I’ve seen some renewed discussion lately about how much schools should teach handwriting and cursive. There has been a downward trend in recent years as technology becomes more prevalent. Kids learn the basics, but I don’t think it’s much a part of the regular curriculum after third or fourth grade.
My handwriting is even worse now than it was when I was a child. And it wasn’t very good then. If I really, really concentrate, I can write something legible. My family often laughs at what I write on the shopping list since only I can decipher it. Anyone who sees my notes on the program before sporting events would have no idea what they say unless they have memorized my pregame announcements.
Is handwriting something we should spend more time teaching? Good penmanship is truly a lost art. If you know someone with exceptional handwriting, that’s probably a rarity these days. You might get your wish as some legislatures are taking up the cause.
What are some other things that seem to have been lost to the annals of time? I’m glad you asked!
Over the past few years at basketball games, I’ve been heard to utter, “My kingdom for a bounce pass,” too many times. Boys or girls, any level, you just don’t seem to see many bounce passes anymore. As players become stronger, there are about 150% more skip passes and over the head passes than when I played.
When I coached, I preached the greatness of the bounce pass. It’s not that it can’t be defended, but rather that it’s the most difficult pass to get a hand on. If I throw a chest pass, it can be intercepted by good timing. If I go over the head and the other person is taller or times their jump, it will be deflected. And if I’m not right on the money with a skip pass, it might sail out of bounds.
This is especially true when passing inside to a post player. Spectators just don’t get to see a bounce pass in there as much, when that’s the only pass that’s almost guaranteed to work, whether you get it in there cleanly or cause the defender to foul when reaching around. The angle at which the basketball arrives makes it very tough to deflect it when bounced.
When I watch baseball games, I don’t see as much stealing of bases as I would like. I know the Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not steal,” but it’s getting ridiculous. There is a true art to base-stealing. It can be a combination of knowing how far you can get off the base and then taking a little bigger lead as well as studying the pitcher. And that means watching him even when you’re not on base.
Between coaches and players, it should be easy to detect patterns and use that to their advantage, but stolen base totals seem to be declining. I wasn’t all that fast when I played the game, but I was able to steal a lot of bases through my wily understanding of what it took to advance 90 feet without the batter having to do a thing. As a coach, I want all my players to steal, no matter how quick they are.
This might sound strange coming from a teacher, but kids who cheat in school have gotten worse at what used to be quite an art form. I catch students on an all-too-regular basis. And it’s not even difficult to do. There are two main ways this happens.
An example would be when I have students write sentences for each of their vocabulary words. I’ll be reading through the work and suddenly thing to myself, “Wow, that sounds really familiar.” I’ll look back at a previous paper and discover the same sentences, word for word. If you’re going to copy someone’s work from the exact same class section, don’t you think you might at least change the names of people in your sentences?
The other form of cheating is the dreaded plagiarism. I like to remind my students that, while it’s very easy to go online and find an essay already written, it’s also extremely easy for me to discover that you have done so. I simply type a line into Google and find your essay in full bloom! A colleague recently passed along part of a paper to get my opinion on whether it was copied. The first clue? The paper used the British spelling of words like “behaviour.”
Before I have students write any major papers, I’ve seen enough of their writing to know their abilities. If you’re going to cheat, don’t do so above your ability. Okay, just don’t cheat, but I admit that I did it a few times when I was younger. I was not part of the following story, but it’s a good example of how maybe just studying would have been less effort than what was done.
In high school, one of my classmates stole the answer key off the social studies teacher’s desk and made photocopies for whoever wanted them. But the group took it another step. They decided to each get enough wrong so as not to appear suspicious. For example, one of my friends usually got a C or D on his tests. What would happen if he suddenly got an A? So he got enough wrong to get a C so the teacher wouldn’t suspect anything. Plus, those who planned on getting about the same grade chose different questions to answer incorrectly.
Again, cheating is wrong. But that was quite a plan, you have to admit!
One more lost art that will, hopefully, make a comeback is, to borrow from Al Batt, being kind to others. It seems there is hatred and vitriol everywhere we look. Let’s be nicer every chance we get. If that happened, I could forgive the lack of bounce passes.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is transpicuous, which means easily seen through, as in, “The student’s attempt to copy a paper was so transpicuous that even the rookie teacher caught it.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!