In what grade did you learn to....

@ebrown p,

I'm opposite again... I liked learning cursive in school. Trouble was, I kept changing it, and varied from the prescribed format (there was a name for that, the something, method, but I forget; so I was miss cursives aplenty, as were many of my peers, a style changer, getting more hand eye control as time passed..

I even taught myself to write cursive left handed while compiling a medical dictionary of my very own on throw away paper in my first job at 16 (taking mini xrays) when I was bored, between patients. I'd look up the radiology reading words I didn't know, write them right handed, and then try them left handed (chaos ascending).

In my thirties, I played with calligraphy and sumie, and in my forties, got speedy enough at architectural type printing, pre cadd (or cad)

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@JTT,

It wasn't a euphemism in my elementary school, but not done for poor printing or cursive.

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@ossobuco,

I'm probably going to get a note re flooding, but this all gives me an idea.

I've oft loved old post cards, not for monetary value, but for interest. Some of them from certain years have amazing cursive writing.
First I'll have to scan some. Might be a while before I open a thread on those..

I getting a little appalled that reading cursive might soon be take as similar to reading Chaucer in the original.

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@JTT,

I had to check my own handwriting. I have a notebook handy that I am using to record my thoughts for some personal projects (I actually use pen and paper quite a bit because I like to draw lots of boxes and lines that help me think).

My letters do join quite a bit... but it is by accident because I am writing quickly without thought. My letters (like 'r', 's' and 'z') all look like the print version, not like the cursive replacements.

The point is, the writing style I use is one I developed myself for my own convenience. I write that way because it is fits my temperament. Teaching someone to write like I do would be silly.

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@ossobuco,

I think that teaching calligraphy is fundamentally different then teaching cursive (at least the way that I was taught cursive).

Calligraphy is clearly an art. The goal is beauty. There are all sorts of avenues for self-expression. I wouldn't mind learning Calligraphy.

Cursive is more of a business skill. The goal is speed, consistency and correctness. The way I was taught cursive was a complete waste of time.

At least that's how I see it.

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@ebrown p,

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but it is by accident because I am writing quickly without thought.

And this differs in some material fashion from what you type here at A2K, how?

[just jokin, Brown.]

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The point is, the writing style I use is one I developed myself for my own convenience. I write that way because it is fits my temperament. Teaching someone to write like I do would be silly.

Yes, it would be like teaching millions upon millions of students to write in the cursive fashion that some unnamed bozo invented. Like that's ever gonna happen, right?

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@ebrown p,

I think I learned cursive by the s------- method, name I really don't remember. I know, with luck, two people who still use that now, which, naturally to me seems very controlled. But I know a lot of people with their own modifications of cursive, a lot of them wonderful.

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I think that sentence diagramming began in third grade. I now teach remedial English and the remedial faculty agrees that if kids today were taught how to diagram, they would not think the subject of a sentence is part of a prepositional phrase! When I first saw the texts available for the class, I was surprised. No one thinks the subject of a sentence is the object of a prepositional phrase.

Diagramming is important because if you can not identify the parts of speech, you can not read well.

We memorized the multiplication tables in the fourth grade when a crazy nun lost her temper with us and told us to write the multiplication tables 12 times over during Christmas vacation. I did it under my covers, with a flashlight at night, so my mother wouldn't punish me because the nun punished me . . . actually, the entire class.

And kids today do not memorize enough to exercise their brains. A memorized multiplication table can be used more quickly and efficiently than a calculator.

Cursive may have been third grade although I remember the nun poking our index fingers with pencils if our fingers weren't flat against our pen or pencil. She also made all the left handed kids write with their right hands.

And we were hit in school.

I graduated from high school two weeks after my 18th birthday.

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@Linkat,

Interesting note about cursive.

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@Miller,

The Palmer method is a way of teaching cursive.

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@plainoldme,

Quote:

We memorized the multiplication tables in the fourth grade when a crazy nun lost her temper with us and told us to write the multiplication tables 12 times over during Christmas vacation. I did it under my covers, with a flashlight at night, so my mother wouldn't punish me because the nun punished me . . . actually, the entire class.

And kids today do not memorize enough to exercise their brains. A memorized multiplication table can be used more quickly and efficiently than a calculator.

Plainoldme,

When did you develop your lifelong love of mathematics?

You know, that moment when you realized that mathematics was not at all a bunch of recipes where you plug in ingredients... but a rich language capable of expressing interesting new ideas and a vehicle for creativity. This is the thing that drives all of us to think up and solve interesting problems with friends over lunch and sometimes keeps us awake at night.

Seeing mathematics as a creative, rather then mechanical act, is key to education.

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Why/when has education become or ever been about solely what is practical or useful?

I think this is the root of the problem.

Like ebrown, I don't see much of what they teach today as being practical or useful. Cursive handwriting seems like a waste of time to me.

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@plainoldme,

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Diagramming is important because if you can not identify the parts of speech, you can not read well.

Diagramming a sentence has nothing to do with being able to read or read well, POM. Just because kids don't know the terminology that is being used, much of it out of date and inaccurate, doesn't mean that their internal grammars don't know the parts of speech.

Listen to kids talk. They don't mix their word order in ways that isn't English. If they didn't have an excellent handle on parts of speech, they wouldn't be able to talk. They'd sound like foreigners. They don't.

The vast vast majority of adults, a large percentage of English teachers don't know much about the English language. If they did, they wouldn't keep teaching all the old canards about language.

Look at David Foster Wallace, a great writer, an English teacher and a creative writing teacher. He knew so very little about English grammar. It was all just the repeats of his mother's sorry little prescriptions.

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@boomerang,

Few schools teach cursive.

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@JTT,

Totally disagree. The kids placed in developmental writing and reading -- and they are placed by examination -- can not pick out a verb. They simply can not read well and they can not comprehend what they read.

I know the source of some of our alternate methods or late 20th C methods of teaching reading and writing and I understand that they were developed to help students who struggled with more traditional methods. The problem is that we have not been quick enough in discarding those experimental methods.

Several respondents have said that they never used diagramming. Of course, you never used it: the message and meaning of diagramming was imprinted in your speech and writing. Diagramming is a tool used to impart a sophisticated understanding of language. Most of those who yawned over the non-use of diagramming have a sophisticated grasp of language and would probably have learned just as well using whole word as they did with traditional phonics.

The ability to read incorporates both knowledge of the language involved and the ability to understand a written text.

My daughter is a language teacher. She despairs over students who were taught by the whole word method. She taught herself to read at 3 and later attended a Montessori school where a system of symbols rather than the lines of diagramming were used. We agree on many issues in teaching but she thinks Latin is a complete waste of time. I would prefer that slower students be taught Latin in a game like setting so that they could learn how to attack a word.

I worry about students who are unable to find a verb in a sentence being taken in by . . . shall we say, flawed . . .political arguments and commercial hucksters.

So, where do you teach English?

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@JTT,

BTW, David Foster Wallace attended Amherst College, double majoring in English and philosophy. He then earned an MFA in writing.

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@plainoldme,

That's it, the Palmer method. I remembered it as starting with S, and was wrong.

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Here's a way to improve the quality of teaching:

Hundreds of DC school employees to be dismissed

Quote:

WASHINGTON – The D.C. Public Schools are firing 241 teachers and warning more than 700 other employees that they could be fired in the next year if their performance doesn't improve.

The firings announced Friday total 302 school system employees, including the 241 teachers. They come largely as a result of the first year of a new teacher evaluation system, though 76 teachers were fired for problems with their licenses.

The evaluation is based largely on five classroom observations of teachers and their students' standardized test scores. Those found "ineffective" on a four-tier system were fired.

Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker says the union will challenge the firings for performance.

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@DrewDad,

Geez DrewDad!

Are you trying to pick a fight? If your employer pulled this crap-- do you think it would make you perform better at work?

Why does everyone think it is OK to crap on teachers? Does the idea of raising pay and working conditions to attract the best talent into the teaching profession ever come up? This is how it is done in almost every other industry.

Can you imagine this happening in any private business?

Teaching is a very important, very challenging job. (If you don't believe me, then try it). Good teachers are heroic... they work extra hours with little support and damn low salary.

A post about how to hire, and support, good teachers would be a much more constructive discussion.

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@plainoldme,

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Totally disagree. The kids placed in developmental writing and reading -- and they are placed by examination -- can not pick out a verb. They simply can not read well and they can not comprehend what they read.

I didn't say that there aren't kids/people who don't learn how to read and write. That's always been a problem. There have always been illiterates and the reasons are many and varied.

What I'm saying is that everyone who speaks knows all these parts of speech.

The mumbo jumbo about verb and present perfect tense and future tense doesn't have anymore to do with language than a medical professional's description of the mechanisms of breathing. The terminology is important to the doctor and the field of study but it has no bearing on our next breath.

Few of us can pick out the verbs of breathing but we all breath pretty well. Few of us can describe the mechanics of walking or running but look at kids, they can do both with ease.

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Diagramming is a tool used to impart a sophisticated understanding of language.

Agreed. But few need that degree of sophistication. Certainly, it's much too much for young children. Mechanically parsing sentences without providing students with the concomitant reasons we choose one grammatical structure over another is all but useless. See my remarks below.

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Most of those who yawned over the non-use of diagramming have a sophisticated grasp of language and would probably have learned just as well using whole word as they did with traditional phonics.

I don't quite understand what you're getting at here, POM.

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The ability to read incorporates both knowledge of the language involved and the ability to understand a written text.

As I've mentioned, the knowledge of the language is already there. Barring any brain damage or other medical conditions, children by the age of about five know pretty much all the grammar of their language.

Not consciously, of course, but that isn't any different for adults, even adults who are pretty handy at diagramming sentences.

Why do you suppose it is that even English teachers who are good at diagramming sentences make the most fundamental errors when describing how language works. Why was Strunk such a dud at describing language? Why are so many college language websites so rife with errors about language?

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but she thinks Latin is a complete waste of time. I would prefer that slower students be taught Latin in a game like setting so that they could learn how to attack a word.

Your daughter is right. There is nothing in Latin that can help anyone learning to use English. There is much in Latin, in a number of languages that can help those learning about English, about language.

That is an enormous difference. That difference is lost on all too many of those teaching English, teaching about English.

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In what grade did you learn to....

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