Why does formal education always seem to think that anything new is better than what came before?

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Apparently learning to print and write is no longer important after grade one. the focus will be on keyboarding.

Why? Did anyone give any serious thought to what we might lose by not teaching people how to write by hand? As it turns out, we could be losing something important.

What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades – The New York Times.

Turns out learning to print has a different effect from learning to write, and that BOTH are important.

Why do we keep doing this? Why do we automatically assume that anything new must be better than anything old when it comes to education. We are forever dumping existing knowledge and skills and techniques and replacing them  whatever is new and shiny and ‘cool’ without understanding the benefits of either.

That doesn’t make any sense.

We’ve tossed out the teaching of Latin. Sure, no-one speaks Latin anymore, but what do we lose when we only learn one language?

What do we lose when we no longer memorize anything? Is it really just as good to be able to look things up? How is our thinking, our creativity changed when we have long passages of prose or Shakespeare memorized in our heads?

Did anyone bother to find out?

We are in such a rush to embrace all things new that we too seldom look at what we are really doing. We should.

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