Friday, June 28, 2013

CAN YOU READ THIS? ⬇


Rachel Jeantel can't because there is some doubt about the necessity these days regarding cursive writing. Jeantel has some serious legal problems but that's not my purpose to discuss today. Today I am interested in the educational movement to do away with cursive writing.

Technology has questioned the need for cursive. At one time cursive's purpose was to speed up communication when printing each individual letter was too slow as more people began to communicate via letters, etc.

"Cursive, also known as scriptjoined-up writingjoint writingrunning writing, or handwriting is any style of penmanship in which the symbols of the language are written in a conjoined and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive]

Now with text messaging and social media cursive is going the way of the LP album. At first I was shocked to learn of cursive's eminent demise. But as I type this post and email friends I understand the educators reluctance to use class time for a tool that is rapidly becoming out dated. Google Blogger doesn't even have a cursive font that I can use in the title page of this post. Online searches have cursive fonts available if you want to pay for them. Cursive may be on my Pages software, but it's not labeled as 'cursive'. 

My concern is that historical documents in cursive will require future historians to learn cursive writing in order to read the original historical documents. It will be like learning a foreign language. I can imagine graduate history students taking advance courses in CURSIVE 500.



Sunday, June 9, 2013

A Tolerable Imbalance

"Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends, Once More"  Shakespeare, Henry V, Act III.

Preserving our freedoms is not written in stone nor on parchment. Preserving our freedoms is daily and never ending. It is not absolute either. Without security we have no freedom so once again we must decide a tolerable imbalance.

Today we find ourselves as collateral damage to terrorism and even more so to domestic terrorism. Our freedoms seem to be increasingly eroded in favor of safety. The historical record is rife with examples of dilemmas such as we face today. Our fear is that once given up they are never given back.

So today, on the Sunday news shows, the question will arise on expanding or contracting the breach. Instead of platitudes and quotes from the past we must once again address the question of tolerable imbalance.