Out with the old

I saw a tweet from an author the other day, begging teachers not to make their students learn to write “snail mail” to him but instead teach them to email him and he would respond. Now I don’t have a problem with teaching kids to use email and encouraging them to correspond with their favorite authors, but to throw out “snail mail” because it is old fashioned is wrong in my opinion. Learning cursive is becoming “old fashioned,” yet at some point we all have to learn to sign our name. Oh but some day it will all be done with finger-print scans. Well, someday isn’t here yet, so in the mean time, kids have to learn cursive so they can sign their name. If you really want to phase out writing, how about phasing in keyboarding class so kids can learn to type instead? But so far, I don’t see that happening, I just see and hear people complaining about the old fashioned stuff we need to get rid of.

I know more and more companies are encouraging their customers and clients to switch from paper statements to all online billing to be “green.” But tell me what happens when the internet is down? Some of these companies will simply charge fees for late payments, regardless of internet issues, computer glitches, etc. A company called me recently regarding a bill, and expected me to pay it over the phone because there was no invoice to send. Excuse me? It’s one thing to encourage customers and clients to be more green, but to assume someone pays bills over the phone all the time?

I have an idea, what if we teach our kids about how it WAS done, even letting them experience writing with a feather and ink well and other “old fashioned” ways then maybe we would be a bit more thankful for what we DO have. Let’s take our kids to museums more often, otherwise, what’s the point of even making movies about the olden days. Even watching Kitt Kittredge with my daughters I realized they didn’t really understand the storyline because they have no idea what a typewriter is or how a Model T was started with a crank.

I wonder when someone will suggest we phase out history class since it’s all old news anyway.