Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Write Thinking

In the 1970s, comic actress, Gilda Radner, created a character on “Saturday Night Live” named Emily Letila. Do you remember her?  Emily was bookish, dressed primly in a longish skirt with a Peter Pan collared blouse and a cardigan sweater buttoned up to her neck, her hair held back in barrettes, and her glasses attached to one of those necklace chains that dangled like a long pair of second ears down to her shoulders.  Her shtick was getting topics in the news mixed up (“What’s this I hear about violins on television?”) and going on at length about how terrible it was, launching into a rant, until the news anchor would correct her (“Emily, that’s violence on television.”)  Then she’d pause and say, “Never mind.”

If the wonderful Gilda Radner were still alive, I think her Emily Letila would have had good material with a hot topic in the news today, i.e., “What’s this I hear about not teaching cursing in school?”  School is a good place for kids to learn cursing – or at least cursing that they haven’t heard at home!  I picked up all kinds of new words at recess and in gym class that I had never heard my Dad or brother use.  Ken tells a story about how he learned to curse in Italian from a kid in grade school named Fabio.  It’s an expanding, educational experience to learn useful curse words from other kids – or your gym teacher.  

Excuse me?  What’s that? The topic isn’t, “not learning cursing at school.”  Its, “not learning cursive?!?”

Never mind!

No wait. I have something to say on this subject. Some schools in our area are in debate about eliminating the teaching of cursive writing in elementary school. The rationale, I believe, goes that kids today need to learn keyboard skills more than they need to learn “writing”, but they will learn to print because printed letters look more like keyboard letters.  Is this going on in your community? Has the world gone mad?  I can’t believe that losing such a basic, centuries-old skill can’t be detrimental to future generations!  Have I become such an old fogey that I can’t see the benefit in this?

Right off the top of my head, I can think of the Ten Top Things Kids Won’t Be Able to do if They Don’t Learn Cursive Writing in School:

10. How is a person supposed to sign their name on a legal document if they can’t write? Is printing acceptable in the legal profession?  Maybe we can all just mark an “X”?

9. How are kids supposed to develop illegible handwriting when they become doctors?

8. Tomorrow’s kids won’t be able to go for handwriting analysis.  This is a shame because there are so few pop-psychology methods for finding out all about your personality (forgive the slight sarcasm on this one.)

7. How is a kid going to write a thank you note to Grandma?  By texting her?  Dear Grm, Hope U R OK. Thnk U 4 gr8t sox 4 my B.day. C U 2moro.  Betcha Gran won’t post that warm little note on the fridge!

6. If kids don’t learn to write cursive lettering, will they also not learn how to read it?  So, does that mean that they will have no clue how to read anything in historic record?  Such as, oh, I don’t know, the Constitution of the United States?

5.  How can a kid without cursive writing skills jot a quick note to pass in class? Printing is too slow for this activity. And where is the thrill, the danger, in texting each other? Sure, the teacher can still catch you and take away the cell phone, but you can bet the message will be deleted before it gets read out in class! It’s not the same as a hastily scribbled note on a chunk of paper torn from your coil bound notebook that the teacher intercepts by sneaking up behind you: “Do you have anything you’d like to share with the WHOLE class?”

4. Kids who never learn cursive will never know the joy of reflecting back to their school days when they got a report card that said they will never amount to anything because their handwriting is atrocious and then, years later, they become President and CEO of a large, successful organization.

3. Future generations will never sit in school rooms that have those poster-sized, loopy cursive letters looming over them along the top of the wall like graphic crown molding. Will those too be omitted from the lexicon of standard symbols that represent “school” – like apples, framed individual slate boards, and chalk?

2. The song, “School Days” will have to be retired because the lyric, “Readin’ and Writin’and ‘Rithmetic” will be irrelevant.  Well, o.k., it was a sucky song that needed to be put out to pasture anyway, and the “Three R’s” was never accurate, because one of them begins with a “W” and the other with an “A”, but I think I can make a case here that learning to write was a skill that my grandmother’s generation did not take for granted.  Are we throwing away hundreds of years of writing for “keyboarding”?

1. And, INHO, (“in my humble opinion”), this insane idea will rob kids of yet another activity, like art, that makes them slow down and attempt to do something for which the goal is beauty. To write they have to use their eyes to really see what is given them as an example and create their own version.  Not teaching them the art of cursive writing, however raggedy it might turn out for some kids, is another way of robbing them of something that is individual; something of their own style and signature; something that will become as distinctive as they are as they grow older; something that will be with them all their lives. A page of computer-generated text, even in the fancy fonts, carries no personality of the writer!  How are we supposed to look at a page of text and say, “That’s so-and-so’s writing” if it looks like every other page of text?  

No, I am against this whole idea. Call me old fashioned or rebut my argument, but I am convinced this is a mistake.  Unless, the topic really is not teaching cursing in school?  Then, never mind.

No comments:

Post a Comment