For some time I have heard kids say, I don’t need to learn how to spell or multiply. I have spellcheckers and calculators to do that for me. I disagree. The helper apps must remain just that – assistants – because these are basic skills we all need to communicate and make sense of the world. (Okay maybe not so much long division.)
However, there are some other kinds of training that I doubt we still need. Does anyone really need to know how to write in cursive? Or tell time using an analog clock?
What do you think? Are these obsolete skills? Are there others?
Required Writing 
Not sure when, but Florida has stopped teaching cursive in public schools. The kids learn only how to sign their names, and it stops there. It seems both wrong and right, somehow. Maybe it’s just nostalgia that makes it seem wrong to me? My 5 y.o. wants to learn to tell time on a “real” clock, but more for the challenge of the task than because he thinks he needs to know. We don’t even have a non-digital clock in our house!
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I agree about that feeling simultaneously right and wrong.
It also precludes people changing their names, unless they change to an anagram.
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Good question, to which I really have no answer. My spelling is pretty wobbly, so i’m always grateful for spellchecker. Mind you I don’t even know what “writing in cursive” means so that tells you something about my level of understand.
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Writing in cursive means handwriting (as opposed to printing). Out here in California, kids are required to learn cursive in 3rd grade then never seem to use it again.
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