Stop teaching cursive writing? Are you serious?

Quoth Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight:

14 states

Number of states that require students to reach proficiency in cursive writing, which seems dumb and vestigial. Still, that number is on the rise. Realistically, kids need to learn cursive only because people still write in cursive — we’d teach them Teeline if speed was really the goal. In any case, I think proficiency is a bit too far; maybe require students to reach the “able to sign things” level of capability and leave it at that.


Really, dude?  No, speed is not the goal. Are you even listening to yourself? You're ok with people not being able to write? I've heard stories about states eliminating the teaching of cursive writing, but this is the first time I've ever come across an actual defense of that lame-brained "progressive" educational idea.

Is it any wonder people seem to be getting more ignorant generation by generation? It's not that people are getting stupider. I truly believe that in large measure it's that educational "experts" have been allowed to implement idiotic ideas like this. Sorry to sound like an educational Luddite, but I really have to wonder about whether if we still taught phonics more college students might not be able to actually read and spell! At what point to we, as a society, recognize that educational "reformers" have turned us into a nation of functional illiterates?

Add appointing Betsy DeVos to the list of things President Trump may well have done right. Education is too important to leave to the increasingly bizarre theories of increasingly radical educators. Perhaps less time should be spent in the public schools indoctrinating kids in "progressive" social attitudes and political beliefs and more on the now obsolete "three R's," none of which American kids seem to be able to do and which the "educators" seem to be less and less concerned about.

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