This is the best of our knowledge, a presentation of national productions.
There is growing controversy around the country about the Common Core Education Standard
that almost every state is adopting.
Some of that controversy is just political posturing and blowhardiness, but one element
may be worth listening to.
The teaching of cursive writing is not part of the standards.
We want more writing done, we want more content in their writings, and cursive is the
quickest mode to write.
Today on the best of our knowledge, we'll hear from a handwriting expert who thinks cursive
writing is a disappearing skill that is still vital.
We'll also hear about an entire language that is disappearing, get commentary about shiny
objects in the classroom, and spend an academic minute with the rocks in your cell phone.
I'm Bob Barrett, and this is the best of our knowledge.
How's your handwriting?
If it's anything like mine, the word illegible is not far from your lips, but according
to Angie Coleman, teaching handwriting, not printing, but connected, cursive writing,
is something many schools across the country are starting to drop from their curriculum.
Coleman is a pediatric occupational therapist in Boca Raton, Florida, and a certified handwriting
specialist.
She teaches workshops for a group called Handwriting Without Tears.
We spoke recently, and I asked if she was disappointed that teaching cursive is not part
of the common core standards.
You know, I do think it's disappointing, but I think it's something that is actually underlying.
The way that I view the common core standards is that they've kind of delineated what they
expected nationally for our kids to gain.
With cursive, while it may not be listed there, what we do see listed there is that the
expectations have increased, right?
So every age level we're expecting more and more from our children.
So when I kind of read between the lines, I see, okay, you want more writing done.
We want more content in their writing, and cursive is the quickest, most efficient way
to write.
So then for me, it seems like a clear line to say, then why would I not teach cursive to
my children so that they can be more effective in meeting those common core standards?
How widespread or not widespread is the teaching of cursive today?
Well, you know, it's an interesting question, and while I don't have exact numbers, I can
say that it's filled you to the foundation skill and that teachers and schools in all
the states are still supporting teaching it.
In a national survey of K through fifth grade or kindergarten to fifth grade teachers,
there was about 70 percent said taking cursive out of schools would have a negative long-term
impact on students.
But the reality is we know that it is a foundational skill, it's a life skill.
And that's the most important thing we would kind of reinforce is that cursive is faster
and more efficient than handwriting.
It's still viewed that way, it will continuously be viewed that way.
There is research that shows that students who, on SAT essays, use cursive usually score
better, right?
Yeah, there was some research that showed about a 15 percent gain or increase in scores
on that first year that the SATs required a handwriting essay that there was improvement
now.
Now experts, we're not to say that the cursive is what made them do better on the SATs,
but what experts do believe is that the availability, those students' ability to write quickly
and efficiently help them focus on the content and not so much on their print.
Is the reliance on computers in keyboarding now making cursive kind of a thing of the
past?
You know what, I think that may be viewed by some, but I think that they're missing the
bigger picture.
You know what, handwriting that appears, we're not saying it's either or, okay?
So we're not saying that, you know, computers versus handwriting.
It really, the both life skills.
There are definitely times, Bob, that I'm sure that you and I would prefer to write something
down quickly and get it on paper.
And then there are other times where it's more efficient, it's better to keyboard, to
keyboarding as your means of communication.
So again, I think that they work more in collaboration and less in opposition than people are
really realizing.
There's definitely better times for one or the other.
Tell us what you do in your workshops.
Okay.
So at our things, I do it without peers workshops.
They're really fun weekend.
Basically, we use multi-sensory approaches to teach not just our curriculum, but to teach
it to our teachers who will then be using our curriculum.
The curriculum teaches a clean, easy, fun and engaging way to teach both print and cursive.
And so we take that to our workshops and we provide that through music and movement and
manipulatives with our administrators and our teachers and our parents in the audience.
We have a really good time with them for the weekend and they walk away feeling empowered
and ready to teach these skills to our children.
And where do you do your workshops?
I am very fortunate.
I'm based out of Florida.
I'm living south Florida, but I'm able to travel all around the country.
So I have been, gosh, I was last year, I was in Fargo, North Dakota.
I was in Los Angeles.
Louisiana, it's really anywhere.
And several of our presenters are international.
I mean, we have multiple countries.
I know we were in, gosh, Australia and China.
So we've just been everywhere.
There are millions of children who use our particular style of handwriting, which is through
the handwriting about this program.
And I think they use it because it's very simplified and it can truly be applied to every child.
Variable children with special needs, children who are typically developing, it's really been
successful across the board.
Can you talk to teachers about this?
Are they like, oh, finally, somebody's helping us?
Or do they go into it kind of skeptically?
You know what, at every workshop, I typically open up the conversation with Christmas, say,
okay, everybody, tell me who in the audience thinks we should let it go and who's in support
of it.
And I will tell you, a large majority of the time, there are much more supporters than
there are new fayers.
And what we typically do as a group, we say, okay, well, let's talk about that.
Let's bring out that elephant in the room and let's say why we think there's a push
one way or the other.
And what typically is concluded, and maybe I can post a question to you, Bob.
Basically, if you have to think about how you yourself write when you have to write
something down, do you do it all in print?
Do you do it all in cursive?
Or maybe, most likely, do you use a print cursive hybrid, which is what most of us do,
right?
We've selected all a kind of like the e in cursive and the b in print and we kind of mix
and match them as we need to.
And we do that because our goal as adults is that we're quick functional writers.
And I think that ultimately, the only reason you and I and most teachers and adults can do
that form of hybrid writing is because we were taught both styles so well.
We were taught print, we had an emphasis on it, then we removed over to cursive and we
had an emphasis on that as well.
And we were able to blend the two.
I think when there are people in the audience or when there are people that are skeptical,
it's because when they're thinking of cursive, they're thinking of the cursive yesterday,
the John Hancock cursive, that's very frilly and tons of loops and curlicues.
And while it's beautiful, I think we would all agree that it probably isn't the most efficient
way of doing that connected print and we're connected writing, which is what we call cursive
now.
The cursive that we intend on out here is kind of encourages and really has modeled for
for the country is a much more print friendly cursive.
So basically it's this connected form of print that's really void of all those curlicues
and additional loops and stancing with and it really fits to the mini-biddy.
And when we just make sure that you can connect your writing, you can move quickly across
the paper and you can focus on that content.
So look ahead, is cursive going to be with us 10, 20, 50 years from now?
I really think it is.
I think when people maybe embrace the current cursive, the cursive of today, which really
is that simple, clean, just connect your writing cursive, I think that it's going to continue
on.
I think that's what needs to happen.
I think we just need to kind of change our style of thinking about cursive and not
as much as an art style, but more as a form of function.
As you call me, it is a pediatric occupational therapist and certified handwriting specialist
from Boca Raton, Florida.
You can learn more at hwtears.com.
Curse of writing may be coming rare in the U.S., but at least the English language still
seems to be holding up.
That may not be the case with a Native American language in the Northeast.
Members of the Pasamacwadi tribe are working to prevent the imminent disappearance of their
people's ancient language.
Gabe Graben from the Salt Radio Institute has more.
The Pasamacwadi language, it's a soft, melodic language.
It's like, well, Dhamma Yudhwaji Bay.
This is Madonna Saktoma, a Pasamacwadi elder.
She's speaking her tribe's native language.
A language they've spoken for 9,000 years.
Did you see my face and my body change when I spoke?
Yeah.
It makes me happy.
So Madonna and a few hundred other tribe members are age.
Are the only fluent speakers left.
Ask her what it meant to her to see the language disappearing within her lifetime.
We've lost the way.
That's all I can say.
Who are losing our value system.
That way it grow up with.
So how did this happen?
How does an ancient language disappear so quickly?
Sally Apt is another Pasamacwadi elder, a grandmother of 10 who grew up nearby.
I remember the TV coming into our house and we were one of the first homes to have a TV.
It was like going to the movies because everybody, all the kids that lived on the point at
the time, would come to my house.
There was no floor space left.
I really think that was the beginning of the change for us with the language.
So everybody was being exposed to English through the TV set.
But English came into the kids' lives even more forcefully in the reservation schools,
where none of the teachers were Pasamacwadi or spoke the language.
This is Wayne Newell, another elder.
One of the things that you weren't allowed to do was speak your language.
That was the first instruction you got.
And you were punished if you did.
Before long, no Pasamacwadi children were able to speak the language.
In the early 70s, we started realizing that if we don't do something, we're going
to have a very serious problem.
But it's not easy to save a dying language, especially one that's never been written down.
First it hasn't been documented.
Donald Sautoma is one of the tribe's primary historians.
A couple of the elders started working with linguists, the first dictionary with 6000
words.
They started there and they continued, continued.
Today we have 18,000 more dictionary.
As the dictionary project gained momentum, the team found a way to make it more accessible
than just a book in a library.
My part in the project was to create an audio dictionary.
That audio dictionary is now online.
At a site called the Language Portal.
The first word is two different ways of saying it.
Aigigualos or Aguajalos.
Dalaiapt showed me how it works.
If you wanted to hear it, you'd hit this button.
Aigigualos, Aguajalos.
And then if you wanted to hear the sentence, you would hit this one.
I'd tell my alien, how much I lost.
The dictionary is documented the language, but it's another thing entirely to bring it back
to daily use.
My brother refuses to speak it because of the way he was treated when he tried to speak
it.
He was ridiculed and when that happens to a person, they don't want to try it again.
Linguists call people like Dalai's brother fluent comprehension.
They can understand past and quality when spoken to, but they can only respond in English.
So how do you get them speaking again?
Ben Levine, a clinical psychologist, turned filmmaker based in Rockland, Maine, says that
the first step is to address the pain that stops fluent comprehension from speaking.
The way he does that is by a process called Video Feedback and illustrate how it works.
He told me about one memorable session.
We had been encouraged to film a group of people who played cards.
You can actually watch this video on the Language Portal site.
A group of past and quality elders are sitting around a kitchen table.
Their conversation is subtitled in past and quality and in English.
They start talking about how the teachers would hit them with rulers for speaking past
and quality.
One of the people talked about how their first period came on when she was in class.
And she didn't know how to tell the teacher that she was having a problem.
And so the teachers started to beat her up and hunger from a hook.
The woman later told Ben that it felt good to talk about the experience.
And when Ben plays the video back for more community members, that feeling gets multiplied.
It'll trigger a memory in somebody else.
So now a lot of memories are coming out of the repressed part of the community.
This kind of catharsis is crucial if you're trying to get the community to start speaking
again.
Would you try to teach everybody the language from scratch?
Would you go to those people who understand everything is being said, but they can't
speak it?
They try to help them become speakers and create a sense of hope and a sense of forward
momentum, a new day for that community.
A lot has been done to counteract the loss of the past and quality language.
The dictionary, the language portal, now there's even a program in the reservation schools
to teach the native language to kids.
Way new was instrumental in bringing these changes about.
But he admits that the disappearance of the language is still a real possibility.
We have done some stuff to slow it up.
But unfortunately we haven't done enough to be where I want to be and that is get another
generation of speakers.
Bert Poulchis is one community member who's taking this mission to heart.
He's raised his son to speak past Makwadi as his first language.
I feel that it needs to be a total immersion.
I think that's the biggest hope that we would be able to have.
His son was fluent as a child, but he's a teenager now and losing his grasp on the language
because there's really no one for him to speak it with.
You can do all you can to preserve it.
But preservation is nothing if you're not using it.
It's just like you can tomatoes, right?
To preserve them.
What good is to do anybody if you're not eating them?
You do that so that you can use them, right?
And that's the same thing with our culture.
You can't preserve it and not expect to use it.
All these people in our communities talking about how we need to preserve our way as well.
You need to use them too.
Like so many indigenous peoples around the world, the past Makwadi have been defending
their culture for centuries against outside forces that threaten to destroy it.
If their language ceases to be spoken, the world loses more than just a set of words.
It loses a way for people to relate to each other.
There's a word for what's happening to the past Makwadi language.
I found it on the language portal.
See, go so will.
See, go so will.
Which means it is disappearing gradually.
For salt radio, I'm Gabriel.
Still to come, a performer noted some disturbing behavior during an in-school assembly.
And it wasn't from the students.
Next on the best of our knowledge.
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Be sure to ask for the best of our knowledge, number 12-05.
This is the best of our knowledge.
I'm Bob Barrett.
During an elementary school assembly, you'd expect some disturbing behavior from the audience.
And you'd expect it from the students, as Jerry Burns sees it.
That's not always the case.
Dear elementary school teacher, you probably don't remember me.
I presented an arts and education storytelling assembly in your school cafeteria on a hot
muggy day in June.
Wearing shorts and tanks, the students looked primed for a day at the beach, not hours
of class.
You remember the day.
New school safety rules required windows and doors to be locked tight.
It was so hot in the room that cafeteria ladies could have warmed lunch pizzas on everyone's
heads.
Yet, in spite of the stickiness, children and teachers appear to enjoy the show.
They laughed and sang along, with dreamy eyes acquired to students listened intently and
applauded along with everyone else.
So as you can see, dear teacher, I watched the audience just as the audience watches me.
And I noticed you.
You weren't engaged in the show.
You ignored the children sitting on the floor at your feet.
You seemed unconnected to everything and everyone, except for your phone.
Perhaps you were texting, checking social media, or doing school-related tasks.
But whatever you were doing underscored what you were not doing.
Being as an audience member while a show unfurled before you.
For 20 minutes straight.
What you may not realize is that performers notice when audience members clock out.
My first instinct was to check on other audience members.
Everyone, teachers and students were wide-eyed and avidly listening.
That suggested that you're tuning me out wasn't a reflection of the competency of my work.
Dear as teacher, perhaps my storytelling did not resonate with you, making the assembly
an opportunity to get other things done.
Art is as personal as favorite foods.
Many people love mushrooms, but there are others who would never dream of ruining their
pizzas with them.
My work is perhaps like a mushroom and not to your taste.
What worries me is that you did not seem to mind that I could see your rude display and
worse that your students could see you too.
Aren't teachers role models?
What if your students needed your attention?
Were you able to hold them responsibly in your consciousness with the same intensity
as you held the phone?
Perhaps your connection with your phone was of an urgent nature.
Maybe your mother took ill and you had to arrange rides for your child.
Or overburdened as educators are nowadays, you still valuable time to get work done.
As personal need takes precedence over social niceties, however tattooed in my memory
is a vision of you holding a phone seemingly oblivious to your surroundings.
It distresses me to think that your students may hold a similar picture.
I am writing this letter to remind you and me and everyone that a cell phone's glow
catches the eye.
A user's bent head and busy hands command attention.
As performers and audience members can all see each other, we have to remember that our
actions speak louder than words or texts.
Might I humbly request that next time you leave the room and do your phone work elsewhere?
It would show respect to guest performers in your building.
Like you, we are educators, only we teach through the arts.
Do you welcome cell phone use while you teach?
Why would we?
Most importantly, by excusing yourself to take care of pressing business, students
would learn by your positive example.
Otherwise they might later wonder if the teacher can do it?
Why can't we?
Yours sincerely.
A storyteller who once performed for you.
Dr. Jerry Burns has been working together with Barry Marshall as the Story Crafters since
1991 and they have both been storytellers much longer than that.
You can learn more about them at storycrafters.com.
One thing for certain about that teacher's distracting cell phone, it was made up of
some pretty rare rocks.
That's the topic of today's academic minute.
Welcome to the academic minute, I'm Lynn Pascarella, president of at Holyoke College.
We are all becoming more dependent on electronic devices and replacing them with increasing
frequency.
Cornelia Class, associate research professor at Columbia University's Le Mans D'Ority
Earth Observatory, reveals the geologic process that makes our electronic addiction possible.
Did you realize that materials required for many electronic devices are coming from rocks
that are millions of years old?
Tiny magnets made of rare earth elements, particularly near dimium, are an essential component
of many compact electronics.
Rare earths are metals that actually are not rare, but they rarely occur in concentrations
profitable for mining.
High concentrations of rare earths are found in very exotic igneous rocks called carbonatides,
which have unusually high carbon contents.
Carbonatides are found almost exclusively where continents are starting to break apart to
form what will eventually be a new ocean, for example.
The African continent is slowly breaking apart from Ethiopia to Malawi in the East African
Rift, in most parts accompanied by volcanism.
My colleagues and I are studying this process by investigating the composition and precise
ages of the resulting rocks, which include some carbonatides.
In fact, the East African Rift hosts the only historically active carbonatide volcano
in the world, Old Daniel and Guy in Tanzania.
For other carbonatides we know of, formed before humans existed.
My graduate student Gary Masco determined that separate carbonatides in our study area,
formed 160 million and 1.5 billion years ago.
This shows that most carbonatides form only occasionally through earth's history.
Of those few even fewer have enough rare earth elements to be mined.
The only major source of rare earth in the USA is a now closed mine in California, which
is made of 1.4 billion year old carbonatide.
The biggest producer globally now is about 1.3 billion year old Baianian, obo-mai-en in
China.
This tells us that our lives today are built on rare geological processes, and the resulting
resources are not being replenished at any significant rate.
So we have to wonder what will be left for future generations.
That was Cornelia Class of Columbia University.
Production support for the Academic Minute comes from Newman's own foundation in partnership
with Mount Holyoke College.
That's all the time we have for this week's program.
If you'd like to listen again, join us online at our flagship stations website.
Go to www.wamc.org and click on the programs link.
And if you have any questions or comments about the program, send them in.
Our email address is knowledge at www.wamc.org.
I'm Bob Barrett.
Be sure to join us next time for another edition of The Best of Our Knowledge.
Bob Barrett is producer of The Best of Our Knowledge.
Dr. Alan Chartock is executive producer.
The Best of Our Knowledge is a production of WAMC Radio's National Productions, which
is solely responsible for its content.
Here more at www.wamc.org.
