Friday, August 26, 2016

Zombies and the Great Cursive Debate




I can’t remember when I first heard about the heated debate going on over cursive back in the US. I do however remember my reaction: “Figures.”

Living as an expat and teacher in Asia, I’ve watched my country from overseas since the mid-1990s, and have learned to expect that if a policy represents dumbing down, most Americans will be cheering it on.

Reading the debate in the press, I found the usual predictable points made by the anti-cursive camp--"It will save classroom time!” key among them, of course. But was more depressed by the often misguided counterpoints made by the pro-cursive camp--"How will kids read their grandparents' old letters?" etc.

Given the lame level of this debate and the generally bad pedagogy in vogue, I could see the pro-cursive camp was fated to lose.

And they did. Cursive is now federally frowned upon. Yet another card pulled from the teetering house of cards.

The pro-cursive camp, I think, would have done better if they'd just stuck to basic truths in this debate, like reminding their adversaries: “You’re all fucking MORONS! Remove handwriting from education? You're fucking IDIOTS! We're going to SECEDE!”

I'm actually convinced this is the only way to deal with these people. Debating them is impossible. Just call a spade a spade.

Then we'll set up an alternative state somewhere else on the globe where watching reality TV is a punishable offense and kids learn not just cursive but also classics and manners and also that there are two genders, male and female, rather than seventeen.

Jump to this month, August. A few days ago a high school friend of mine, I’ll call him Steve, who graduated from the University of Chicago no less, and who, as a technophile, considered himself in the anti-cursive camp, posted on Facebook a New York Times editorial by one Anne Trubek opining that cursive was unnecessary and that “the kids will be alright.” This bit of offensive NYT blather is titled “Handwriting Just Doesn’t Matter”. And the kids aren’t alright. They already aren’t alright, never mind what they “will be” after a dozen more years of the anomie we’re raising them into.

I should point out that Steve and I have both just turned fifty, that we remain good friends since we left high school in the 1980s, and that we tend to disagree strongly on what are called "hot button" issues. The caption Steve added to his posting of Ms. Trubek's article showed his typical approach of cool optimism whenever such questions come up:

Soon the conspiracy theorists will be claiming that this is yet another example of turning our children into brainwashed automatons. Change is tough. Especially on the old.

For Steve, anyone who points to educational decline and sees the culture going to hell is just being “alarmist”. I’ve written him before about his scary inability, as a University of Chicago graduate, to differentiate between its and it’s and compliment and complement and suchlike things, but carping on English usage to Steve is counterproductive. He replies with an emoticon with its tongue stuck out. If he’s forced to use actual words, they are: “Lighten up dude. Its not important.”

For Steve, people who even use words like civilization are being alarmist by definition. Because, don’t you know, civilization grows on trees. And there are trees all over, dude.

The first two of Steve’s friends to comment in the thread were also in the “Civilization? Who cares?” camp. They wrote:

MARY S.: Oh thank you thank you thank you for posting this article, Steve! I feel like I am shouting into the wilderness when I say that cursive offers no special cognitive advantages over printing, no special ability to "read historical documents" (as someone who actually has read handwritten historical documents, I can assure everyone that older styles of penmanship are so different from our own that knowing cursive is no help--plus, why waste millions of precious learning hours teaching something that only the tiny minority of kids who go on to be academic historians will ever use?), no special fine motor skills that couldn't be better taught by learning to cook or sew a button back on. Change is hard, except for those of us who remember sitting inside on a beautiful day, hunching over our desks for hours a week, papers at a perfect 45-degree angle, meticulously drawing little parallel lines. My son is old enough to have had some cursive in school, while my daughter didn't have it at all. Let cursive go the way of button-hooks, itchy starched collars, and other anachronisms!

ALANIA C.: YES! I hurt my wrist and write like crap and then this. Well played universe, well played.

I couldn’t let all this slide. The Pokemon Go phenomenon already has me in a bad state this summer, and seeing all this on a friend’s wall, I had to deliver a few punches. The thread went on as you see below. What surprised me, this time, is that in the end I actually won Steve over. That is a rarity. In fact I'm not sure I’d ever before convinced Steve of anything.

ERIC MADER: The end of cursive handwriting would be a great cultural loss. The decline of writing on paper is already a serious loss. For many reasons. One of the most basic reasons being cognitive. Studies have shown it.

In general you’re a geek about these things, Steve. But get something in your head: You and your friend Mary and the others in your camp will eventually be devoured by cyborg zombies. And in my mind, the worst thing about this is that you'll probably all enjoy it. Hell, you’re half-devoured already.

I ain’t even gonna debate this with you it's so fucking obvious. I live in a culture where kids, just in order to READ, have to learn three thousand different handwritten characters. We're talking thousands upon thousands of hours of practice. And this basic hard work of learning the writing system deepens their respect for the content they learn and sharpens their skills in so many ways. So that in most other subjects, often even including the foreign language ENGLISH, they could outperform their American peers who over there in the States can graduate high school by learning to wipe their asses and spell their names. I've seen this happen over and over--kids leaving Taipei and going to school in the US and realizing it's a joke. I have kids, in regular public schools here, who study English no more than an hour or two a day and have larger ENGLISH vocabulary and better spelling and grammar than the majority of American kids their age.

“Millions of precious learning hours wasted" on cursive? It’s a fucking joke. Many of my pre-teen students TEACH THEMSELVES English cursive just for fun. They do it in a couple afternoons. After which they'll often hand me homework and essays in English in perfectly functional cursive.

SHAME on America. “Hours wasted” indeed!

STEVE L.: I didnt write the article man. And I guess you didnt read it, because according to the article (and I dont have an opinion on this actually as I dont know enough about cognitive brain functions) what you say is not true when it comes to learning. But hey, take it up with the author. And as for being a zombie, you too will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

ERIC MADER: You posted the article man. And I did read it and have read into the positions of the two sides in this debate. And this NYT piece, in the spectrum of this debate, is simply DAFT. Its arguments are shallow. It's typical of a new strain at the NYT, a paper growing DAFTER and DAFTER every year. Along with the whole country.

When we all hit 70 or so, if we're still around, we're going to see just what kind of culture our "reforms" and “advances" have brought about. The key difference is that you, muttering "Holy shit", are going to be surprised. I'm not.

Resistance will continue.

BRIAN D.: Steve, I don't need cursive to write this: I will wrestle you for food. Cursive is just one stop on the road to anarchy. And no, I don’t need to read the article to register my desire to wrestle you for food. THAT should be a given.

LOUISE B.: Aside from the arguments made in the article, my gut (a pretty accurate scientific barometer, if I do say so myself) dislikes the loss of any learning opportunity. My sisters were forced to conform their writing through hours of repetition. Though I learned cursive, it wasn't perfected at their level. I believe we should throw cursive at the kids just to expose them to the art of written language. Cave drawings, the development of written language around the world, evolution of cursive, etc. Let kids play with it: feather quills, calligraphic nibs, roller balls, the speed of texting and typing--let them play with all of it.

STEVE L.: I would be happy to say the jury is still out. I can also say this: I haven't actually written in cursive in any extended way, save my signature, in years. I also don't think that the merits of learning cursive have ever equalled the seeming abuse left handed writers have faced in American schools. But who knows, maybe learning cursive, just like riding horses (animal empathy) or chopping wood for fire (connection to environment) has/does make us better people. I simply don't know. Apparently you do, on the cursive issue anyway.

ERIC MADER: I haven't done algebra in 30-some years, or much of any other math other than calculating percentages. I haven't worked through a geometric proof either. That doesn't mean I would subscribe to arguments that we should get rid of these basic elements of education just because they aren't "the skills needed for the job market".

That you personally haven't written in cursive doesn't mean much. I write almost everything important that I write on paper, in CURSIVE, and many writers of the books published every year do the same. If I didn't know how to write cursive, my handwriting would be slowed considerably, and I'd need a digital device of some kind to keep recording words at the pace of my thoughts. I'd be seriously hampered if for some reason a digital device wasn't at hand. I short, you take away cursive skills, and you take away a huge swathe of important cultural work, journal writing, personally handwritten notes, novels, poetry, etc., that is better done, according to many professional writers, on paper first. And you permanently link that very crucial cultural process called writing to access to digital devices. Are you sure you want to do all this?

I would have to say that yes, on this issue, I do know the right side.

STEVE L.: Excellent points. Consider me converted. Not kidding. Reason. It is a great thing.

ERIC MADER: Glad to hear. You’ve proven yourself an honest man. But that has a downside. When those cyborg zombies come to finish you off a couple decades from now, if you’re still an honest man, you won't actually enjoy it like I thought.

The arguments of mine that convinced you are really only a small part of the question of what is at stake in this kind of debate.

Anthropologists GET the fact that societies or civilizations hold together in myriad complex ways, often in ways that nobody in the society itself understands or knows consciously. Anthropologists have documented in case after case how pulling out only a couple little rivets is all it takes to cause the whole culture to fall into decline. Pulling out this or that rivet, especially in a practice as central to us as reading or writing, is going to have complex interactions with the whole of the structure. It’s going to have repercussions that we can't foresee. Any change, however reasonable or practical it may look at the moment, may play a role in ushering in things we really don't want.

All advanced civilizations that we know of have taught the young to write by making marks or characters on some surface. Forming these written marks BY HAND. We don't know of any advanced civilization that HASN'T included this practice. The upshot: We simply can't know much about what a civilization based on typing, texting or voice input (which is where it will lead) will be like. Going that direction as a pedagogical norm or goal, we may very well be undermining a whole host of other things in ways we can't even predict. Again: for a certain kind of cognitive development alone I strongly suspect handwriting is crucial.

Yes, resistance may be futile given the fast-growing cyborg zombie demographic. But I would still say: Resist!

Eric Mader

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Hugh Hochman Reviews Idiocy, Ltd.


Bookish Asia has just posted a review of my Idiocy, Ltd. by Prof. Hugh Hochman of Reed College. Hochman is a sharp reader. Go check it out.

And pick up your own copy of Idiocy.

E.M.

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Casanovites


Drawing of Giacomo Casanova by his brother

Still working our way through a novel--can you guess which?--in our small Saturday reading class, I was telling the four boys a bit about the great Venetian lover Casanova, alluded to in the book. We’d read enough that day, so I gave them a challenge. They had thirty minutes to write out a Casanovan narrative of their own and had to use as many of the words in the handout vocabulary list as possible. The words:


Results from Anthony, Felix, Ryan and Shawn. I edited the tales for grammar, but the narratives are theirs.

E.M.


CASANOVA

by Anthony

He stepped out of the Santa Lucia Train Station, taking in the extraordinary view. He was seeing it for the first time.
     “How beautiful!” he said aloud, and, thinking back on his plan, a sinister grin appeared on his face.
     His name was actually Casanova--yes, the same name. He’d just read Casanova’s Story of My Life, finishing it some weeks earlier, and he considered the lines illuminating. He’d immediately decided to take the man as his ancestor and namesake, and decided as well to do what his great ancestor had done in the 18th century. So he had come to Venice.
     “Plan A”, he thought. “This will almost certainly work, so I won’t have need for any Plan B.”
     He took an object from his elegant Italian bag and placed it under the sun. A crystal prism!
     “Okay, c’mon, ladies,” he thought, peaking at the passing women from where he was standing.
     The prism refracted the sunlight into a rainbow of colors on the slab of marble where he’d placed it.
     To his surprise, none of the women even stopped to look.
     But in fact somebody did notice him, a man standing not far away. A frown bent his face. It was “Alhambra”, nickname of this particular Venetian policeman.
     “What’s that guy up to?” he thought.
     Casanova looked around in disappointment. “Why?” he wondered. He felt it extremely strange that the women showed no interest in this magic of light and color he had brought.
     “Newton was English, not Italian,” he thought. Maybe that was it. In any case, since he’d prepared no Plan B, he put the prism back in his bag and began to walk around. As he walked, he kept his hand on the prism in his bag, which alarmed the policeman watching him.
     Casanova strolled through the streets trying to come up with some Plan B.
     “What’s he going to do?” Alhambra wondered, stalking not far behind.
     Passing through the city and across St. Mark’s Square, Casanova reached the Bridge of Sighs. He remembered some superstition that kissing a woman under the bridge would lead to success in love. He waited.
     Moments later, a girl passing by stopped and looked at Casanova.
     “Who’s she?” Alhambra wondered.
     Since the girl had made eye contact, Casanova stepped up to speak to her.
     “She will have a sudden girlhood crush on me!” he thought. He had dressed himself with understated elegance for his first adventure in Venice, and his clothes gave him confidence.
     He began talking with the girl, and though she began to walk away, he didn’t stop. He followed her closely, talking all the while, asking if she had ever seen a prism refract light.
     The girl felt a growing anguish in the presence of this nervous man speaking English to her. After enduring it for a few minutes more, she shouted: “Stop, please! You are overbearing and swashbuckling!”
     Casanova was taken aback by the odd words she’d chosen. While he wondered how to reply, the girl slipped away.
     Alhambra still had no idea what was going on, and couldn’t understand why this foreign man kept his hand in his bag.
     Casanova then wandered to a different quarter, Alhambra not far behind. In a quiet neighborhood Casanova began to peer through the quatrefoil perforations in the stone surfacing of an old building.
     “No,” Alhambra thought. “Not . . .” Alhambra moved closer.
     A woman’s voice was heard from within. “Pervert!” she finally yelled in Italian.
     The woman came out the entrance, still in her underwear, wielding a broom to hit the foreigner who’d spied on her.
     “You are under arrest for invasion of privacy!” Alhambra announced, seizing Casanova’s arm.
     “No!” Casanova cried. “I just--“
     “If it were up to me you’d languish in the lead-roofed cells atop the palace, you English scum!” Alhambra yelled.
     “But I was just--“
     “This woman is my wife!” Alhambra said, dragging Casanova away.


MR. MA AND THE GHOST OF CASANOVA

[The “Mr. Ma” mentioned in the story is the former president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-Wen the current president.]

by Felix

The very day that Mr. Ma finished reading his copy of Casanova’s My Life, the Alhambra exploded, but that’s not important.
     The important thing is that Mr. Ma decided to become just like Casanova and go to Venice. In Venice he knew he would find his boyhood crush, Tsai Ing-Wen, since she was going there on a state visit to the Venetian Republic.
     Mr. Ma approached her on St. Mark’s Square. But as he approached, he also noticed a handsome Italian man with a six-pack doing a perfect swashbuckling scene to impress the foreign woman. Fortunately, after the scene was over, that man had some business, so Mr. Ma seized his chance to ask her on a date. She thought he looked familiar, was a bit suspicious, but finally accepted, and their date on the Grand Canal was everything Mr. Ma had dreamed it would be.
     Over the following months in Venice, he did the same thing to hundreds of women young and old--but especially old.
     One day, Mr. Ma was hitting on a Russian model when the same man appeared, but this time he had a twelve-pack and huge pecs that were bigger than his own head. The man threw Mr. Ma against a low-slung lead-tiled roof and began to beat him savagely.
     But suddenly, the Ghost of Casanova appeared to protect his follower Mr. Ma. The Ghost was now taller than Taipei 101, and it appeared holding a rubber slipper, the kind you can buy at any thrift shop. He swung the slipper down on the man with the twelve-pack, but he swung with such force that the whole city was broken apart and began to sink into the lagoon.
     And so the ancient legend was fulfilled that said the great city of Venice would be destroyed by a rubber slipper.


CUSINOWA

by Ryan

A man in Japan named Cusinowa, inspired by the holy book The Life of Casanova, decided he would model his life after the famous Venetian. So he bought another book from Amazon called How to Seduce Italian Girls and read it carefully. Thirteen days later he packed up his books and notes and boarded a flight to Italy.
     He got lost in the Marco Polo International Airport and met the first interesting girl in the men’s room there. It was a boyhood crushed because within thirty seconds he found certain things about the girl to be disgusting. Cusinowa abandoned her and set out to find his next target.
     The first chapter of How to Seduce Italian Girls said it was necessary to find a nice suit, so he went to buy a pair of jeans and a pair of handsome binoculars. He thought his outfit had understated elegance. He finally found the train to Venice and arrived in the city without incident.
     Cusinowa thought the best way to show how handsome he was was to pilot a gondola by himself. His first customer was a girl, and he happily piloted the gondola into one of the smaller, less busy canals so he could be alone with her. He soon found out it wasn’t a canal, but a sewer ditch that carried the city’s flushings into the sea. Cusinowa, the prow of his canal now stuck in a huge pile of poop, realized he was in trouble.
     The girl happened to be the niece of Antonio Pimponi, former head of Venice’s Department of Historical Preservation. She phoned her uncle to send rescue and had Cusinowa incarcerated in a sea level room in the prison next to the Ducal Palace. It is there that Cusinowa languishes today, waiting for the flood that will drown him and doing his best to concoct sushi plates from the small sea creatures that wash through his barred windows at high tide.


RYANOVA

[Ryan, writer of the previous tale, is made the main character in Shawn’s tale. Ryan is a dedicated fanatic of curry dishes.]

by Shawn

After Ryan finished reading The Life of Casanova, a copy of which Eric had given him for his birthday, he couldn’t get the famous womanizer out of his mind and decided that becoming a 21st century Casanova was the best thing a young man could hope for. Borrowing money from everyone he knew, he used the sum to buy a ticket to Venice. To his great frustration, he took the wrong flight and ended up part of a tour group heading to Spain.
     “I can’t afford another flight,” thought Ryan. So he decided to follow the tour.
     Visiting the Alhambra, he broke away from the group and set out on his own. He had put on his understatedly elegant black suit that day, which made him stand out, given the June heat.
     Around lunch time he caught sight of a curry stand behind which a slim Pakistani girl was making curry. The sight of slim girl, the smell of curry, and the June heat struck him with a sudden force. This was more than just a boyhood crush.
     “That’s my spicy stuff,” he thought. “The love of my life!”
     He took out his wallet and stepped toward the curry stand.
     “Hello,” he said to the girl. “It must be hot selling curry in such weather--and hey, your stand even has a lead-tiled roof! That’s crazy!”
     The girl said nothing to this, busy making another customer’s order.
     “Please give me . . . uh, your best curry chicken,” Ryan said, “along with . . . er, your milk tea.”
     “Okay,” the girl said.
     Ryan got his curry and started eating, the whole time watching the girl.
     Before he had half finished half his meal, a policeman approached.
     “Papers?” he said.
     “Huh?” Ryan said.
     “Your passport,” the policeman said. “Please show it to me.”
     “Uh, I don’t have it,” Ryan said. “I’m with a tour group.”
     What Ryan didn’t know was that the police were looking for a terror suspect, a Pakistani immigrant whose complexion and height were not very different from Ryan’s, and who also was known to prefer wearing suits regardless of the weather.
     “Come with me,” the policeman said.
     And so Ryan never finished his curry that day, and never again saw his beloved Pakistani curry girl. Three days later, when he had finally cleared up his identity with the police and returned to the street where he saw the stand, she was nowhere to be found.

Shawn Chuang (莊崴翔), Ryan Tsai, Anthony Huang (黃聖翔), and Felix.


Whatever are you waiting for? Read my new book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.