Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: HankB on October 08, 2022, 03:47:06 PM
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I just happened to take a closer than usual look at the currency in my wallet and I noticed something interesting; if you look near the bottom right of the portrait on the front of a bill, there's a place for the signature of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Every secretary I remember has signed it in cursive, the way normal adults do. True, penmanship varied, but cursive is cursive.
Until now. David T. Mnuchin (Biden's appointee) (my bad - he worked for Trump.) printed his name the way a first grader who'd just learned his ABC's would.
Here's a link to historical signatures. (Order is alphabetic, not chronological.) http://www.uspapermoney.info/sign/
I'm not sure exactly what this says about Biden and his appointees, but I'm sure it's nothing good.
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Besides cursive not being taught anymore, apparently, people don't have a lot of opportunity to even really sign their name anymore either.
So much stuff that I sign nowadays is all on a screen, and they either want me to use my finger, which is ridiculous to do, so I end up with a halfassed "B" and then pretty much just a straight line, or else a lot of even legal forms let you choose from a selection of your name already "pre-signed" in some form of cursive or other, then you just point and click your way through.
Honestly, at that point a signature is almost worthless, because certainly none of my electronic signatures even remotely resemble my actual pen and paper signature.
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Haven't you heard? Cursive writing is racist. There were articles to that effect not too long ago.
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Devil's advocate:
Assuming that the point of writing something down is to communicate information clearly to a reader, what does cursive bring to the table? Why should people learn it?
Is anyone here's cursive penmanship better then their their printed penmanship? Why do so many boomers want to metaphorically die on this hill?
FWIW I'm old enough that we still lined up on payday, signed our "payroll signature" and got cash for some of our money when I went to Basic Training.
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Devil's advocate:
Assuming that the point of writing something down is to communicate information clearly to a reader, what does cursive bring to the table? Why should people learn it?
Is anyone here's cursive penmanship better then their their printed penmanship? Why do so many boomers want to metaphorically die on this hill?
FWIW I'm old enough that we still lined up on payday, signed our "payroll signature" and got cash for some of our money when I went to Basic Training.
I think the signature argument is different than the cursive argument. At least that's the argument I was trying to make. I've been printing for years, and yes, mostly for legibility (I think many lefties have worse cursive than righties from how we were forced to learn cursive writing). I still do my cursive signature though. A cursive signature is much more unique than a "printed" signature, which was historically kind of the point. You made your own unique signature that was more often than not hard to read, and that was the point - something difficult to forge.
It has been a very long time, but I still remember my signature being matched at the bank (and being called out if I happened to sign significantly differently), and even in stores when using a credit card. I don't think anyone signs the backs of their credit card anymore. There may not even be a spot for it.
Going electronic is fine, I guess, since that's where we're headed, but I don't get the point of an electronic signature, since doing something like the fingertip signature is almost impossible to do the same way repeatedly. If you're going electronic, then go biometric or token or something.
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Cursive works fine if penmanship is taught as well. My penmanship is not so great, but legible to me. I still tend to make notes printing as it is easier to read than my cursive. I write cursive so little that I don't get a great deal of practice with it.
When I was in high school, we still had teachers that would put notes on the overhead and we had to write it all down rather than them giving us copies. I guess most of their books are electronic now and everything is on the computer.
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I learned cursive, but never actually use it anymore. In my opinion, cursive is going the way of shorthand.
My signature is not cursive. It may have started that way, but now it is effectively a scribble - a glpyh - bearing no adherence to any of the rules of cursive. On digital terminals, sometimes I just draw a smiley face.
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Captain Kirk Recites Preamble to Constitution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlGIHL4nZVU
I remember seeing this Star Trek episode years ago. With the demise of cursive writing, it sort of takes on new meaning when you realize that many people will soon not be able to read the original version of the US Constitution. =)
Of course, I never found that script all that easy to read myself.
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Haven't you heard? Cursive writing is racist. There were articles to that effect not too long ago.
Writing is racist.
Spelling is racist.
Grammar is racist.
Math is racist.
Basically, anything and everything that normal, productive people need to know to be normal, productive people and to earn a living and possibly contribute something to the world ... is racist.
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The good, the true, and the beautiful is racist.
Civilization is racist.
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My signature has been printed for decades. This is a carryover from when I was handwriting medical chart notes and my handwriting is all block capitals, so people can read the chart notes. My typical signature for chart notes, credit card receipts and the like are my first two initials and full last name.
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Steven T. Mnuchin was Secretary of the Treasury for Trump's entire term of office. The current Secretary of the Treasury is Janet Yellen.
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I learned cursive, but never actually use it anymore. In my opinion, cursive is going the way of shorthand.
My signature is not cursive. It may have started that way, but now it is effectively a scribble - a glpyh - bearing no adherence to any of the rules of cursive. On digital terminals, sometimes I just draw a smiley face.
My signature is just a squiggled line. The only important stuff I sign anyway is loan docs and hell half the *expletive deleted*it nowadays is e-signature
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Steven T. Mnuchin was Secretary of the Treasury for Trump's entire term of office. The current Secretary of the Treasury is Janet Yellen.
:laugh: I thought there was something wrong with the OP.
Devil's advocate:
Assuming that the point of writing something down is to communicate information clearly to a reader, what does cursive bring to the table? Why should people learn it?
Is anyone here's cursive penmanship better then their their printed penmanship? Why do so many boomers want to metaphorically die on this hill?
I believe the advantage is that it is a faster and smoother way of writing, and I suspect it may also be less tiring for the writer. It seems like a good idea to teach a way of writing that could make writing easier or more enjoyable.
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Steven T. Mnuchin was Secretary of the Treasury for Trump's entire term of office. The current Secretary of the Treasury is Janet Yellen.
Oops - I stand corrected. :facepalm:
I haven't seen Yellen's sig on any bills.
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According to this article, cursive writing was necessary to write legibly using fountain pens. Ballpoint pens eliminated the "need" for cursive.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/
The article some shed light on my maternal grandmother's gorgeous handwriting. It appears that she was old enough to have been taught Spencer script which was replaced by the Palmer method taught to many of us.
My default today is all capitals printing, like from high school drafting class. When journaling or other stream of consciousness writing, when only I need to read it, I try to remember to use cursive. It's a faster way for me to write.
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Schools could stop teaching cursive, and analog clocks, and replace the multiplication table with a calculator. They could also drop history, art, music, and everything else that's not needed for children's future careers. If we want schools to just make children into workers.
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:laugh: I thought there was something wrong with the OP.
I believe the advantage is that it is a faster and smoother way of writing, and I suspect it may also be less tiring for the writer. It seems like a good idea to teach a way of writing that could make writing easier or more enjoyable.
Tuco beat me to it, but no, it's a carryover from writing instruments that had issues when lifted from the page. Having watched several Gen Zers knock out emails with two thumbs on a touchscreen, I'm pretty sure that's faster than block or print writing. Maybe old people just need to learn to run adaptive keyboards better.
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Maybe old people just need to learn to run adaptive keyboards better.
YOU'RE NOT MY SUPERVISOR!!!
Gen Zers can work those key boards because they have weak tiny little girl hands and fingers. :p
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Tuco beat me to it, but no, it's a carryover from writing instruments that had issues when lifted from the page. Having watched several Gen Zers knock out emails with two thumbs on a touchscreen, I'm pretty sure that's faster than block or print writing. Maybe old people just need to learn to run adaptive keyboards better.
Tuco said he writes faster when he uses cursive, which agrees with what I said. I was talking about the usefulness of cursive now; not about its origins.
I don't understand your hostility to cursive, or why you think it's somehow in competition with email, of all things.
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I'm not hostile to cursive. I don't use it because my already not great penmanship is worse in cursive, but I can read it fine.
I just don't understand why so many older folks feel like the lack of cursive use or teaching is somehow significant.
I will say that I don't think cursive writing aids in written communication in any way. Any advantages it has are for the writer, not the reader.
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I'm not hostile to cursive. I don't use it because my already not great penmanship is worse in cursive, but I can read it fine.
I just don't understand why so many older folks feel like the lack of cursive use or teaching is somehow significant.
I will say that I don't think cursive writing aids in written communication in any way. Any advantages it has are for the writer, not the reader.
I think it's significant because much history, including our founding documents, was written in cursive. It's important that at least some people are able to go back to the originals and read them to verify that the electronic transcriptions are accurate. The more people that can do that (whether they avail themselves to do it or not) the better. It's like asking why an anchor is important since when a boat is underway it's just unnecessary weight.
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Do you read Aramaic? Or even Latin?
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Do you read Aramaic? Or even Latin?
As I understand it, it was not that long ago that Latin was considered an important part of education, and well before the college level. But today, we say, "why bother? You'll never use that in your adult life. What's the point?"
We have this utilitarian view of education that insists everything has to be about job training and directly-applicable "life skills." Add to that public schools' obsession with meeting standardized tests, and pushing sex & gender confusion on small children.
The point is, kids should get a more full education, especially including things like cursive that allow them to be more connected to the writings of those who came before, and make it easier for them to write, and enjoy writing.
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Do you read Aramaic? Or even Latin?
Touche'. =) I do not, but I know people who do.
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I think it's significant because much history, including our founding documents, was written in cursive.
This is a good point. After my dad died, I found several of his old books that he brought over with him from Germany. Even from just being from the 1940s, they still used an older German cursive (I forget what it's called) that almost looks Cyrillic. It was used from the 1400s to the early 1900s for everything from history and science texts to literature.
Just because it's not used anymore doesn't mean there isn't value to knowing it. Not everything is going to be "translated" to modern text. Though I remember my mom and dad teaching me to read German with an old elementary school primer with that script, I have forgotten much of it and trying to read these old books now is quite time consuming, but interesting, because not only is the script older, but many things have a different meaning than they do now and I'm big on preserving history, versus "updating" history.
I'm also someone who wishes they hadn't stopped teaching Latin before I got to High School. As fistful mentioned, not all education is about training workers. There is great value in a Renaissance education to better understand the world.
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I pretty much print. So did my father. We're not really cursive-minded geeks.
And... I also spent too much time in graphic design and drafting type stuff...
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Oh, and...
I type faster than most folks can write with cursive. Or printing. Or anything. Because that's how I frickin' write ANYTHING that has to be understood.
My handwriting? It sucks. It sucked since the damn nuns taught me how to do it.
My printing? It's fair.
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Penmanship (searching for a term that encompasses both block printing and cursive) is a mixed bag. At one time, far in the distant past, my cursive handwriting was good enough that many people commented on it. Too much work on computers has resulted in serious degradation of my penmanship. Unless I consciously slow down and work at it, my cursive today is so bad that half the time I can't read it.
Conversely, my mother (born very early in the 20th century) didn't write in cursive. I have no idea where she learned it, because both her parents wrote in cursive, but my mother wrote in what I would describe as "elegant" block printing. It was very precise, lines all straight and very minor variations in letter height, quite beautiful to look at -- and absolutely indecipherable. Of course, the same has to be said about my father's cursive. Very neat and precise, every document a work of art -- as long as you didn't need to read it.
I do agree with Perd about the loss of education in the schools. When I went to high school in the late 1950s/early 1960s, my high school offered Spanish, French, German, and Latin. I'm not sure what they offer now, but I know they dropped German years ago, and I'm fairly certain they now offer Chinese (which is probably not a bad thing). But then they get into entire multi-year curricula in things like performing arts. When my daughter attended the school, one of her assignments was to go to the city where the state capital is located and attend a garden and flower show. My wife and I took her -- and we never figured out what the purpose of the assignment was.
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Back in the mid to late 90's I had to go to printed all caps because the forms all got scanned into the computer. I had to do it so many years that is the way I write now. My girls high school still teaches cursive.
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Back in the mid to late 90's I had to go to printed all caps because the forms all got scanned into the computer. I had to do it so many years that is the way I write now. My girls high school still teaches cursive.
High school seems a little late to teach it. But it's better than teaching them CRT, so...
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A case could be made for teaching folks how to read it, so that they could easily[ish]* read primary sources over 100 years old. The same could be true of Latin, although that's a second language instead of just a second alphabet, so a bigger investment of limited student hours.
As far as learning to write cursive (and we spent a good bit of time on it back in elementary school) I don't see the reason to teach kids. As Ben has said, a signature these days is more a glyph then cursive writing in most cases. Teaching how to write in cursive to a kid in elementary school now is akin to teaching them how to make a nice horse whip or run a spinning wheel: It used to be really good knowledge to have, but now it's kinda a waste except as a party trick.
*I say "ish" because even though I read and write in cursive, many of the documents discussed in this thread as reason for learning it are pretty hard to decipher due to age, syntax changes, and penmanship of the writers.
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A case could be made for teaching folks how to read it, so that they could easily[ish]* read primary sources over 100 years old. The same could be true of Latin, although that's a second language instead of just a second alphabet, so a bigger investment of limited student hours.
I could sign on to teaching the reading of cursive vs the writing of cursive as a way to preserve the knowledge.
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I'm not a expert on education or anything, and I don't have any idea what the current curriculum is for elementary school (that's where I learned it), I'm just saying there's only so many hours in a school day, and if someone asked me which elementary school knowledge was better to have: How to write in Cursive, or how to write Basic, I know which I'd pick. (Although these days it's probably Python.)
Not to be a more useful worker or anything, but to navigate the world successfully.
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I asked my niece and nephew about it once. I believe they learned basic cursive writing, learned to sign their name, and really didn't use it much after. They were both aware of it, but could only read it with difficulty.
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Dropping cursive from the elementary school curriculum might make sense if they were making room for something worthwhile, but DEI or CRT or Common Core nonsense doesn't fall into that category. As it is, I thought it was a useful discipline and always felt I was learning SOMEthing useful. Although hearing the nuns harp about penmanship all the time eventually got tiresome.
I sometimes wonder why they don't teach shorthand in elementary school, to make note-taking at lectures in high school and college more efficient.
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I sometimes wonder why they don't teach shorthand in elementary school, to make note-taking at lectures in high school and college more efficient.
And I thought I was old. :laugh:
Laptops and tablets for note taking nowadays. =)
https://youtu.be/eTkw9WOzhDs?t=156
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I'm not a expert on education or anything, and I don't have any idea what the current curriculum is for elementary school (that's where I learned it), I'm just saying there's only so many hours in a school day, and if someone asked me which elementary school knowledge was better to have: How to write in Cursive, or how to write Basic, I know which I'd pick. (Although these days it's probably Python.)
Not to be a more useful worker or anything, but to navigate the world successfully.
I doubt that BASIC or Python programming is a good way to learn logic. And teaching coding without any fundamental logic is probably counterproductive. The kids would be better off solving puzzles.
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I didn't mean it as a way to learn logic, but as a way to better utilize the tools around them. Tools that are increasingly reliant on software to work.
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High school seems a little late to teach it. But it's better than teaching them CRT, so...
I was thinking the same thing. I clearly remember the cursive alphabet on a display above the blackboard in my 6th grade classroom, and I sort of think we started learning cursive in the 4th or 5th grade.
But that was in the 1950s, when the United States of America was still a nation.
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Dropping cursive from the elementary school curriculum might make sense if they were making room for something worthwhile, but DEI or CRT or Common Core nonsense doesn't fall into that category.
This. I wouldn't prioritize cursive above teaching a solid basis in American history, classic books (including great novels), mathematics, civics, science, geography, etc. But the real mistake is to think that schools should only teach things that are "useful." Kids need more than that.
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Perd I won't argue kids need more than that, but zi would say they don't need more than that from schools. Or at least not until secondary education, but I would probably push it to college.
Elementary education should absolutely be useful stuff, and specifically the useful stuff they will build upon to be functioning adults. Language, and how it works. Numbers, and how they work. How to communicate, both with speech and writing (do they even teach a 5 paragraph essay format anymore?) Certainly history and US Government, but it's [dis]functioning, not an editorial on how it came to be. Logical thought, and machine logic. How to operate the computers that run the world.
The "more" that kids absolutely do need should come from parents, family, and non .gov sources until, at minimum, high school and some demonstrated critical thinking skills.
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Dropping cursive from the elementary school curriculum might make sense if they were making room for something worthwhile, but DEI or CRT or Common Core nonsense doesn't fall into that category. As it is, I thought it was a useful discipline and always felt I was learning SOMEthing useful. Although hearing the nuns harp about penmanship all the time eventually got tiresome.
I sometimes wonder why they don't teach shorthand in elementary school, to make note-taking at lectures in high school and college more efficient.
In my experience, short hand is a terrible way to take notes. Yeah, you can write faster and in some cases, the shorthand abbreviations replacing certain words makes sense, but shorthand was intended to be translated back to full writing pretty soon after writing it. I found that trying to read short hand notes a month later before a test was very difficult if not impossible.
I haven't taken a college class in quite some time. Anyone know if written class notes are still a thing?
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. Anyone know if written class notes are still a thing?
They are not, and haven't really been a thing for at least a decade, if not longer. It was half and half written notes and laptops when I left college at the turn of the century.
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Headmaster Hapley wouldn't allow "devices" in most classrooms, either, but that's just instinct. I could be wrong.
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Schools could stop teaching cursive, and analog clocks, and replace the multiplication table with a calculator. They could also drop history, art, music, and everything else that's not needed for children's future careers. If we want schools to just make children into workers loyal comrades.
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I doubt that BASIC or Python programming is a good way to learn logic. And teaching coding without any fundamental logic is probably counterproductive. The kids would be better off solving puzzles.
FWIW, I was introduced to BASIC in 6th grade by the shop teacher. That was a critical bit that led me to end up with a bachelors in computer technology and a career as a software engineer.
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I guess I should have said my daughter still uses cursive in high school. She has one teacher that makes them do written notes. She is taking a coding class. I need to check and see what they are using.
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Govt officials writing cursive or not should be the least of our worries. I'm more worried about their mental state
(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qyOdj0DWq6VEgoVuuf7fVlV8FGNRgNkVMaGVB3OkmK3RiTdb4qWXJNYZZM4n47mcmHOpz90_-3y0Eq6VICv48zSSmPl6-mBi8BFwp2zPKBj5P1UnDboNhFaOjesoce0SkEOTQTeWtZfVwRCNzL76Szja1iMhh3g7d2gcUQghOUIQiJUMF_VHeG5huQ/w576-h640/113.jpeg)
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Name the band?
How about "The Perverts"?
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>Name this band
The District People
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Portugal The Man
The former counter-culture, now mad with power.
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Name the band?
The Old Catamite Fellas
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The Village Perverts
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https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/gen-z-handwriting-teaching-cursive-history/671246/
An article on the issues mentioned here about reading the past.