urbantinker8 said:But then again, I tend to write with a certain elegance, and I do it with other people in mind. And I take a little bit of pride in that, I guess.🙂
For now...
I suppose I'll just keep an eye out for professions where people actually have to decipher someone else's handwriting.☕
urbantinker8 said:I mean, why on earth should writing be strictly confined to professional work or anything like that?🙂 Besides, I suppose almost anyone can sit down and tap away at a keyboard these days, but actually knowing how to write... well, unfortunately, that’s a much rarer skill altogether.
Because that’s really the only aspect where clarity actually matters—being able to communicate something to someone else. If you’re just scribbling down illegible nonsense for your own eyes, or if you're writing in some elaborate, decorative script like my great-grandmother's old diary, then nobody cares. It doesn't matter. Honestly, deciding whether to prioritize legibility is about as significant as deciding whether you prefer listening to modern pop or Tchaikovsky.
I didn't say anything about keyboards 😂 But what I'm actually curious about is: which professions TODAY still truly require decent handwriting? Writers? Lawyers and judges? Administrative assistants? Technical drafters, architects, or engineers of any kind? Cashiers at the grocery store? Doctors and nurses? Accountants, finance pros, or tax specialists? Journalists? Sanitation workers or street sweepers?
I am genuinely interested in a list of people who actually write by hand these days where someone else is expected to read their script...
Isn't it a bit problematic when seventh graders write their exams in a way that makes it impossible to actually read what they've written?[/QUOTE said:
Well, look, if there’s a problem right now, it’s an incredibly easy one to fix—if a professor can't decipher the handwriting, they simply don't give credit for the answer, and that’s that. That should motivate them to start writing in something resembling print eventually. Honestly, anyone who has dealt with the handwriting of students in American middle schools lately completely understands why kids feel zero need to practice it. I haven't seen such illegible scribbles in years; you practically can't even connect three letters together without lifting the pencil off the page entirely.
Idiocracy isn't really about how much time we spend staring at screens; it’s more about the fundamental way modern society is structured. It seems like life is being organized in a way that allows total idiots to thrive and pass on their genes with almost zero effort. Everything is just made too easy for them. Honestly, pushing for things like Universal Basic Income—where someone could essentially live without even knowing how to hold a broom—is just an open invitation to accelerate that whole Idiocracy future.
Screens aren't the root cause here, it's just a lack of digital literacy among the population...
Carol Johnson4 said:It felt totally overkill to have kids learning all those print uppercase and lowercase letters in the first semester, only to switch to cursive in the second. When I heard they were cutting some of it, I honestly hoped they’d just scrap the print stuff and jump straight to cursive. But nope. :rolayz: What’s even the point of practicing lowercase print? And why spend an entire year drilling those letters just to ditch them completely by next year?
This would actually be perfect for this upcoming school year, the final year before kindergarten.
Exactly. Kids should probably start at age five and a half in a preparatory program, gently learning print letters and numbers up to 20, then move into the standard curriculum once they hit six and a half.
Honestly, I don't see much of a crisis regarding messy handwriting. Let's face it—about 99% of our adult lives involve typing on a laptop rather than using a pen. Some people will always fight that reality and try to downplay how little handwriting matters these days... but soon enough, we'll likely see college exams being taken entirely on computers (or just selecting A/B/C/D options), which solves the whole issue of professors not being able to decipher a student's scrawl. Of course, there will be plenty of complaining and hand-wringing about how "this is all sooo bad" and how everything needs to be done exactly the way it was back in our day.
jadetrucker43 said:If you’re using the Alfin digital textbook over on MozaWeb, there are these little worksheets tucked away on the side—you can actually print them out, and they've got extra problems that feel just like the stuff in the actual book. Plus, there’s this massive pile of additional exercises at the very end of the whole thing that you won't even find in the printed version. I'm planning to give MozaBook a spin next week, though the students don't have access to it yet.
I'm curious why they wouldn't have access? They can just download MozaBook, sign up, and then activate their digital textbook using the code found right inside the book—and boom, they're all set. Honestly, though, I think the physical textbook itself has more than enough practice problems to go around, so she hasn't really needed to dive into the extras yet. Besides, with that recent teacher strike, they haven't even managed to wrap up the first unit. She uses ESfer quite consistently, too.
I was looking into the Alpha series for fifth grade, and honestly, they don't even offer a math workbook or a practice collection. They just mention having digital quizzes and extra problems online, but the classic physical workbooks and collections are nowhere to be found. Given that the kids are already lugging around three different books almost every single day for English class, I actually think it’s better if they don't have that much stuff for math either. Besides, those backpacks are still way too heavy.
I always knew I’d eventually sit down and try to summarize those textbooks by subject for every grade level. Honestly, if you took the core material for the first four years, you probably wouldn't end up with more than 20 or 30 pages of actual content. Instead, they somehow managed to bloat it into over 1,000 pages total, and to make matters worse, it's all written in such a completely disorganized, muddled style...
So, while the actual concepts aren't necessarily impossible to grasp, the way these books are composed is just dreadful. Especially the science curriculum—it's been driving me crazy for years how consistently poorly handled it is.
Fortunately, back at university, we actually used American textbooks for our core courses, which was a massive breath of fresh air compared to our local authors! That was really when it clicked for me what it actually means to have material that is explained simply and effectively. My only regret is remembering those old analysis sessions where my TA would pull problems from those old Russian workbooks; it was a total 😵 😵 😵
Personally, I’m all for weighing school supplies down to the gram according to the textbook law. Honestly, those backpacks are already ridiculously heavy as it is, so if we can actually enforce some limits, it might just save some kids from even worse weight than they were carrying before... Just yesterday, I was chatting with a mom whose daughter is in 8th grade. The girl is quite active in sports, too—but now she’s constantly seeing orthopedic specialists because she developed scoliosis. At just 13 years old. Yay.
Jason Hall35 said:Yeah, we’re talking fifth grade here. Only thing is, my kid doesn't even have a workbook from McGraw Hill or some supplemental practice book. What kind of system is this?
Basically, the textbook just has these tables you're supposed to fill out, but she has to manually cross them out and rewrite everything from them before she can even start the actual problems. Proab—do your kids actually get workbooks?
They do have workbooks. Oops! Edit—sorry, they don't. I remembered us getting two books, but now I realize they were actually just two parts of the same textbook; it just came back to me. So no, ours don't have separate workbooks either.
If Mad says there used to be actual workbooks, then I assume they just reworked the old ones. I suppose they didn't feel like rewriting everything from scratch just to change the questions so they wouldn't be solved directly in the textbook. I don't know, just a guess. It seemed strange to me too. But her book didn't have many tables; most tasks were more like: Expression B = ____ or Value A + B = ______ where she just rewrites that tiny part and solves it. She did have one table, sort of like a crossword puzzle to check her answers. We told her to just snap a photo of it with her phone and print it out so she could use it to verify her solutions, but the teacher didn't require them to cross out the crossword, just to finish the problems.
And since our kids aren't rewriting anything and are just solving things in their notebooks, I haven't gotten too worked up about that specific issue. I'm more bothered by other aspects of this math curriculum (personally, I think the explanations are poor), but that’s a perennial problem with American textbooks. It feels like everyone is competing to see who can cram in the most definitions and overly complicated explanations. As a layman, I can always think of at least five different ways to explain something using simple words and a clear example, yet the authors just don't. What really gets under my skin is that all these lists aren't presented clearly—you know, with bullet points to make it readable—but are instead buried in these marathon sentences full of commas and endless conjunctions. Even when I know what they're trying to convey, I find myself getting confused. A sentence could be concise, simple, and crystal clear, but it’s as if they’ve taken a vow against being lucid...
It’s funny how math textbooks are usually designed with specific little boxes or designated spaces left open for your answers. In my experience, though, my professors don't bother filling those in, nor do they even bother copying the problems down—they just jot down the problem number and dive straight into the solution. So, I guess whether you actually transcribe the full question or not really comes down to how much your professor likes things tidy. Honestly, it would be a lot more logical if they stopped including all those "fill in the blank" or "color this part" type of busywork questions, too. I can't tell if it's just my luck, or if every textbook is like this except for those Alfin ones.
rustyowl7 said:And just how mandatory is it, considering it’s being offered again as an elective course in the 7th grade? 🤦
If you take a moment to look at the logic, you'll see it won't become a requirement for those 7th graders who had it as an elective back in 5th and 6th grade—meaning they might have missed out entirely. Instead, it will be mandatory for the current 6th graders once they hit 7th grade, or rather, for the 8th graders the following year.
Wait a second... regardless of all the fluff and useless content, you're saying it's a good thing it became mandatory? 😕 When you consider that about 90% of the "smart stuff" is actually geared toward kids who already have advanced logical reasoning skills, it just doesn't add up. Between the poorly written textbooks and the fact that they can't seem to find—or properly pay—qualified professors, it’s a mess.
This was definitely one of the worst moves by the Secretary of Education (and let's be honest, that's a pretty long list of failures), serving as a textbook example of how to perform damage control for the public.
Another "innovation" popping up in our schools is this elective "digital literacy" for the younger grades. It’s not inherently bad to introduce kids to tech before we start demanding electronic presentations from them, but that's really only an option if you happen to have an after-school program teacher with extra tech training, or if you have the means to drive your child to a "better equipped" school district.🧐 (It isn't exactly groundbreaking, either; most parents could teach this themselves, or a kid could just pick it up on their own. But it gives us this nice little illusion that the school system is actually teaching them something useful.)
Personally, I feel that Computer Science is something that absolutely ought to be a required part of the curriculum, which it hasn't been until now. We also need more digital resources available. In my opinion, providing every single student with their own tablet or laptop for classwork should be the bare minimum requirement. So, from my perspective, this is a step in the right direction. It’s far from perfect, but I wouldn't expect it to be. Honestly, I’m just surprised the direction is even somewhat decent. For context, I have an old Computer Science textbook from over ten years ago sitting at home, and this new version is definitely an improvement.
If there is some fluff in there, well, just like with any other subject, students will learn it, answer the questions, and promptly forget it. But if there is useful, intelligent material in there—and I am certain there is—those who want to learn it will retain it and keep using it.
P.S. Logical thinking is a skill that develops; nobody is just born with it. Therefore, they really ought to be practicing it.
rowdypanther12 said:That’s exactly why I keep bringing up the need for reform. We're teaching "modern" subjects without any of the practical weight from the old ways, trying to prepare kids for a life where there's apparently no ambition left. Instead, they just end up memorizing things that would be so much easier to learn through actual hands-on experience. 😁
What do you mean by "not weighed down by old ways"? I took computer science classes quite a while back (I won't even get into how long ago 😁), and believe it or not, we actually covered input and output units, binary and hexadecimal systems, and the fundamentals of programming... The only thing we didn't learn was Windows; we were stuck using MS-DOS 😁
Look, let’s just be clear about one thing here. Computer Science isn't exactly hitting the mark right now. Not even close. But then again, I suppose it's still better than nothing at all. Honestly, I don't quite understand why anyone in our American school system—where students are basically forced to memorize endless piles of useless trivia—would expect things to suddenly become perfect overnight. My only real hope is that this reform means we'll deal with a lot less of that mindless rote memorization. It's pretty obvious that our education system hasn't quite figured out how to move past that old-school way of doing things yet...
Honestly, it drives me absolutely crazy when people have zero clue about basic concepts—like what a network actually is, how a computer functions, or the difference between input and output devices. They don't grasp where data flows or where it gets stored; they just mindlessly swipe through screens without any understanding of the underlying logic or architecture. Then, the moment something goes wrong, they come looking for help but can't even explain the issue because they don't even know the right terminology to describe what's happening.
And once they run into even the tiniest little glitch, they’re totally lost because they lack a fundamental understanding of how things work on a macro level. If you don't realize that a monitor is an output device, you'll end up reporting that your entire computer is broken when, in reality, the screen just isn't plugged in. You'll mash that power button fifty times until you eventually break the hardware itself! I see a thousand different versions of this exact scenario every single day (though, thankfully, I'm currently surrounded by people who actually get it, so I don't have to deal with it as much 😁 ). I really hope my kids don't grow up to be that clueless one day.
I suspect there’s more than just the standard Python out there—perhaps some sort of block-based programming version where you just snap command blocks together and plug in your parameters. It reminds me of something like mBlock for the mBot, which is essentially a variation of Scratch, or even using Swift Playgrounds on an iPad.
They haven't quite reached that level yet, and honestly, I don't have the energy to dive deep into the upcoming curriculum right now; I just flipped through the textbook for about five minutes.😁
I noticed there’s some programming included, even if they haven't quite reached that part of the curriculum yet. Personally, I think learning to code is such a fantastic idea—and I don't mean that everyone needs to become a software engineer by trade, not even close. It’s more about the mindset. Programming teaches you how to analyze a problem, how to systematically break a massive task down into bite-sized pieces, how to organize steps in the right order, and how to rigorously test your solutions while hunting down bugs. I truly believe it instills a level of analytical thinking and systematic discipline that everyone could benefit from, regardless of their career path. You can apply those problem-solving skills to almost any area of life. There are no shortcuts in coding; you can't skip steps. You simply can't solve a problem until you fully grasp every single aspect of it. It’s actually the total opposite of much of the rest of the schoolwork, where you can often just memorize certain phrases or procedures to pass a test or get an A without having any clue what you're actually doing.
And hey, who knows? Maybe someone will decide to pursue it professionally, start their own tech company in high school, conquer the world with their software, and become a millionaire... honestly, that’s not a bad perspective to have either! :P