Now they want to stop teaching kids cursive handwriting
 

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/is-it-t...ting-1.1147200 (full story)

Anything to make the teachers' job more easy...while we continually pay them more and more for less output.

What happens when the battery goes dead on their electronic gadget? Power outage? Systemic failure. Then what...?

Pay them more and more? How much do they get paid in canada? in the US I believe the average starting is like 28K

There's no need for cursive. Hell I'm not even sure I can write all the letters anymore.

Agreed.

I do not have kids, but it seems the local school districts around the country are always looking for more money and teach less. I recall a few years back they wanted money to give every child a laptop to take home. They said that a lot of teachers now-a-days prefer to use computer based lessons and are dropping traditional education techniques.

It's really no surprise that this country's youth are always looking for handouts.

:disgust

I don't care.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

my cursive sucks... but I learned it.

If that time could have been better spent learning a NEW real world skill, then I would agree.

Typing is becoming a very necessary skill as opposed to only girls who took it back when I was in school.

teachers get paid big in Canada, and pensions to match. I posted these stats for Canadian public sector salaries versus private sector salaries. You'll see that a high school teacher is making 100-120K a year - elementary school teachers 60-80K

People with good jobs working for the government in Canada are upper middle class, many of them are in the 1% income bracket we heard so much about during the Occupy movement but nobody said shit about it. It's wrong, who pays the salaries of all those public sector fat cats? The average joe making the Canadian average income of $46,000, the people with their own small businesses who risk their own capital and no pension plan.
When I was a kid school teachers made a little better than average income, now they make TWICE the average income - two high school teachers married to each other pull in about $250,000 a year, with about 3 months off a year.



http://www.bratcash.com/canada_salaries.gif

so you think because they do not teach it the kids just sit there for days LOL hell no they teach them something else. Also it is not up to the teachers on what they have to teach. They have shit they have to teach the kids.
I think it is good, Teach them something they will use, other then my name I have not wrote like that since school

You know what else? Kids don't know how to spell either, because spellcheck usually does it for them.

So now its a war against teachers because kids won't be taught cursive writing?

Teachers have a pretty tough job, and they should get paid more than they do. They're doing one of the most important jobs in the country, and cutting their pay isn't going to help anything.

Such as where and how to apply for government handouts.

Good point. I guess they need cursive to sign d'em gub'nment checks. :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Cursive writing is a waste of time, how often do you really use it?

A lot more often than....

Creative Writing
Public Speaking
American Literature
Algebra
Earth Science
Biology
Chemistry
Spanish
Religion

.... and so on.... and so on.

Don't teach math either, every computer has a calculator. Don't teach spelling every computer has spell check. Don't teach sex ed every kid knows how to find porn tubes. Don't have gym classes every kid has video games.

Just make sure kids know how to upload cat videos to YouTube.

.

Number of jobs that require 'cursive' as a prerequisite skill?

Hmm.... typographer, calligraphist, tattoo artist...
Am I missing any others?

There are always calculators handy as well... yes they need to be able to add, subtract and divide... but doing long division on 8 digit numbers is something that simply will not be necessary in their lifetimes. At a certain point in the past adults stopped teaching every kid how to ride a horse... because driving a car became a more useful skill.

How about teaching them how to code, speak foreign languages or critically think well enough to vett information being 'given' to them to discern what is valid and what is not valid. Those are all skills BEST taught to grade-school aged children and will serve them much better in their adult life than any form of 'hand writing' ever would.

How many 'require' you know American Literature, History, Spanish, Biology, Chemistry, Religion, Women's Studies, and so forth? Correct. Next to none unless you choose them as a career. You missed the point.

Yet most people have to do some form of "writing" on a daily basis. Assuming they leave their house. Which is the majority.

:2 cents:

:2 cents:

Cursive always sucked to me, glad it's becoming obsolete

I know you asked for a number of jobs but personal life it's needed for signing for packages.
In my case I had postal both Fed ex and UPS tell me not to
print on those handhelds devices number of times.
Documents and deposit slips at the banks. Checks for rent and so on.

I love cursive writing it's printing I suck at.

Yep, ridiculous someone could think its important.

Cursive is flat-out antiquated now. In today's world there's really no need for it. Literally the only time I ever use it is to sign checks and even then it's so horrible it's not even legible. My signature is just a scribble. I'm just fine with cursive being shitcanned. Maybe it can be taught later on in an art class like calligraphy or something.

Stupid question, but if kids no longer learn to write in cursive how would they sign a document?

with a pen?

They still know how to print. This is why it is so hard ot make effective change. "I learned so even though no one uses it or needs, you should too." Is not really that great of an argument but here it is being used.

WHAT you LEARN has an effect on the BRAIN…..and HOW you learn….and FUTURE COGNITIVE ABILITY...

Used to draw an "X"?

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but learning how to read and write (even without a keyboard and monitor) still strikes me as being important.

teach banking

I know schools in Indiana that already stopped. And don't think for a minute that the things you were taught will continue to be taught to your kids. If you think a certain subject is important and the school isn't spending enough time on it to suit you, teach them yourself.

Quite frankly if i've written down 500 words in the last 2 years that's about it.

nobody could ever read my cursive anyway, my typing is much better...

During the holidays I get cards from family members written in cursive and I only understand half of what they're saying anyway.

Nobody is advocating people not being able to 'sign their name' but in the very near future 'signatures in cursive' will all go away as a matter of security. It's simply much too easy to scan or forge a cursive signature. In the very near future your 'signature' will be some kind of digital fingerprint + location + spending habits + other data to determine whether the person 'signing' is you or not... and it will be authenticated by your mobile device, not by a pen.

You teach a kid cursive, Chaucer and Egyptian Studies. I'll teach another kid how to vett information, how to code and how to speak 3 modern languages. Then we can set them loose in the world and see which one does better. Biology, Women's Studies, Chemistry and Religion are still very relevant areas of learning. In fact, learning Women's Studies and Spanish makes a tremendous amount of sense because of the current demographic growth of those segments. Chaucer? Not so much...

We live in an age where we know more than we can teach. In 30 consecutive years of education you can only cover so many topics proficiently. Choosing WHAT to teach and HOW to teach it is much more important than it used to be. The only *tiny* reason to learn cursive is that it may assist a visual thinker with learning basic language skills, but even in that instance the person would be far better off learning American Sign Language than cursive.

99% of information can now be retrieved in seconds from any location in the world by anyone with a cellphone. Teaching people to memorize that information is not nearly as helpful as teaching people how to find it reliably, who to trust about it and who not to trust about it. That fact will only become more true by the time this generation reaches maturity. :2 cents:

Voting in school board elections would help as well.

After all, it would be kinda nice if your kid's peers could read something that your kids wrote on a piece of paper.

Yep, I write on a daily basis - court notes, incident reports, employee performance evaluations...to name just a few.

Provincial Court doesn't allow us to take electronic gadgets into the courtroom - all testimony must be made from handwritten notes made at the time.

The *only* thing that would make that still be the case when today's youngsters join the workforce twenty years from now is an incredibly strong stenographer's union. :winkwink:

It should be an elective class. You don't need it.

Handwriting Nutters

I took typing in high school. Now kids know how to type before they know how to spell.

Back in '78 - I was the only guy who took two years of typing, lol. A lot of guys took it first year, but I found myself the only guy among thirty chicks in the second year. My buddies ribbed me about it at the time - but I had the last laugh. On a good day my keyboard speed is 90-100wpm...plus I got to stare at a lot of nice T&A that second year.