This was, without a doubt, one of the dumbest articles I've read on HN in a long time.
I wish I had better handwriting, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who wish they wrote less clearly.
I wish I had better handwriting, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who wish they wrote less clearly.
I still take notes with pen and paper quite regularly. I can read my own chickenscratch just fine, even if no one else can. Who cares? In fact, while in college, I developed a sort of hyper-condensed personal shorthand, to the point that my notes are basically a code that only I'm fluent in. That was key, because it let me spend more time listening to the lecture and less time drawing fonts. To paraphrase pg, "terseness is what written language is FOR" ;)
If anyone else has to read it, then you type it. Most of my teachers in high school and college required papers to be typed anyhow, and this is becoming much more common. It's only in elementary schools that we subject children to emotional abuse for their lack of calligraphy skills.
As for the meditative qualities of putting pen to paper, that's still not an argument for requiring penmanship. Most of my "fleshing out ideas" writing looks more like a flowchart anyhow, usually with plenty of the aforementioned chickenscratch shorthand all over it.
I don't wish I wrote less clearly. And I can write just fine if I do it slowly. It's just that my penmanship is almost entirely a purely personal activity, so as long as I can read it, there's no problem. We should teach kids to type fluently, think clearly, and draw script that they can read.
Nope.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295110
I was convinced to design a system so that I could actually pay attention in class and take good notes, as well as take notes during these important face-to-face conversations. So whenever somebody says something interesting, I can get it down unobtrusively, quickly, and actually then reuse those notes later on in further conversations.
That's why I made a wearable computer. ...
I went to a heads-up display. I could put the focus on the whiteboard, and suddenly I could keep up. And I found not only could I keep up and take good notes, especially with this one-handed Twiddler keyboard I have, but it actually focused my mental attention, so that during a lecture I got a whole lot more out of it than ever before. And that's why if you've ever seen me in a meeting or a lecture, you'll see me taking notes furiously on my wearable computer not just so I get it, but also because it keeps my attention focused. I can put in new ideas and new offshoots and things I want to ask later into the stream of data that I'm capturing. ...
I also have a one-handed keyboard called a Twiddler. It has 12 keys on the front and six keys on the top. One of those keys is actually a joystick. It allows me to type up to 130 words per minute, though I maintain about 70 when I'm writing papers, that sort of thing. ...
And this is the system I wear basically every day. Right now, if you looked at my screen, you would see that I have all the previous conversations I had with David here – one on 25 January 2006, one on 25 January 2007, and one 29 January 2008, today. So every time I've met with Gartner, I've kept notes on the conversation.
This is the Twiddler:
If handwriting is still being taught in schools, it's being extremely overvalued. When's the last time a kindergartner, or any elementary student for that matter, was required to take a typing class? And yet, those students learn to type at a passable level.
Teach touch typing instead. The children will learn the same fine motor skills but with something that will be much more important throughout the rest of their lives. They'll pick up handwriting as necessary, but public education shouldn't hand out grades and devote significant resources to its teaching.
We had writing in Kindergarden/1st/2nd grade. Which doubled as English lessons (expanding vocabulary, etc). And learning how to read as well. Maybe I was just lucky enough to have good teachers, but I assume that it was done intentionally. Never writing "cat" over and over until the "c" was perfect, but finding different words that have a "c" and writing those instead.
I'm sure there's probably more handwriting classes - but it's slowly changing..
Question - Which Do you think would be better to learn the structure of letters from? Learning to type first, or learning to draw out the letters?
Quite honestly, if you paired typing with auditory feedback for what letters sound like ('s' from 'c' from 'z' from 'sh' and 'sp'), you'd not only help the kids to learn the letters but also how to read. Handwriting doesn't offer that dual modality approach. Further you could pair typed words with the objects to which they refer (think animals), the sounds they make, and other facts about them. I'm actually shocked there aren't teaching programs like this. There must be that I'm not aware of.
Instead, I'd prefer a web app that allows my doctor's office to connect directly to the pharmacy. Heck, a good one wouldn't require any text even - point and click on the medication.
Now I wonder if this sort of article should be tolerated simply because it generates discussion...
Care to fill out the missing steps in the syllogism, to make the "point" you think she's got?
But you made me re-read the article (actually the middle three paragraphs, which I skipped because the intro and final paragraphs weren't interesting). Fair enough -- she has a point. It could be about cursive, stupid teachers, bad curricula, schooling, or just handwriting in general. Not sure which, and that the title is incendiary and that she stated her profession in the intro just doesn't do it for me. I admit my comment was untamed though.
Teaching typing to kids would be far more useful once they can write well enough to get by. Spending ages on getting lovely neat joined up writing seems a bit of a waste these days.
Most professions have long since moved from filling out paperwork, to typing. It would make sense to reflect that when we educate our children.
I have a few kids of my own, so this isn't just me imposing my own personal preference, this is me wanting the best for my own children. Having the best chance of getting a good job etc, and learning skills that will be the most use.
That is not a good enough reason. I don't know anyone who wishes they were was worse at the high jump. That's not a reason to devote more school resources to it.
This is a question of priorities. There is not doubt that handwriting is now less important then it was 15 years ago. That should be reflected in the school curriculum. There's room for debate on the issue of how much.
At my school I don't think there was even an option to learn to type. That seems a pretty large oversight given how often the average person in the workforce needs to type something out.
It's a ludicrous argument, but given her next post it seems that this is her modus operandi.