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| fossils | 59% | 77 votes | Total: 131 votes | |
| cursive | 41% | 54 votes |
fossils
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Add to FavoritesBoth hunting fossils and practicing cursive are equally important. Hunting fossils certainly is more interesting however. The key here is not in what we want our children to learn, but in how we want them to learn. If hunting for fossils is done in project fashion, it can be a telling and rewarding experience for everyone involved.
Education should inspire our children. What better inspiration than hunting for and learning about history? Hunting fossils is a mysterious task. It grabs the interest and engages the imagination. It also resembles play, which helps make learning fun. It requires patience, diligence and teamwork. It is a learning experience less likely to be forgotten. So many lessons can be tied into a simple session of hunting for fossils.
For example, when hunting for fossils, our children have to work with their classmates and educators to discover what animal the fossil came from. They might have to research to find out more about the area where they found the fossil. This requires teamwork and organizational skills. It also educates them about history. They may have to document their findings, which will require spelling, writing and grammar skills. They will learn patience when they go to a dig site and dig, sometimes for an extended period of time, before finding anything. They will be using their imaginations and creativity as well.
Hunting for fossils is an excellent activity that keeps our children active physically and mentally. Our children will come to appreciate history. They will learn why asking questions is important. They will learn how to focus. They will find their strengths and weaknesses, as so many skills go into fossil hunting. When a group of children hunt for fossils, there is likely to be an appropriate role for each child. There will be discussions and debates about findings. Students will have to work with each other and learn to communicate with both theirs peers and their teachers in appropriate ways. Hunting for fossils will also teach our children the value of such historical artifacts. They will learn the monetary value as well as the educational, historical and scientific value of the fossils they find.
The rewards of an activity such as hunting for fossils are endless. It is an interesting activity that fosters a love for learning. While there are books involved, and countless hours of research may be required, hunting for fossils engages our children and teaches them how to think. This is what education is intended to do! Education is supposed to give our children the tools they need to one day be a productive member of society. Imagination, creativity, curiosity and inspiration are all necessary factors in education if we want our children to continue seeking knowledge after their school years have long passed.
Learn more about this author, Belinda Long.
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cursive
When it comes to choosing between whether hunting for fossils or practicing cursive handwriting as a better use of school time, I would have to say that said time would be better spent learning how to properly write as opposed to digging for fossils. It's not because I am personally against fossils or digging for them - as science lessons go, it certainly beats growing Lima beans - but it's more a matter of efficiently using class time to help prepare children for life beyond school. Teaching children how to write legibly is far more helpful in that respect than staging an archaeological dig.
To be fair, I can understand why some would think otherwise. After all, what with so many schools doing away with recess altogether, being able to take children out into the fresh air to dig in the dirt is the closest some children are going to get to constructive playtime. There is also the possibility that this could be the impetus for getting a formerly directionless child into considering the possibility of being an archaeologist themselves one day. Be that as it may, the fact remains that while perhaps one child in the class might seriously consider such a career move, everyone in the class is going to require the skills necessary to write clearly, including that budding archaeologist.
In this era of never-ending leaps forward in computer technology, it has become more common to teach children how to type than how to write cursive. However, even with all this technology, there are still times when a person needs to put pen to paper and scribble. Perhaps it's when taking notes, or possibly to add an important postscript to an already-printed letter. If the reader can't make out what the writer is trying to say, the resultant confusion could be at the very least irritating and possibly catastrophic at worst.
Despite the increasing reliance upon computers for written communication, there are gaps enough between technology and necessity that sometimes a person will have to write something down by hand, preferably at great speed. Being able to write in cursive helps with that immensely, as that cursive tends to be faster than printing out each individual letter, since you don't have to keep lifting your pen or pencil off the paper to start a new letter. But if you can't write cursive legibly, what you wind up with at the end is a headache from trying to decipher your hastily-scrawled letters later on.
Being able to write readable cursive is fast becoming a dying art, I've noticed. As the years roll on, I find that the quality of handwriting on the whole has dropped dramatically, to such levels that it would make a number of my former elementary teachers wring their hands in anguish. More and more often, I find myself looking at some handwritten missive, whether from a boss, a colleague or a friend, and spending far more time trying to figure out what on earth they wrote than anything else. Mind you, most of these people went to school around the same time I did, or completed schooling much earlier than I did, and their handwriting is still appalling. I can only imagine what it must look like among the up-and-coming generation, who are far more reliant on keyboards than the rest of us.
So from where I'm standing, taking time out of the school day so that children can practice cursive handwriting is a far more constructive use of school time. Digging for fossils would be more fun, but by teaching our children how to properly write, we are providing them with a skill that they will be able to use for the rest of their lives.
Learn more about this author, Rose Calder.
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