Sunday, March 22, 2009

Communications 102


Years ago elementary teachers taught the fine art of penmanship. If you are from my generation, you might remember your Palmer method or Zaner-Bloser instruction books from grade school. ( I learned Zaner-Bloser.) The books had illustrations on beautiful cursive letter writing. You practiced on special lined paper that helped you get the letters properly sized.

I don't think today's teachers will spend the same amount of time drilling children in perfect cursive letters. Texting and computer keyboard, and cheap long distance calling have made handwriting almost obsolete. I wonder what we will be losing. Didn't caveman who had to chew tougher food have more teeth than we do? Wasn't there some benefit in mastering fine motor skills?

A couple years ago I started emailing and blogging at my daughters prodding and enjoyed it. Recently a longtime good friend sent me her Facebook address and asked me to join. I delayed taking the step, but finally did, although I haven't entered anything but my name and age on my page. I'm working on it. Eventually I'll get 'er done but I am leaving the Twittering and tweets to the robins while I try to decipher "pokes" and "likes". We've come a long way from signal fires and petroglyphs.

1 comment:

Mary said...

Oh man my MOM has a facebook page? I've heard a lot of what you said- people are getting bugged to create a facebook page because their friends have them. I paused to consider doing it about a month ago. Then decided against it- just another place to visit and keep up to date. Then in the last few days it occurred to me that maintaining a plain old blog was all I wanted. "Old" technology is fine by me. Keep it simple. (a la "I don't want 10 remotes to turn on the tv). So I guess I'm Mary in the middle lane :!