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0 pointslsc13y ago0 comments

>Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.

I was in both the 'gifted' and the 'special ed' programs at the same time. the 'special' classes weren't so bad, really, if you only had to do it for two hours, twice a week, and it seems they were mostly worried about my handwriting.

It's funny, 'organizational skills' haunt me to this day, that's the other thing they tried to teach me. (and yeah, even now I'm pretty bad; I dono if I would call it a disability, but it's a big problem that holds me back.) but handwriting? the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.

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derleth13y ago

> the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.

It works like this, in the mind of a (bad) educator:

1. I had to do this.

2. I don't do random shit, so it must be important.

3. Therefore, you have to do this.

This chain of logic breaks down at step 2, so that's where post-hoc rationalizations step in to save the day. That's why I'm going to say this explicitly: For everything you can come up with to justify handwriting classes, there's a better way to learn the same skill that also fosters things that are more important than having neat handwriting.

For example, fine motor control is better learned through PE classes that actually teach sports, which has the added benefit of promoting physical fitness. The aesthetics of handwriting is better learned through calligraphy as part of a good art class, which has the added benefit of transmitting a culture which is left out of handwriting classes.

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