dirty dave

When I was in the 8th grade (the early 60s), a local bank donated a copy of the Declaration of Independence to our school. I thought it was the greatest thing it was aged and looked like the real thing. Each student had their own copy. We all took turns reading out loud in class, we were told to take it home and study it and we would have a quiz the next day. My son is a middle school teacher and I told him the story. My son decided to find a copy of the Declaration of Independence and take it to class. He called me that evening and said his students had difficulty trying to read it. First it was wrote in cursive (he called it connective writing) and second the words are to hard and not the same language that we use today. I said you must be kidding me. What a shame that our middle school students can't read our original documents from our country's history. May be our educators don't feel it is important enough. I know I am just a crabby old man but something just don't seem right. What is your thoughts? Should kids be taught cursive writing or is it becoming a lost language.

balticvid Loc: Queens now NJ

I wasn't aware of this.
It should be "translated" into modern day language
that all the young people can understand. Make lots of copies. It SHOULD be taught in all the schools.

lwiley Loc: Los Banos, CA, USA

Currently, our society does not reward excellence or hard work. In 1953 issac Asimov wrote a short story, 'The Gift', that describes exactly what is happening in the industrialize world today! With the computers and instant gratification afforded by it, we do not need to be able to read and write the spoken word or do the math mentally. Pretty soon for many that grey matter holding our ears apart will really be mush!

tschmath Loc: Los Angeles

If you picked up a copy of Beowulf in the original Old English, you wouldn't be able to read it, either. I think the bigger shame is that they have no idea what cursive writing is. I see it every day as kids try to take notes in class, and can't keep up because they print everything. Kids have no idea what a signature is, they just print their names. I find that very sad.

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Not only are they not teaching writing, some schools are no longer teaching spelling. Their comments are they have spell checker... Tell them there is no spell checker in the pen/pencil and they reply, why are they using pens/pencils - nobody uses them anymore...

Sad state of affairs - and these kids are going to be our leaders in the near future - it is scary...

tschmath Loc: Los Angeles

I really find it hard to believe that schools are not teaching spelling. Can you give us an example of what you're talking about? Which school(s) are not teaching spelling?

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Schools in Ludowici GA - my daughter just moved there and is shocked to find this out...

But it seems this is state wide - she is looking into it and send me the following info:

They do offer a hand held spell checkers -
http://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/Special-Education-Services/Georgia-Project-for-Assistive-Technology/Pages/WS-Handhelds.aspx

Seems GA has new guidelines and I cannot find any mention of spelling -
http://www.longcountyps.com/Departments/Parent_Involvement/Basic_info_powerpoint.pdf

https://www.georgiastandards.org/standards/GPS%20Support%20Docs/GPS%20Glossary.pdf

And a side note - not all states are at the same level - in the late 80's I moved from CA to PA and was appalled that they did not have gifted programs or advanced programs - my kids were two years ahead of them and bored silly until I got them moved to a different school.

Not happy about the current situation, but it is what it is...

skooters Loc: Flagstaff, Arizona

Hey, here in Arizona we rank 47th in education. We do not teach a thing.

tschmath Loc: Los Angeles

And yet Republicans there don't want Common Core standards. ANYTHING has to be an improvement over what you have now, even if it isn't perfect.

skooters Loc: Flagstaff, Arizona

I really can not figure out why they do not want anything. You are right, anything would be better than what we have now. Hell the Legislature just gave themselves raises, both republicans and democrats, as more school funding gets cut. This is bipartisan for sure. At least you can say it crosses the isle on this one. I guess you can't fix stupid.
:D

tschmath Loc: Los Angeles

Can't fix it, so just keep votin' them in. That'll fix it!!!

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

I used to require that all class work be done in cursive. (history, geography etc.) I never down graded for poor cursive, only for not attempting it. I gave out charts of one of the simpler cursive styles and did mini lessons on using cursive from time to time. I got a lot of resistance from many students and heard about it from some teachers that students had complained about my requirement. Some of the younger teachers couldn't do cursive either. They also couldn't spell, they relied on 'spell check' and often didn't know they used the wrong word when their typos happened to be real words.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

I could certainly be printed to make it easier to read than the original cursive. But the language shouldn't have to be dumbed down because the original language is beautiful as well as historical.

Singing Swan

We give them things like spongebobsquarepants for entertainment. Why should they learn anything when they have such wonderful role models????? And in case anyone doesn't catch it ... that was meant to be totally sarcastic, which I can write in cursive ... with either hand and backwards to boot !!!!!!

tschmath Loc: Los Angeles

I had an interesting conversation at school today with an expert on Common Core English standards. I asked him about teaching spelling, and he agreed that formal teaching of spelling is being deempasized in lieu of a more holistic approach.

The rational is that through the standards, which emphasize much more exposure to written text, children will learn spelling through kind of an absorptive process. Just as they learn sight words through continued exposure, so too will they come to be proficient spellers.

Now I'm not sure if I agree with it, but it seems like a valid way to try to increase several critical skills at once. We'll have to see how it plays out, but I'm in favor of trying new techniques to get our kids to be number one again in the world. What were doing now sure as hell ain't working.