and because it was very impractical; I wanted to learn to sew things I'd wear or use, not quilts and dollies, and so on. I took mostly art-style electives - drawing, general fine art, theater and a few years of choir.

I learned a decent amount of electronics and basic hardware stuff (working with power tools, construction etc) from theater tech work. I also had a home basic electronics kit which taught you to hook up basic switches and transistors and things, but I never learned to solder properly (and want to). I re-wired half the phone outlets in my house in high school and also put new plugs on household appliances, but in the UK that's something everyone did (and why more of them don't electrocute themselves doing it I don't know).

I went to three different high schools, so I got both suburban and urban education, at pretty well-funded to very expensive levels. I didn't learn to drive in school because I was in the UK at the time US kids got Driver's Ed.

I could have taken Home Ec or Typing as electives somewhere in junior or high school, but I had already learned those skills outside of school (learned to type in fifth grade from a friend's mom giving lessons after school; cooking from Mom and Girl Scouts and our maid; sewing likewise; woodworking from Dad). At least one of my high schools had a required "Computers" elective, which I dodged mostly by switching schools; I had nothing against the theory, but the class was an impractical mishmash of "what is a transistor" instead of useful things like programming. I did take electives in computer art and learned some (oh, dear, ENTER magazine) BASIC programming on my own.

[stuffphile.livejournal.com]

I think I learned, or started to learn cursive in grade one. My teachers at the time were a bit heavy-handed in shaming the kids with handwriting they deemed "messy", though. And then the other kids would pick up on it, and "messy handwriting" was almost like a stigma. Ridiculous!

I am curious to know if anyone else recalls anything similar in their schooling.

[tjs-whatnot.livejournal.com]

You didn't have auto mechanics, but I learned to do that too...right after sewing. :))

[influx]

18, female, various suburban schools up and down the East Coast.

I learned cursive in second grade (upstate NY) and again in third grade (Virginia), and the teachers made us use it near-constantly during those two years. In fourth grade it disappeared entirely, never to be seen again. I think the only time most kids my age have to use cursive is for a signing statement on the SAT, so no, most of them can't do it anymore. I...sort of can? (I remember all the lowercase letters! Capitals may or may not be made up off the top of my head.)

Typing was covered multiple times in elementary and middle school. In middle school electives were randomly assigned, which was how I ended up taking FACS (home ec). I never took an electronics class per se, but I did have several sorta-related classes--technology, and a few programming classes.

[emyrldlady.livejournal.com]

The only reason I didn't have Driver's Ed in school was that I was pushed ahead a grade and was too young when the class happened my Junior year. I was only 15 and they would not let me take it Senior year.

[pineapplechild.livejournal.com]

I also didn't have any form of mandatory physical activity after age 11, nor any form of institutionalized sex ed at all. (Ah the joys of private school.)

[timelady.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm not surprised on the kids not learning cursive nowadays (aside from signing their name, of course). When I was going through the school system, it seemed like it was getting phased out (and I'm in my early thirties). There was more emphasis on it during grades 1-4. By the time I reached 6th grade, the teachers were asking for papers to be printed, rather than in cursive for easier reading. I remember mainly because I had a sub require for everything to be turned in that day to be in cursive, and she was grading people on if they stayed on the line and how legibile it was, and the students were really groaning about it. In junior high, we had a home ec class that was split into quarters -1st quarter cooking, 2nd quarter wood working, 3rd quarter sewing, and 4th quarter metal working (and the guys were required to take it as well as the girls). Driving I technically took as a summer school course, and technically it was an extra-curricular course, same with typing. And the only electronics experience I've ever had was my work-study job during college in the basement of the library.

School stuff

[newwaytowrite.livejournal.com]

It was acceptable to print but in grade three the skills of cursive (or handwriting) were taught. I also was able to cross the school industrial arts threshold but it was a new dawning of school options that were no longer divided along gender lines that happened when I arrived at jr. high school (grade 7). For reference I graduated in 1979. Drivers Education was taught in the school but was not during school hours but we got 3 credits for it that counted toward he 100 needed to graduate (with other specifics that were not up for students choice like English at the senior level,etc.
I picked rural as location and in reality it was small town (3000 at my birth and 6000 by the time I graduated and left 18 years later.

I loved the two varieties of 49. I chose 40-49 as I just began being 49 three months and eight days ago so I am not yet touting to be 49 and half.

[frog-songs.livejournal.com]

I learned cooking, woodworking, sewing, and cursive from my parents, but these things were later taught to me in classrooms, too.

[frog-songs.livejournal.com]

Oh, also: Canadian (Ontario), public schools, taught all of the above at the elementary school level.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

I would also like to mention that, despite being schooled in Kansas, we were taught evolution AND we had sex ed. My jr. high wasn't the best place in the world, but we did have some great teachers.

Our school had home ec as well as shop type classes. Everyone was required to take home ec AND Construction regardless of gender. Since I came in late in the year from a different state (we lived in NM for one year) I only took one. They put me in Construction.

I kind of wish I'd had Home Ec. because I would love to be able to sew the costumes I can envision, but gender did not play a role in those class selections.

[hakeber.livejournal.com]

I went to school in a...

All of the above. We moved. A lot.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

The largest community I lived in when I was school age was around 60,000, and it was the largest population center in the area-so rural.(Smallest community, maybe 40 houses, one street.)I thought everyone had fields,livestock, horses, and wild animals nearby.

No one had a problem with me taking Home
Ec.- I just wasn't very good at sewing, and we didn't get to real cooking when I took it.

My ten years older sister had to take Home Ec. INSTEAD of Shop, despite her off the charts aptitude for mechanics.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Oh. Took Drivers Ed. That's how I know that I'm too dyslexic to drive a car.(There have been more recent attempts. Argh.)

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

I am amazed that some of those were options! Our poor little private school didn't have money for any of that. Well, except for writing in cursive.

Other things we didn't have: sports programs, clubs, art programs, music programs, science labs, and computers (the boys' campus had five, but we didn't have any.) We sort of had PE, in that in order to stay accredited the school was required to have PE. Apparently giving us some dodgeballs and telling us to go to the park down the street for an hour every other week qualified.

[alumiere.livejournal.com]

Handwriting and speech classes were the bane of my existence in grades 1-3. An overbite so big I was in braces by age 7, plus coke bottle glasses and serious lack of coordination meant I was sent to remedial speech and writing classes two days a week instead of staying with the rest of my class. Fortunately, I was already reading at a 5th/6th grade level, so I didn't miss anything significant.

And even in private school, both cooking/sewing and shop classes were mandatory in 6th grade for all students. In 7th and 8th we had to choose either shop or home-ec; go figure I was one of two girls in my shop classes. But I was also good at math, electronics, etc so I routinely did better at anything not brute strength related than many of the boys.

The burly male teacher liked me, and let me tinker with more advanced stuff pretty often, which no doubt made the boys jealous. But since I helped them with projects when I could most of the guys didn't give me too much crap for it.

[gina-r-snape.livejournal.com]

I went to school in both urban and suburban environments, as my parents and I moved at one point. But I answered for the suburban part as I was older.

We learned cursive as a regular classroom in either junior high or high school. Electronics was part of our science course.

But wood working, cooking, sewing and metal working were junior high school 'industrial arts' options. Oddly, we also had technical (architectural) drawing. As we had to choose two out of five, I chose sewing and technical drawing. The gender lines were split pretty predictably except for the drawing class, though I believe boys were in the majority. Forgive, it was something like 25 years ago. Typing was a 1/2 year filler course, and it wasn't split by gender so much as filled with kids who didn't like academics. I took it to hang out with some friends and have an easy semester.

I don't recall teachers guiding us into picking courses. Rather, it was social herding/peer pressure that guided choices. And the drive to hang out with one's friends.

[sanacrow.livejournal.com]

40-mumble, several schools from rural to suburban.

Learned print before school, learned cursive some on my own, some in 2nd and 3rd grades - all work was required to be in 'longhand' until somewhere mid-high-school. My 'everyday' handwriting now is mostly script with a few print letters scrambled in (and not always the same letters consistently).

I use the keyboard or voice-to-text for a lot now due to medical/dexterity issues, but strongly prefer to sit down with fresh paper and a Japanese pen to outline projects, draft writing or simply take notes. I *think* differently sitting at the table with a pen and a cuppa than I do at a keyboard. (I've tried bringing the laptop to the table, but the voice stuff just *so* isn't the same as the feel of a pen and good paper.)

I took typing in junior and high school (on big manual typewriters with the "zip-clunk" manual returns). I took cooking in 9th, although I had already learned to cook at home. Girls were not allowed to take Shop. And our high school didn't offer driver's ed at the time.

[sevendayloan.livejournal.com]

I was told that if I didn't learn cursive in elementary school I would never be able to pursue higher education and would probably drown in my own ineptitude during junior high before dropping out to a life of hard drugs and/or petty crime.

So I learned cursive. I still think they're full of shit.

[st-aurafina.livejournal.com]

*highfives you* We clearly had similar teachers. Hope they're loving the computer age, the old harpies.

[little-iago.livejournal.com]

I learned cursive in elementary school (3rd grade, if I recall). It was pretty much a requirement to write in cursive from that point on, at least for English classes.

I took typing in junior high, though it was optional. That was probably one of the last times I used an actual typewriter. I'm still grateful to my dad for making me take that class. My fingers can fly so fast across a keyboard that I used to charge my college dorm mates $5 a page to type their hand-written papers.

I did learn to sew in high school, but it was my theatre teacher who taught me the skill rather than a home-ec class...those costumes weren't going to make themselves. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think we even had a general home-economics class at my school.

[electricalgwen.livejournal.com]

I only got woodworking and electrical wiring in school in Europe. (Also from my dad, but obviously that's not the point of your poll.) Here in North America it was Home Ec with no shop option.

[hierokeryx.livejournal.com]

i took drafting and was very good at it. this was in a suburb wedged right between Detroit and the GPs, so us public school kids were taught that our one best hope was the Big Three. i was on the fast track to start taking college level drafting courses and, by senior year, actually working (as an unpaid intern, i'm sure) for the automaker of my choice. then, thankfully, we moved out of the state.

[kadairk.livejournal.com]

My 15 year old daughter mentioned to me just yesterday that she's forgotten how to write in cursive. I think she wants to re-learn it.

[st-aurafina.livejournal.com]

I learned cursive, with a fountain pen. I'm left-handed. It didn't go well - every afternoon I went home smeared with royal blue. And I was told over and over that I'd never get anywhere without neat handwriting. Pff.

My school was a suburban Anglican day school, we didn't have any classes in woodwork or electronics or anything like that. Pity, because I would have enjoyed electronics.

*kicks old school in the pants*