Few entering college this year have ever written in cursive

I’m much younger than I thought! I bought a cell phone on eBay for $24 which I use instead of a watch.

The sooner cursive writing as a standard method of writing for communication dies the death of 10,000 screams, the better off we will be. Something like the writing taught for calligraphy (which is more like an art form than writing to simply express ideas) should stick around, and that is great. However, most people do cursive way too badly to be completely legible, and honestly, it’s way too slow as a method of communication.

When my kids started home school after having been at a private (Christian) school, the very first thing I instituted was a no-cursive policy combined with typing class their first year (5th and 7th grade). After that was complete, except for math class, I accepted no handwritten assignments in any form. Ever. At first, I got complaints, but halfway through the first semester of typing class, I did a test with both kids. I had them write out (in any form they wanted) a paragraph, and then type the same paragraph, and timed them. Not only did both of them blow their times out of the water (more than twice as fast typing), I could hardly read the paragraph they attempted to write by hand, and truth be told, if I didn’t know beforehand what the text in the paragraph was, I doubt I’d have been able to read every word. Once they saw that, they were completely convinced.

Technology is that way. The article also speaks (with some wistfulness) of even new students having to learn to do research in college with books and libraries rather than the internet. Eventually, I believe serious works will all be available in electronic form (if not on the internet, then on a private electronic server accessible by the students) because card catalogs and slogging through paper is simply outmoded, and there is really no point to wasting a lot of time for the sake of nostalgia. I understand if there is a big war or some disaster that the internet may not be available, but in that case, I believe that the least of the problems would be learning how to use books again. The reality is that in 10 or 20 years, I believe it will be hard to find all that many current “real” books (if any), and the old ones will be available on eBay or in antiquarian shops.

Our kids (and theirs if the Lord tarries) will have lots of problems to worry about because of the nature of the curse and of sin, but just as I didn’t have to walk or bike to school, I’m not worried that they won’t have to learn to use the old technologies I had to deal with.

The sooner cursive writing as a standard method of writing for communication dies the death of 10,000 screams, the better off we will be.

LOL. I teach my kids to write in cursive, but mostly so that they have neat signatures. Since every form they will ever have to fill out by hand will read PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY, I don’t see the point of cursive. It’s pretty and all- but when are you going to use it? And I agree that it is very difficult to read at times unless someone has particularly neat handwriting.

6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
Someone needs to tell them she moved to Sunnydale and the Hellmouth is closed for future business.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
When I see someone doing this on tv I become wistful. I really miss the rotary dial- such a comforting sound.

[Jim Peet]
It was nice when the phone rang and you really wanted to talk to the person calling you (before tele-marketers, political calls, robo calls, etc)

I can’t argue too much with this, but technology has provided a way to fix this too. My VoIP provider gives me several options in this department, some of which you could get with regular telephone, but were way too expensive.

First, I always get caller ID, and I block ALL calls (even unknown, not just blocked-ID) that do not give caller ID. Second, I don’t answer any call where I don’t recognize the caller. They can go to voicemail, and I’ll call back if it was important. For numbers that don’t have a name with the caller ID (like cell phones), I can assign a caller ID on my provider web page, so I get those by name too. I get a text any time I get a voicemail, and I can listen to the message for my home number right on my cell phone. Third, for repetitive calls from numbers I don’t recognize, I just add them to the block list, and then the phone doesn’t ring, AND (the best part), they get a “Disconnected or no longer in service” message at their end. Now, 95% or greater of my calls are calls I want to get, and the rest I can ignore unless repeated, but a couple seconds on the web, and I won’t get those again either. :D

This might not be quite as good as only getting calls you wanted to get, but it’s pretty close!

Finally, our answering machine message is in German (my wife’s native language), which usually scares off those who don’t know us from leaving any message at all. (And, I can always give a more friendly message to particular numbers I do want to call us!)