Roman Numerals And Cursive

I don't always watch the Super Bowl, but I did watch it on Sunday. During the fourth quarter, I decided I was rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs. They won. So now, for the rest of the year I can say, "We won." At this time last year, I became a Los Angeles Rams fan and spent the year saying, "We won." If you are a sports fan, you're probably scoffing at me right now. It's a joke I tell to irritate people who take professional sports too seriously.

That said, one thing I do know for certain is that this was Super Bowl LVII, which is Roman numerals for 57. I know this because we were taught about Roman numerals in first grade. I have no idea why we were taught Roman numerals. The only time I use the knowledge is for identifying which Super Bowl is taking place and occasionally for determining when a particular ancient Roman building was completed. I was going to say that I also need Roman numerals when telling the time using old timey analog clocks, but to be honest, I've simply learned where the Arabic numerals are traditionally placed around the dial. You could put smily faces on it instead of numerals and I'd still be able to tell the time. I can even tell time on this clock I saw in Greece:

It seems odd that our schools took the time to teach Roman numerals. When I ask why, most of the time the answer is, "I don't know." But when someone does try to defend the teaching of Roman numerals they provide an explanation along the lines of it being a different way to play with numbers in the interest of making connections and discovering patterns. Fair enough. Making connections and discovering patterns is how I can tell time on an analog dial with or without numerals.

I enjoyed learning about Roman numerals. They came easy for me. If our teacher had divided us up into Roman numeral groups the way she did for reading, I would have been in Group A, which everyone knew was for the teacher's pets. The kids who didn't enjoy pleasing the teacher by getting Roman numerals would have been in groups B or C. The kids who outright refused to learn were always in group D. There was a cool kid named Chuck in reading group D who threw the best fast ball in first grade. There was also a cool girl in that group who dressed for school in mini dresses and go-go boots. I decided she was my girlfriend even though I'd never spoken with her.

As a young football fan, I knew the Roman numerals for and the winners of every Super Bowl. Green Bay won game I and II. Joe Namath and the Jets won III. Kansas City and Baltimore were the winners of IV and V respectively. And then, my own Dallas Cowboys won VI. By then I was 10 years old and had come to realize that this about as far as my Roman numeral prodigiousness was ever going to take me. Fair enough. To this day, I enjoy being the guy who can translate Roman numerals into Arabic numerals, but as Kurt Vonnegut quipped, "Try doing long division with Roman numerals."

I don't know if kids are still learning their Roman numerals in first grade, but I sure hope so. It's just the kind of useless knowledge that makes life a little more interesting.

In second grade, we were introduced to cursive writing. I enjoyed that too until my teacher, Mrs. Cockfield, told my mother, who told me, that I would never amount to much when it came to cursive. I would have been placed in group B or C because I tried so hard, but in her judgement, and perhaps because of my gender, I would never touch the cursive stars.

It seems less odd that we were taught cursive in school. Back then, everyone was expected to write letters to their grandmothers and becoming proficient in cursive meant getting that chore out of the way faster. There were also essays and whatnot in our futures that would be written in cursive, but I was unaware of that at the time, although looking back I pity those poor teachers having to decipher all those cursive essays. 

Mom was a speed demon when it came to writing cursive, which I found impressive, although once I learned the skill myself I realized that her speed came at the price of legibility. Nevertheless, I found it beautiful. In the days before I learned cursive, I would imitate her by writing page after page of wiggly lines, very rapidly, then admire the beauty of what I'd created. But Mrs. Cockfield's assessment put an end to that. I came to hate cursive because I feared I would never measure up. As a sophomore in high school I took a drafting class where we learned to use block lettering. No lower case letters. Capitals only. The goal of this type of handwriting was not speed, but utter clarity. After all, there might be a bridge span at stake and there was no room for guessing. One day, my father, an engineer, saw my lettering work and said, "This is better than most of the guys at my office." From that moment on, I gave up on cursive altogether, adopting all-caps block lettering exclusively. In college, where we still had to write tests by hand, my professors would always compliment me on the legibility of my non-cursive handwriting.

This isn't to say I don't occasionally use my cursive writing. My favorite doodle is the letter L. I often doodle it over and over. I have a few living relatives who write letters in cursive. And, of course, I use cursive for my signature, a stylized thing that bears close resemblance to my early efforts at imitating my mother's cursive.

Many schools stopped teaching cursive entirely in 2010 because the Common Core national curriculum said to stop teaching it, but there are people who are very upset about it. They say that it trains the brain to learn functional specialization (whatever that is), improves memory, and helps with developing fine motor skills, among other very important things. When our daughter's school dropped cursive, a group of parents were so upset that they were forced to reintroduce it.

When Paul Simon sang, "When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school/It's a wonder I can think at all," he was singing about things like Roman numerals and cursive. You know what he wasn't singing about? Art. PE. Dance. Recess.

I mean, sure, I use my Roman numerals and cursive to show off during Super Bowl season and when doodling, important things indeed, but the things I taught myself while drawing, playing kick ball, and shaking my booty are skills I use almost every day. I would even assert that they help me make connections, discover patterns, learn functional specialization (whatever that is), and develop both gross and fine motor skills. And, at the same time, I was learning about fitness, beauty, and joy, the things that actually prove that life worth living.

But perhaps most significantly was that in first grade I was partnered up to dance with the cool girl in the go-go boots. At one point the dance called for us to touch hands. I can still feel her palms against mine. They were cool, dry, and a little chapped.

******

 

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!