Happy New Year! So far, we haven’t seen any of the white stuff. Good. Our heating bills are lower and kids are in school. There are fewer pot holes, unless of course you are out at Silver Lake.
Still–a winter without snow? We haven’t even had much weather below freezing. Is this El Nino or something more sinister?
New Years Resolutions? I have given up. I am going to keep going to the gym a couple times a week. I will keep communicating with my friends and I will play with my new toys. I got an Echo and I bought myself a new Mac. Life is good. Downton Abby is about ready to start. February brings Game of Cards.
Just doing my part to ignore the election.
Signatures are no longer necessary. They aren’t secure or authenticated. We don’t even sign a piece of paper; we doodle on a touch screen. If signatures are the only reason for cursive then time to stop wasting time on it in school. A signature can be a picture, a scribble, an X; it doesn’t have to be cursive lettering.
Replacements: biometrics like fingerprints, DNA and smart chips.
It is the government that is wrong to require identification via a proper cursive rendition of one’s name especially since they require government issued photo ids to vote.
I refinanced my house last summer. I had to sign about 20 documents. I didn’t get to scribble or color. I had to use an actual pen.
How are kids going to read hand-written communication?
Sorry Ed, I think you should be able to sign your name if you are to be considered literate. One year of penmanship should be enough.
@Wolve
well, Wolve, you are the one repeating it. An 18 year old cannot blame anything on Common Core as they have not been exposed to it. I do not know why they do not know cursive, but it is not Common Core. I did not see a link to the article.
@Pat.Herve
Elementary.my dear Watson: Type in search terms “New York Post cursive.” You’ll be right there before you can even say “argumentative”!
A link would go on my billing hours sheet.
The New York State Board of Regents adopted 28 learning standards in 1996. Cursive was not included in those standards. That was left up to school districts. The subsequent NY Common Core standards appear to have continued that practice. Looks to me like some NY legislators view the lack of cursive is a here-and-now problem and the present Common Core standards as a potential guarantee of a continuing problem.
It sounds like they should probably mandate it, at last as far as signing one’s own name. It wouldn’t take up that much time if it was designated as a partial study, like keyboarding used to be.
Our signature is one of the things that make us unique. Every child should at least be able to sign his name. Or print and hook the letters together like you do in transitional writing.
I think that cursive must have been taught up until about 10 years ago, just basing my assumption on the skills of various grandkids.
After our discussion I got hold of granddaughter #`1 and bribed her into teaching her little sister how to sign her name. The bait was a new My Little Pony.
The real estate industry/government is behind the times but hurrying to make electronic documents standard.
The last time I went to the bank I did not sign any of the checks I had to deposit. (Went to a teller because of a complex transaction that could not be done on the ATM.) I had to put in my card and enter my pin instead.
When the credit card chip becomes standard, the signature when buying stuff on credit will disappear too.
In the high school personal finance course mandated by the state SOLs, they can add signature creation as a component for a few more years, I suppose. A series of handwritten emoticons, for example, is a signature. A Chinese person does not have to convert his name into cursive to be a signature which proves that a signature is not one’s name written in a cursive western alphabet.
Ed, why are you promoting illiteracy?
In this country, being able to sign your name has a long history of being the earmark of literacy. It is an identifier. Right now it is a big issue in voting irregularity, right here in this county. Some yahoos were trying to match signatures on absentee voting.
Until such time when we all have retina scans, its a good idea to practice our traditions. You are talking like I am trying to promote signature rings in wax as seals or something.
I have not one problem with modern technology replacing the need for my signature. That doesn’t give me a pass to be an ignoramus.
Chinese people can sign in Chinese even. I simply don’t care.
When I sold my mother’s house, I did it entirely online. I signed in a signature box and that signature was transferred to all other lines that needed to be signed. I purposely make my signature a hard to replicate scrawl. Younger people could do the same – make a scrawl that’s individually theirs.
I don’t even remember doing the initial signature when I refinanced. I did it all electronically. Then at closing I had to actually take pen in hand and sign a million times. GRRRRR.
Regardless of how many things replace signatures, I think we still need to know how to scrawl. Mine keeps getting worse and worse, btw. That carpel tunnel makes it difficult.
The biggest drawback I see to eliminating cursive is the difficulty in quickly reading script – must be like plowing through The Canterbury Tales.
LOL great analogy. I agree. How do you read those old letters from great grandma? How do you read….GASP!! The constitution?
“Ed, why are you promoting illiteracy?” LOL.
When I get to the old folks home I’ll be sending cyphered notes to my friends that can’t be intercepted by the young ones because it is written in cursive. Cool.
I’ll be glad when wedding invitations stop using those silly cursive typefaces, though.
Wedding invitations are expensive and pretentious…the old engraved fancy calligraphy kind.
I had those. It cost a fortune. Ridiculous waste of money.