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Okay I gotta ask.....

voicesdarkvoicesdark Member Posts: 0 Arc User
edited April 2013 in Ten Forward
I know the past couple of years there's been talk of schools in the US not teaching cursive writing anymore. My question is when in the hell did they stop teaching people how to read or for that matter simple comprehension of what they are reading ???!!!!!

The influx of raging idiots on here going off on forum wide rages because they didn't comprehend something they read is becoming seriously insane. If it was a virus that spread this quickly, the CDC would have put us all in quarantine and anyone we've had contact with.

Has texting and tweeting and every other one-liner social media really degraded human intelligence this quickly and severely with anything composed of more than one sentence, or is it just a random string of recent coincidence?
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Post edited by voicesdark on

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    anazondaanazonda Member Posts: 8,399 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    voicesdark wrote: »
    Has Facebook, texting and tweeting and every other one-liner social media really degraded human intelligence this quickly and severely with anything composed of more than one sentence, or is it just a random string of recent coincidence?

    This summed it up quite nicely, and I've added my own little touch.
    Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
    pwebranflakes wrote: »
    Let me put the rumors to rest: it's definitely still the C-Store (Cryptic Store) It just takes ZEN.
    Like Duty Officers? Support effords to gather ideas
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    dirlettiadirlettia Member Posts: 1,632 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    I would not be so hard on people so quickly. If I try to read announcements on French or German games I end up with such poor comprehension it really shows. The same applies for others whose native language is not one which the announcements are made in.

    If the posts were made by native english speakers then yes, be hard on them as they have a lot to learn, otherwise just imagine they dont speak english properly and forgive them.

    As an example of how they might read an announcement try running the news page through Google translate twice, once to maybe swedish and then back to english and see how weird it looks as that might give an idea of how people are reading the news.
    Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
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    catstarstocatstarsto Member Posts: 2,149 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    They still taught that when I was in, but Ive heard lately to pass English call you have to learn Spanish......I wonder, to pass French class do you have to learn German? :P

    They even changed math since i've been in, apparently long division (what i was taught) is no longer acceptable :O

    Truth is stranger then fiction! Anything stranger then tat comes from public schools !! ^^
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    jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,365 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Oh, it's hardly a recent phenomenon - it's just that with the advent of the Internet, what was once fairly harmless blather over a breakfast table as someone half-read the newspaper headline and decided from that what the article might say, has now become broadcast to the entire world via Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

    And of course the tendency of this to happen with online conversations is merely an extension of what happens with verbal conversations. (Have you ever noticed that a good many people, rather than listening to everything you have to say, just listen to as much as they think they need to in order to formulate a response, then spend the time considering what they're going to say rather than listening any further?)

    tl;dr - Electronic communications let people look stupid to a much wider audience than they used to.
    Lorna-Wing-sig.png
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    There's actually a couple of good reasons to get rid of cursive. It's actually quite expensive to teach it, due to the materials and time involved. That's time that could be used for other things.

    People need to remember why cursive was invented as well. It was developed as a faster way of writing, that allowed people to write large, long business documents, novels, essays and whatever in a short period of time. Nowadays with computers, cursive is actually very counter intuitive to it's original purpose. It takes a lot longer to write something in cursive than it takes to type it out.

    It's the typographical equivalent of the stagecoach, and there's a reason we don't use those for mail anymore. Grammar, reading comprehension, and intelligence will live on without cursive, that I promise you. I can understand why getting rid of cursive rubs a lot of people the same way, but we shouldn't use cursive for the same reason we don't use feather quills anymore. It's impractical.

    Businesses, writers, and print shops (the kind of things that gave us calligraphy and cursive n the first place) have been doing away with cursive for the past 200 years. You wont even find "please use print" on documents much anymore because it's expected. Cursive is very hard to read quickly, and you better believe that some poor intern stuck reading 2500 applications isn't going to want to put up with some idiot who thinks he's "refined".

    I work in the graphic design industry, and I have seen some really nice advertisements and websites fail, simply because people couldn't read it quickly. It's not because their becoming stupider, it's because we live in a different world than we did 300 years ago. So getting rid of cursive should be no more difficult than getting rid of Linotype Machines. (As freaking awesome as those things are)
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    deyvaddeyvad Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    People are stupid.

    The problem you describe is not only affecting the US, it's affecting the whole occident.

    A lot of folks use phonetics in their writing and get genuinely offended when you correct them. How many times have I been compared to a TRIBBLE for pointing out basic mistakes.

    I once saw a post of facebook, from someone complaining that nobody speaks french anymore in montreal. In a sentence of 8 words, not a single one was written correctly, and he ironically used 2 english words in that sentence (mispelled of course!).

    People are stupid.
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    captainrevo1captainrevo1 Member Posts: 3,948 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    the problem often starts with just one person not reading properly or having some kind of reading comprehension failure, then spreading their incorrect view of the situation to everybody else who, while understanding him perfectly, now think its true.

    you then have what seems like a lot of idiots who cant read, where in fact its one and a lot of misinformed people.

    what a lot of people are guilty of is believing what they hear from one source without fact checking it themselves.
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    neoakiraiineoakiraii Member Posts: 7,468 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Yeah, it's a lot of one person did not read everything, and spread the word.




    My fleet mates one by one kept raging saying the expansion is expensive because they heard from so and so.
    GwaoHAD.png
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    voicesdarkvoicesdark Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    anazonda wrote: »
    This summed it up quite nicely, and I've added my own little touch.

    Yeah thanks for that I knew it was missing something lol
    dirlettia wrote: »
    I would not be so hard on people so quickly. If I try to read announcements on French or German games I end up with such poor comprehension it really shows. The same applies for others whose native language is not one which the announcements are made in.

    If the posts were made by native english speakers then yes, be hard on them as they have a lot to learn, otherwise just imagine they dont speak english properly and forgive them.

    As an example of how they might read an announcement try running the news page through Google translate twice, once to maybe swedish and then back to english and see how weird it looks as that might give an idea of how people are reading the news.

    believe me when I say if it was someone that wasn't comprehending it because English isn't their primary language I would fully understand that, I'm referring to people who either English is their primary language or they are very fluent in English.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    voicesdark wrote: »
    believe me when I say if it was someone that wasn't comprehending it because English isn't their primary language I would fully understand that, I'm referring to people who either English is their primary language or they are very fluent in English.

    "Primary" and "fluent" don't mean the same thing. XD
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    voicesdarkvoicesdark Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    centersolace wrote: »
    "Primary" and "fluent" don't mean the same thing. XD

    please press 1 for english, 2 for broken english, 3 for bad english, 4 for no habla burrito, 5 4 abbrev eng, 6 for chinese, 7 for geek, and don't even think of pressing 0 for a customer service agent. Of course all of that would probably be in spanish from a call center in India.

    Anyone else ever wonder why it's not "Please press 1 for spanish"
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    sander233sander233 Member Posts: 3,992 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    jonsills wrote: »
    Oh, it's hardly a recent phenomenon - it's just that with the advent of the Internet, what was once fairly harmless blather over a breakfast table as someone half-read the newspaper headline and decided from that what the article might say, has now become broadcast to the entire world via Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

    ...

    tl;dr - Electronic communications let people look stupid to a much wider audience than they used to.

    ^^^This.^^^

    People aren't getting dumber, it's just easier for the idiots to reach the rest of us.
    16d89073-5444-45ad-9053-45434ac9498f.png~original

    ...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
    - Anne Bredon
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    marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    At first, I thought how disgraceful to not be teaching cursive, but then reading centersolace's post, I can see the logic of that. I do believe that there is a deliberate long-term attempt to dumb down the population, and this would fit in with that. In the digital age, I wonder why anyone must actually fill out a paper-form in long-hand (although I understand that it is so a person's writing can be analysed by a company graphologist) rather than being given a printable option. So from that perspective, why should a person be taught cursive if they won't need it? I don't think there should be any restrictions on the knowledge and skills a child is taught, and to do so is simply limiting their potential :( As much as I love writing (creatively), I hate putting pen to paper and writing long-hand. I've often been told that I have 'doctors writing' (ie illegible) as I when I do write, it is for my reference, no-one elses. Equally, even when a form says 'print only', I tend to simply write cursive capitals... :o
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    catstarstocatstarsto Member Posts: 2,149 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    I guess what everyone is getting to is, Babylon! With the addition of the internet and chat, everyone can run wild and unchecked, making it all up as they go not caring if everyone is on the same page or not. Blinded by our own smokescreen, folks reach out looking for something that seems solid to latch onto since their own base is unstable. Blind leading the blind.
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    So... you're saying that it's only a matter of time before the powers that be rain destruction upon our impudence? :P
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    sander233sander233 Member Posts: 3,992 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    The Internet Explained
    16d89073-5444-45ad-9053-45434ac9498f.png~original

    ...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
    - Anne Bredon
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    hortworthortwort Member Posts: 281
    edited April 2013
    If they replaced it with a more useful skill, I wouldn't really care. Cursive is close enough to print that it can still be read (though perhaps not written) with just a bit of practice. They don't teach slide rules in school anymore, either.

    I *would* like to see basic survival skills taught in phys ed, but unfortunately that class is just throwing a ball and running in circles. Whee. :rolleyes:
    I miss my _.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    I vote for bear punching.
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    catstarstocatstarsto Member Posts: 2,149 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    centersolace wrote: »
    So... you're saying that it's only a matter of time before the powers that be rain destruction upon our impudence? :P

    No, I wont let the governments block the internet! what will the galaxy do without CatStar :O

    lol, nah I didnt mean it that way, times come and go but people stay the same, even in ancient times there where fads, odd people and language barriers, to challenge the norm of daily life. That will never change. Though I do hope the pants fad runs out soon, I tire of seeing people walk around like the Jerk when he became poor...and having your hat worn like Gomer Pile, I didnt know he was an Idol for kids! =O.o=
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    cptjhuntercptjhunter Member Posts: 2,288 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Its an evolution thing. Humanity by the end of the next millennium will resemble giant @sses, with eyeballs, and opposing thumbs to tap on keypads.Our only means of sustenance will be a bland mixture of vinegar, and water.I weep for the future.
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    You watch too much Futurama.
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    cptjhuntercptjhunter Member Posts: 2,288 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    centersolace wrote: »
    You watch too much Futurama.

    Actually, too much CNN. Also, the older I get, the more cynical I become. I figure I'm about 10 years away from telling the kids in the neighborhood to "get off my lawn":D
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    sander233sander233 Member Posts: 3,992 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    centersolace wrote: »
    You watch too much Futurama.

    If he did watch too much Futurama, I'd think he be excited for the future. I can't wait to try a self-microwaving Bavarian cream dog.
    16d89073-5444-45ad-9053-45434ac9498f.png~original

    ...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
    - Anne Bredon
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    cptjhuntercptjhunter Member Posts: 2,288 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    sander233 wrote: »
    If he did watch too much Futurama, I'd think he be excited for the future. I can't wait to try a self-microwaving Bavarian cream dog.

    Okay, now I'm excited about the future.:D
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    marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    sander233 wrote: »
    If he did watch too much Futurama, I'd think he be excited for the future. I can't wait to try a self-microwaving Bavarian cream dog.

    And Bachelor Chow... Now with flavor! :cool:
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