The Dodo, the passenger pigeon, and Palmer penmanship

There's been a fair amount of online chatter, some of it quite nasty, about Rachel Jeantel's recent testimony in the George Zimmerman trial in Florida. Ms. Jeantel admitted on the witness stand that she cannot read cursive writing. This has caused quite a few people to mock her as illiterate. Well, it's pretty obvious she's not alone.

The S.O. and I were down in Eagle River, Wisconsin, yesterday to help the now 12-year-old grandson celebrate his birthday. A fair number of his friends were there, too. Coincidentally, his mother has been going through  the kids' books in the house, some of which were purchased for Logan fairly recently and some for his older brother back in the '90s. One of the books I noticed was The Ledgerbook of Thomas Blue Eagle -- it's a book written from the perspective of a Lakota youth who ends up being shipped off to the Carlisle Indian School in the late 19th century. It's a gorgeous book, beautifully printed, and tells an interesting and heart-wrenching story. It received a Christopher Award in 1995. And here's the thing: it's printed in cursive.

It's absolutely perfect cursive, but it's cursive nonetheless. Seeing the cursive printing in the book led to us talking about Ms. Jeantel and her admission that she couldn't read cursive. So we started wondering just how common that was. We called Logan and his cronies over. The kids ranged in age from 12 to 14. Two of them admitted outright they couldn't read it, a couple could make out words if they worked at it, and one could read it fairly easily. She stumbled a few times, but she could read it. These kids are in middle school, heading into 7th and 8th grades, and they were stumbling over a book written for kids in grades 4-6.

This led to Logan's mother (aka our Oldest Daughter) mentioning that back when she worked in a restaurant a few years ago, they had trouble with some of the high school students who worked busing tables or as waitresses. If a label or an order ticket wasn't in block printing, they couldn't read it. One girl kept screwing up orders and finally admitted she couldn't read the labels on the salad dressing bottles because they were in cursive script. This solved another mystery for me: why the graphics on commercial products more and more look like they're being marketed to 6-year-olds. 

You know, I can understand not teaching penmanship in school anymore, but not teaching kids how to read cursive? That's bizarre. In a few years the government won't have to classify anything as Secret; all they'll have to do is print everything in Edwardian script.

Cluelessness

I'm sitting here semi-listening to the early local news, hearing the traffic reports and once again being happy I'm able to walk to work, sipping my coffee, playing Tetris (I love the classics) and generally killing time until I have to head for the Dilbert cage for the day when my ears perk up: a local teen is upset over the invasion of her privacy by the manager of a local cell phone outlet.

Turns out this 18-year-old naif had taken some rather intimate photos of herself -- showing off the new Wonder bra for the boyfriend, perhaps, or just indulging in fantasies of being a Victoria's Secret model -- using her cellphone. She left the photos on the phone, then brought it to the store for some unspecified reason. (In their usual fine style of reporting only 1/5th of a story, the TV newshounds fail to mention whether she needed to have it serviced or if she was turning it in after closing an account.) Suddenly her private photos weren't so private anymore. And she's shocked. And outraged. And generally freaking out because people she doesn't know have seen her in her unmentionables.

Here's a hint, kid: if you don't want the whole world to see you flaunting the new thong, don't take a picture of it to begin with. Or, if you are dumb enough to play at being an exhibitionist, delete the photos before handing the device they're stored on to a total stranger.

Ah, the innocence of youth. . . I'm not sure which amuses me more: her initial dumb mistake with the photos, or the fact she was willing to go on local TV to tell the whole world she was an idiot.

(Kids today have no clue about the levels of protection against future embarrassment offered by the now defunct technology of Polaroid film -- only one copy of the money shot, and it could be shredded.)