First: Some UK teachers exchanged the analogue with digital clocks. This was only to reduce interruptions by some students (during a specific kind of UK exams), who had trouble determining the remaining time in the heat of the exam battle.
Secondly: The use of analogue clocks is taught at UK schools. What’s missing is the practice that former generations of pupils had. No more wristwatches, public clocks all but gone, and (what I am nostalgically missing from my youth) no more peeking onto parked car’s dashboards to read the analogue clock there. Times have changed, and this specific partially lost ability is not the schools’ fault. (Not to say that other things aren’t…)
Can we please bury that stupid old meme, as it has been based on some inaccurate buzz and largely giving a completely inaccurate impression of the topic from the start…
First you learn how to write ordinary letters. That trains your fine motor skills so you can write them reliably (try writing with your non-dominant yourself hand to see).
What cursive teaches you is how to write quickly. Of course, no one will write in pure, perfect cursive. Most people settle for a style somewhere in between. It teaches you the concept of “you can combine letters together to make you write faster” and “here are a bunch of ways to combine them”. It’s a good thing, Especially if they end up going to college.
Giving them a few more weeks of practice in reading and writing is a great way to avoid them being partially illiterate.
I was taught block lettering in technical drafting class, 8th grade. Cursive is a lettering specifically created to be easy to handwrite. It flows on paper, as opposed to the repetitive short strokes of block lettering.
The way they taught us cursive was the complete opposite of the intent of cursive. Rigidly proscribed characters with marks only for form, ignoring all function. It was agonizingly tedious and physically painful writing all of those nonsensical scrawls. I immediately switched back to my own chicken scratch after grade school because it was not only orders of magnitude faster, but at least didn’t make my hand painfully seize up into a claw.
Decades later, as my handwriting evolved, a number of my own script letters began to resemble those wretched cursive runes, because I had apparently blindly stumbled upon the actual correct method for writing to flow from nib to parchment, as opposed to whatever those torturous rituals scarred me with as a child.
The problem you describe is very real, and not just in the US or the UK, but in most of Europe as well. A big part of writing is how to actually write, not just the letters et al.
I mean the literal way you move you arm, the angle you write at, how you hold you pen, etc.
I didn’t learn any of that, and as an intensely dyslexic and left-handed individual, writing was extremely painful to me. That is, until 10th grade where I taught myself calligraphy.
It turns out that, when learning calligraphy, you do learn how to write properly.
After that, my handwriting in school (and for the rest of my life) became much better: I didn’t have hand-pain anymore, I didn’t smudge the ink, and, of course, my handwriting was very orderly and neat. Teachers even started commenting on it!
Most notably for me though: writing became fun. For me, as a dyslexic, this literally felt revolutionary.
Anyway, that is what I think they should teach in schools.
I used to troll my teachers with inane questions to help my friends prepare for exams or quizzes that we knew were coming. I can’t expect it’s changed much.
First: Some UK teachers exchanged the analogue with digital clocks. This was only to reduce interruptions by some students (during a specific kind of UK exams), who had trouble determining the remaining time in the heat of the exam battle.
Secondly: The use of analogue clocks is taught at UK schools. What’s missing is the practice that former generations of pupils had. No more wristwatches, public clocks all but gone, and (what I am nostalgically missing from my youth) no more peeking onto parked car’s dashboards to read the analogue clock there. Times have changed, and this specific partially lost ability is not the schools’ fault. (Not to say that other things aren’t…)
Can we please bury that stupid old meme, as it has been based on some inaccurate buzz and largely giving a completely inaccurate impression of the topic from the start…
Eventually, Lexus might stop including the analog clock as a luxury feature.
Kids don’t know cursive either. Nobody needs it anymore.
I feel that learning cursive is important.
First you learn how to write ordinary letters. That trains your fine motor skills so you can write them reliably (try writing with your non-dominant yourself hand to see).
What cursive teaches you is how to write quickly. Of course, no one will write in pure, perfect cursive. Most people settle for a style somewhere in between. It teaches you the concept of “you can combine letters together to make you write faster” and “here are a bunch of ways to combine them”. It’s a good thing, Especially if they end up going to college.
Giving them a few more weeks of practice in reading and writing is a great way to avoid them being partially illiterate.
Counter point: I can write a hell of a lot faster on a keyboard if I need to take notes.
Being “taught” cursive in school was torture, anyway.
I was taught block lettering in technical drafting class, 8th grade. Cursive is a lettering specifically created to be easy to handwrite. It flows on paper, as opposed to the repetitive short strokes of block lettering.
The way they taught us cursive was the complete opposite of the intent of cursive. Rigidly proscribed characters with marks only for form, ignoring all function. It was agonizingly tedious and physically painful writing all of those nonsensical scrawls. I immediately switched back to my own chicken scratch after grade school because it was not only orders of magnitude faster, but at least didn’t make my hand painfully seize up into a claw.
Decades later, as my handwriting evolved, a number of my own script letters began to resemble those wretched cursive runes, because I had apparently blindly stumbled upon the actual correct method for writing to flow from nib to parchment, as opposed to whatever those torturous rituals scarred me with as a child.
The problem you describe is very real, and not just in the US or the UK, but in most of Europe as well. A big part of writing is how to actually write, not just the letters et al.
I mean the literal way you move you arm, the angle you write at, how you hold you pen, etc.
I didn’t learn any of that, and as an intensely dyslexic and left-handed individual, writing was extremely painful to me. That is, until 10th grade where I taught myself calligraphy.
It turns out that, when learning calligraphy, you do learn how to write properly.
After that, my handwriting in school (and for the rest of my life) became much better: I didn’t have hand-pain anymore, I didn’t smudge the ink, and, of course, my handwriting was very orderly and neat. Teachers even started commenting on it!
Most notably for me though: writing became fun. For me, as a dyslexic, this literally felt revolutionary.
Anyway, that is what I think they should teach in schools.
I used to troll my teachers with inane questions to help my friends prepare for exams or quizzes that we knew were coming. I can’t expect it’s changed much.
Support. First reasonable comment in here.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/schools-removing-analog-clocks/
Since smart watches are a thing some schools banned wristwatches during exams because they where not planning to look for the differences
My wrist watches were always digital, public clocks in suburbia I’m just gonna say never existed, in cars wtf?
I can only see this as an education problem.