Comment by sneak

1 year ago

By this logic, should not schools teach calligraphy?

Sure, why not?

  • Because it's a waste of time in an age where we have machines that can do a much better job?

    The same reason we don't wash clothes on a washboard in a river anymore?

    Teaching how to make pretty smudges on dead trees to store and communicate information is in the exact same bucket, to me. It's a an utterly useless and wasteful anachronism, like mechanical watchmaking or praying. Given that we have limited time, energy, and budget to educate children, it is actively harmful to their future.

    • Why teach them to write at all? Why teach arithmetic, just hand them a calculator. Why teach poetry? Why teach history -- if they need to know it, they can look on Wikipedia. Why offer band class, will it help you write tighter Javascript?

    • It's often faster to write down notes while listening than type them out, and you can make quick graphs/tables/etc without formatting hassles. Especially if you would be using a phone and not a real keyboard. That's why police always carry those little notebooks in their pocket.

      Additionally, there are many cases where it's possible to type and print something, but faster to just write it. Ex. writing the address on an envelope rather than making one in Word and trying to remember which way the envelopes go into the printer (which inexplicably is the opposite of the picture on the tray).

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    • Calligraphy is a form of art, it’s not a “pretty smudges on dead trees” - what an awful way to put it really. Knowing any kind of art makes you think differently, probably “better” in a way. Not everything should be reduced to the functional level.