Thread

Singapore’s National Library Board offers micropayments to build reading habits

288 points · 149 comments · geox

andsoitis · 1789921480 · focus · HN ↗
> to build daily reading habits among a phone-first population
Reading is fundamental.
EDIT: Other skills and habits that you can then build on reading: critical thinking, reasoning, detection and handling own biases, numeracy, financial literacy, and more. All these dimensions are manipulated via phones and the apps on them, so you need a firewall.
Also: writing. Cursive writing.
1. Viliam1234 · 1789933425 · focus · HN ↗
  > Cursive writing.
  Is there anything useful about cursive writing? Other than it being positively correlated with many good things because education is the common topic?
  1. homarp · 1789939374 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202010/why-cursive-handwriting-is-good-your-brain" rel="nofollow">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202...
    note that at least "Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom" is critized - <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1517235/full" rel="nofollow">https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
    201984 · 1789947819 · focus · HN ↗
    Is there any evidence that handwriting in cursive is better than handwriting normally? The Van der Meer study only compared cursive to typing or drawing, not handwriting.
    It's rather suspicious to leave normal handwriting out of the study, and makes me suspect bad faith.
    hdgvhicv · 1789955574 · focus · HN ↗
    Anecdotally my kids wrote a fair bit before they were forced to do “joined up writing”. Since then they have stopped almost entirely and what little they do write is far less legible than before.
    If there is one thing I would ban from education it’s this 17th century torture device.
    basisword · 1789986561 · focus · HN ↗
    How does this work? In school if they’re forced to write in cursive surely they still have to write the same amount? And if it’s writing in their spare time that has reduced they can write non-cursive so that shouldn’t be a blocker.
    hdgvhicv · 1790003794 · focus · HN ↗
    Once they hit year 6 or 7 (about 10-12) all bets are off
    My eldest son was so damaged by the cult of obsolete writing that he has to do everything on computer now, including exams. His writing before was neat and fast.
    basisword · 1790023091 · focus · HN ↗
    Seems like a simple problem to solve for the schools. Don't accept typed work. Handwriting only. It was 25 years ago now but I remember learning cursive about age 7 or 8 and it was something we worked on for no more than a few months. And I feel like most kids were excited to be able to write like 'adults'. It's really not some insurmountable challenge.

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