Quote:
Originally Posted by MandoMan
This is a noble effort. I spent 1960-1968 in grade school, and for, what, four years? Five years? that included handwriting classes. I was left-handed, which made cursive difficult, and I well remember spending hours trying to copy out each letter hundreds of times, rather as in Ms. Mallory’s book, but on pages and pages of Big Chief tablets. I’m very pleased that I can still read cursive with ease, but I reverted to printing as soon as I was able to. I’m not sure many kids today would be willing to learn to write cursive unless they are forced to, and I’m not sure Ms. Mallory’s book offers enough repetitions to learn to write cursive easily, but it might make it possible for kids to read it.
I would prefer that kids be required to learn touch typing. That would be very useful for anyone who uses keyboards for typing documents instead of just using a phone or iPad. I took a year of touch typing in high school, and I can still type 40 words per minute. I used to wish I’d learned Gregg shorthand in high school—as a writer and teacher that would have been useful. Now, however, that day has passed. I don’t need it anymore. Indeed, I don’t recall meeting anyone in my life who could still write in shorthand. I would also like to be able to read old Gothic type like that used in old German books. But I wouldn’t use it much. While we are at it, I wish I spoke more languages.
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There's nothing stopping you from learning more languages, or learning to read gothic typeface, or even learning a whole other alphabet.
I took touch typing too - on an IBM selectric with a daisy wheel. The keyboard keys were all blanked out, you only knew which letter you were about to type because you kept your pointer fingers in "home" position and learned the qwerty keyboard backward and forward - literally. By the end of the class I was at around 37wpm with 0 errors. Not bad, but not impressive either.
Having spent more of my adult life using a computer than not using one, my typing speed is up to around 90wpm with 0 errors. When I was a Kelly girl in the 1980s it was over 100wpm with 0 errors, and could take dictation "live" on an electric typewriter or computer keyboard without needing a dictaphone.
I learned to read Chaucerian English when I was 30 by typing papers for college students. Prior to that I had already learned Shakespearean English, as an elective in High School. I learned Quebecois the summer after graduating from college by living in a fishing village north of Montreal that year. And tried to learn Mandarin last year but I lost interest in it after the first month of lessons, and gave it up.
If cursive writing is a big deal to you, and you're any good at it, you could always volunteer to teach an extra-curricular class for students after school or during summer session.