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

[ursamajor]

I started kindergarten in the mid '80s, where we learned how to print. In second grade, we were taught D'Nealian specifically as a "transition to cursive," which we learned in third grade. I changed schools in fourth grade, and by middle school, we were being encouraged to print again as we'd get new kids in every year who hadn't learned cursive, or whose cursive was not up to the standard of writing simple essays legibly. In high school (mid '90s), all papers were required to be typed, and you had to take a typing/word processing class twice a week until you could type 40 wpm.

Sewing was definitely gendered for me, but that's because what I learned of it, I learned in Girl Scouts; I remember reading books about "home ec" and being very puzzled that these kinds of subjects would be an actual Class During The School Day - in my experience, school was supposed to be a lot of book learning, with PE the sole exception. I remember wondering if this was a difference between public school and parochial/private school, but I asked my (local-to-the-Bay-Area) public school friends if they had to take sewing or woodworking or cooking classes, and they all agreed that that "only happened in books from long ago." (We were 12.)