Life is tough for a third grader. Kids are mean, the
playground is a battlefield, and on top of all the other twists and turns of
third grade life, you are forced to learn cursive. I distinctly remember
sitting at my desk in Ms.Mahoneys classroom, wrestling with the delicate
intricacies of an uppercase cursive ‘G’. So many weeks were spent struggling to
perfect our cursive, being told we would employ this method of writing “all the
time” and that it would eventually help us write faster. Sure, the idea of
cursive was nice in theory, handwriting where you never had to pick up your
pencil, and therefore would speed up the process of writing, whether you were
taking notes or drafting an essay. Fast forward a few grades, to a very awkward
six grade me sitting in computer class playing typing games on the computer.
Gone was the need for me to be able to write in cursive, now it was important
that I be able to type with a high proficiency, keeping my fingers on my home
row keys, ASDF and JKL;. An evil orange plastic key cover was placed over my
keyboard so I would learn to type faster and make it to the highest levels of
the typing computer game we were required to play. Fast forward to present day,
I am a college student, who has never written an essay in cursive (to be honest
I don’t think I’d be able to write in cursive if you asked me to), and while I
do type, I never keep my fingers on my home row keys as I was instructed to do
by my kooky computer teacher Mrs.Veneable. For me and my peers, growing up with
technology was completely normal, as we were developing our minds, technology
itself was also developing. We had a learning experience like any other,
because we were the ginea pigs for so many learning techniques that used
technology.
All
throughout my middle school and high school careers, I constantly heard the
phrase, “technical difficulties” and “were going to try something new”. Because
there was always a new technology out there, there was always a new assignment
to try out on us that somehow used that technology. Some things worked, and
others didn’t. My senior year in high school, my Spanish teacher decided ,to
bring us into the global world we were about to become a part of, as a class we’d
adopt pen pals from Spain. The assignment was, once a week we were to post a
video of us talking in Spanish about our personal lives and send it to our pen
pals through a certain website. The Spanish “video blog” pals, then would
respond with a video of them doing the same thing in English. From an educational
standpoint, this idea was revolutionary in the way that students from opposite
sides of the globe would be able to communicate and learn about the others life
through the internet. While I was sitting in my room in Dallas, Texas I could
get a first-hand account of adolescent life in Madrid, Spain, and also improve
my Spanish skills. No previous generation could have ever had this sort of
primary source experience; communicating face to face with a person about a
topic is a completely different way of learning. In the end, our pen pals weren’t
as successful as my Spanish teacher would've hoped, and we abandoned ship for
other learning experiments in this new technological abyss. Trial and error
with these experiments is something me and my peers have become accustom to
over the years.
In a
way, teachers are reformulating their lesson plans and criteria, and testing it
out on our generation. It a type of simultaneous learning on different levels; the
teachers are learning about the technology and what works while the students
are learning about the technology and also the course curriculum. As a result, it’s
a multi-level learning process that is beneficial for all parties. In the past,
teachers gave the same assignments over and over again. Now teachers and
students work together to create new assignments that are challenging and
innovative. Frequently, after a big project or group assignment, my teachers
would hand out review sheets asking our opinions of the assignment and how we
think it could be improved. The teacher/student dynamic has therefore changed
as a result of technology utilization in the classroom. This new kind of
learning and teaching fosters creative ways of thinking and is completely different
from traditional ways of schooling used in the past.
Today,
writing an essay begins and ends using Microsoft word. There’s no need to
prepare a first draft, using cursive of course, and then a second and third
draft on old school notebook paper. Kids also learn to use a computer before
they can learn to read so teaching typing in schools seems a bit outdated. I
was in third grade almost ten years ago, in 2003, almost a millennium ago in
technology years. Our rapidly evolving society is changing second by second,
and learning is changing too. For generations to come to be equipped with the
skills and knowledge necessary to live in such a society digital learning is a
necessity (and cursive probably is not).
The requirement to learn cursive is heavily debated in U.S. education right now. I remember when I was in fifth grade, and when we were asked to write our paper on the little mock-laptops the school provided, I freaked out. I had no idea how to communicate on a piece of machine, and I missed the paper drafting. Now, we take for granted that our generation had to learn computer skills; they were not inherent to us.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to see how children learn technology today. Maybe teachers have worked out all of the kinks and figured out a way to incorporate technology seamlessly into traditional education.
The point you make about us being guinea pigs is so interesting! I could remember exactly how I hated my computer classes learning with "Type to Learn" but I loved to learn how to write in cursive, and still use it as my main writing today. I guess everyone learns differently. I always think to myself how much more technologically advanced can we get in our society. Will it one day stop? Certainly not, and the future generations will unquestionably continue being guinea pigs for the sake of technology's inventions. What I find even more perplexing is that Marshall McLuhan, back in the 1960s or even before that, realized how present, and in his opinion important, media and technology in general were to education. I believe there is no point in giving children and adolescents an antiquated education that restricts them from assessing the new forms of technology of the present. However important cursive or other "less technological" learnings are, the future education system will incorporate and favors contemporary technological forms of learning that will ultimately prepare future generations better in every aspect.
ReplyDeleteI can definitely relate to this post. Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, we were taught certain practices would "help us in the future" or would be "used when you're older". This was especially said in my computer class where we learned how to navigate through microsoft office. A common complaint made by the students was that by the time we actually used more microsoft office, there would be a new edition out so there was no point in learning from an old model.
ReplyDeleteI think your essay points out how quickly we are changing and growing with regards to technology and education. and it calls to question what practices will seem outdated tomorrow, a year from now, a decade from now?
I like how this blog post connects to communication. I never thought of how useless my cursive lessons were in middle school. I actually haven't thought about cursive in years because it has been phased out completely by the dominance of computers. It is interesting because in our current digital age cursive and even writing letters or thank-you notes by hand are rare and carry a special meaning. In our digital/computer based world hand written notes have become a way to express that something is special because normally we would send an email or text message. I had not really thought about this until reading this post about cursive!
ReplyDeleteI share the frustration of the uppercase G's! Haha but I really liked your take on always having to try out the new technologies within the classroom. I find it interesting that still today, when I babysit younger kids they have homework learning to write the alphabet in cursive. Personally, I can see the value in practicing handwriting, because it's still important if you have to send someone a note or a thank you card, but I didn't appreciate being told that we would "always" use cursive in the future. More than anything, its aesthetically pleasing instead of being an efficient way to write.
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