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Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills
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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Forcing children to do cursive was not really the point I am trying to make. Yes it's technically more efficient to write that way, but it's also considerably more complicated. Forcing children with disabilities to do it leads to all kinds of problems, and makes their writing less legible. I am more talking about techniques that avoid issues like RSI. If we are making children do things we should be teaching them the correct way to do it, not half assing it. While I think we should still teach cursive, I don't think it should be mandatory. In fact I actually want to see more keyboard use with proper ten finger technique, as that is useful for the real world. Typing technique is also something schools love to neglect. It's also better to give kids that option as even with better handwriting instruction some just do not have the required motor skills through no fault of their own. People like me were forced to do handwriting practice despite having significant coordination issues, and never being taught the right technique. Eventually I had to dig through obscure corners of the Internet to find out the right way. Situations like that should never be allowed to continue for as long as it did in my case. Either by actually teaching the right technique in the first place, or in cases where that doesn't work by switching to typing instead.
...which includes cursive. Also for disabled folks, as far as possible: At that point you're teaching fine motor mechanics first and foremost, secondly writing. How quickly they write is of no great consequence (or we'd be teaching shorthand), how well their motor skills develop is. The usual approach here is that you get a set cursive with a couple of options and alternative glyph shapes for the first four years, then you can develop from there as you wish. Some kids arguably should get more hand-holding in the "develop for yourself" part.
That you didn't learn it the right way is a thing you can blame on your teachers, but not cursive. Like, I mentioned pencils and fountain pens, ball-point pens are outlawed in schools here: It's so that kids don't use pressure, which makes them not tense up and cramp, which makes developing proper technique way easier. Though if the coordination issues are sub-clinical they generally should be sorted out before primary school starts, that's a job for the kindergarten, making sure that everyone has a proper baseline in physical, social, and language skills.
Maybe I haven't explained this but with regards things like handwriting and special education my country isn't that well put together. They hand kids ballpoint pens for the most part unless you are in private school. Some schools force kids to use pencil even.
Cursive is fundamentally less legible and harder work for most students to learn. It should be taught yes, but not as the only way. Schools often force people to use cursive even when that person doesn't have that skill, and the school isn't willing to give them proper lessons on it or the lessons they give aren't of good quality. It was a whole thing in my primary school.
I have actual clinical issues in several different areas of development, not just coordination. You can't remove all issues before primary school starts, I am entitled to some help even now as a 23 year old PhD student and still have issues. I wouldn't even have been accepted into primary school if my parents hadn't gone out of their way to get me tested by psychologists as I had issues the school weren't willing to get me tested for that were picked up on in preschool.
I can write pretty well now including cursive. It's not clear to me how much of the problems I had were because I was younger and at a lesser stage of brain development or how much was bad teaching. Maybe if you know more developmental psychology than I do you could answer that question, but I suspect that answer will be different on a case by case basis.
It's way easier to read for dyslexics as q d b p all look actually different, not just flipped/rotated (which makes them the same thing, try it with a pair of scissors). I don't know what they're teaching in (I presume?) the US, but this is quite legible. There may be instances where it's an undue burden, teachers here are trained to spot that and accommodate, just as they do with dyslexia where you'll get two grades for spelling: One raw, and one with all the dyslexia-typical mistakes (but only those) calculated out.
Pencils, as said, are a good thing: Makes sure that you're not using too much force. Re-sharpening the thing from scratch every other word gets annoying fast. If there's coordination issues then that may be a problem but ultimately it's probably better to bite the bullet and focus on training to not break the lead than it is to hand the pupil a ball point pen because then they're bound to cramp up.
And just because you got me curious I tried to figure out what part of my body I'm writing with -- and TBH aside form "right arm" I can't really make it out because it's all so interconnected and all over the place. I think up/down (the page) is mostly shoulder, and so is continuous left to right, while per-letter left-right and off/onto the page is a combination of underarm rotation and fingers. Never got taught explicitly how to do it, but I remember the primary school teacher occasionally telling kids how to not do it. There's probably multiple ways to do it well.
Oh, and apparently I was wrong: My state did get rid of cursive, then results tanked, now they've re-introduced it, but only from year two on, and the ministry is waiting on data to come in. My guess is that they'll re-introduce cursive from year one. Somehow all the previous generations didn't have an issue using two different fonts at the same time: It's not like our books were written in cursive. I doubt Gen Alpha will have. They may be cringe, but they're not stupid.
I am from the UK. This idea of states having an influence over their education system seems weird to me, though I guess we might allow something similar with Scotland, Wales, or Northern Island.
As I said we really don't teach handwriting that well. They give kids either ball points or these triangle grip things that are actually designed to increase the force it takes to write. Why? No idea but someone thought that was a good idea to stop people who write too quickly and mess it up. Weirdly that actually helped some people. Even though it makes no sense to me.
It's interesting though that you say cursive is more legible for dyslexic people. I think for everyone else print handwriting beats cursive. Not that that's the issue as it's still perfectly readable when done right. I am talking about people with typical doctors handwriting who can't actually write it properly. I am also talking about the difficulty of the technique needed and how that could be a problem for some students. You say teachers adapt but my experience is that they don't. If making students use cursive improves grades though it might be worth it. I am wondering why that's the case that it improves grades.
Either way I think typing should be much more of a focus in modern education. People type more often than they write by hand, yet there is almost no education on how to use a keyboard. Heck lots of modern school students apparently don't know how to use a computer. I've heard of people going to University and not understanding how files and folders work, because it's just presumed that new generations actually know this stuff without being taught.