5 Bad Ideas Humanity Is Sticking With Out of Habit

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Humans are funny when it comes to technology. We're eager to adopt new technologies when the difference is trivial, like camping out for days to buy the new iPhone when we still haven't figured out the old one. But at the same time, we also have a way of getting attached to worthless technologies of the past, just because it's too much hassle to change.

It turns out old habits die hard. And sometimes, they don't die at all.

#5.
The QWERTY Keyboard

Quick -- look at the very computer you're reading this on. Depending on your level of geekitude, you probably have a plasma monitor and a system running six terabytes of RAM powered by a flux capacitor. But in order to communicate with this futuristic device you probably call your Tardis, you're still using an archaic system that hasn't been improved since it was introduced 130 years ago. We're talking about your keyboard.

Why It's Inefficient:

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Besides not being able to take a punch.

When you rest your hands on the "home row" like they told you in high school, check out what keys you're touching -- A, S, D, F, J, K, L and semicolon. Besides A and S, you're looking at a conga line of some of the least-used letters in the English language and possibly the least useful punctuation mark of all time. In fact, your right index finger, the dominant finger on most people's dominant hand, is sitting on goddamn J, which is worth 8 points in Scrabble for a reason -- it's the fourth-least-used letter, trumped only by the loser letters X, Q and Z.

How did we wind up with this intuition-defying random configuration? Well, back in 1868, when Christopher Sholes and a couple of other guys had just finished inventing the first typing machine, the keys were arranged in alphabetical order (our current middle row shows vestiges of this, with A, D, F, G, H, J, K and L still in order). But there was a problem: Before long, people were mashing away on these fragile early keyboards, which had a tendency to jam when two keys next to each other were pressed in rapid succession.


Early versions of World of Warcraft were almost impossible to play.

So Sholes consulted a buddy who had studied up on letter-pair frequency, and he moved the keys that were most often typed together away from each other. After a few other minor tweaks, like moving up the R key, allegedly so that salesmen could impress buyers by typing the word "TYPEWRITER" using only the top row, we had our current QWERTY arrangement. Never mind that the most commonly used letters (E, T, A, O, I, N and S, respectively) were randomly scattered all over, and that it took forever every time you wanted to type "ESTONIA." Sholes wasn't trying to make the most ergonomically sound keyboard; in fact, QWERTY is deliberately engineered to slow you down so you don't have to worry about pesky typewriter jams.

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And so you don't have to put "awesome typing skills" on your insurance claim.

Why We're Stuck With It:

The only reason we're still tying our fingers in knots more than a century later is simply because QWERTY got here first.

Since then, several more "scientifically" designed keyboard layouts have been introduced, including Dvorak, Colemak and XPeRT, which no one's ever heard of but which has an extra "E" on the keyboard.


And then there's the E-board. Yes, we just did.

Now, debate rages over how much faster these alternatives are than QWERTY. But the fastest typist in the world used Dvorak to set her record, and it's hard to imagine that a layout with a semicolon in the home row would be as fast as one with an extra freaking E.

Speed aside, countless studies show that Dvorak and others are far more ergonomically efficient, requiring fingers to move approximately a third of the distance that QWERTY requires. Oh, and QWERTY also discriminates against right-handed people. Thousands of English words can be spelled using only the left hand, while only a couple of hundred words can be typed using only the right hand. Maybe Sholes just wanted to hold his beer while he typed.

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Or maybe he lost it in a game of "Fuck Your Hand."

And yet, QWERTY shows little sign of going anywhere, all because of the "first mover" advantage -- everybody has already grown up knowing only one way to type, and nobody wants to completely relearn how to type for the possibility of slightly increased speed and comfort, at least until they get carpal tunnel.

#4.
Cursive

Virtually everyone reading this was made to learn cursive writing in school. Most of the people reading this are either in college or out of school completely, living in the adult world. So when was the last time you wrote something in cursive, other than your name? Do you even remember what a capital cursive Q looks like? Put your hand down, Quentin.

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And stop making racist comments in class.

Originating from the Latin cursivus, meaning "flowing," cursive developed in ancient languages to be a speedier way of writing by hand. And for many hundreds of years, it was. Also, nobody could read your handwriting.

Why It's Inefficient:

There's a reason nobody can read your goddamn signature -- cursive is hard to read. Many colleges forbid students from turning in exams written in cursive and present lectures via PowerPoint, not pretty P's and looping L's. Some say writing in cursive can help brain development, but so can printing. Also, kids can type far faster than they can write in cursive, and they can work on their grammar, syntax, spelling and idea flow much more efficiently on a computer than they can with a quill pen and parchment.


The drawback, of course, being that you can't stab someone with a computer.

But the main argument against cursive comes down simply to an allocation of classroom resources. If you somehow already know cursive, fine, but in these days of stretched school budgets and limited teaching time, some wonder whether we should really be devoting school resources to the world's stupidest way of putting words on paper.

Yet 90 percent of schools are still spending the recommended 60 weekly minutes teaching their second- and third-graders cursive. If that hour is going in, what are we sacrificing? Math? Cultural diversity? Phys ed? Our fat, racist, counting-on-their-fingers kids don't need to know how to make flowery Z's. Or at least, they need to know a lot of other things more.

Why We're Stuck With It:

There are some signs that cursive is on the way out. Ten percent of schools have stopped teaching it, which actually makes cursive even more inefficient, as 10 percent of kids now won't be able to read what everybody else is scribbling about.

But most schools are, for now, clinging to their curling C's, thanks to slow-to-change educational standards. Cursive was actually reinstated in Florida's school standards in 2006, amidst fears of students becoming too reliant on technology. Perhaps we should also reinstate hunting and gathering, over fears of becoming too reliant on grocery stores.

#3.
Summer Vacation

The standard "take three months off every summer" schedule that our schools use came about through a combination of fiscal limitations, hundred-year-old developmental theories and antiquated medical concerns that kids somehow couldn't hold up under year-round teaching.

You may have also heard that it's a vestige of farming days, when families needed the kids back on the farm. That's not really true -- that would have meant time off during spring and fall, for planting and harvesting. Either way, it's old-fashioned. And it's hurting our kids. Especially the poor ones.

Why It's Inefficient:

Three things happen when you take kids out of school for three months.

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Not to the teachers -- to the kids.

A. They get dumber. The human brain forgets things it doesn't use, and not many kids are doing fractions and reading Shakespeare during the summer. A recent Time article found that, on average, students lose around a month of math skills each summer. Kids who are poor and don't have access to summer enrichment programs do even worse: Low-income students lose as many as three months of reading comprehension. Other studies suggest that ninth-grade summer learning loss can be blamed for roughly two-thirds of the achievement gap separating income groups.

B. They need to be re-taught what they've forgotten, so kids wind up spending up to a month in the fall reviewing what they learned the previous year, when they could be moving ahead. Most countries that boast higher test scores have shorter summer breaks, and there could be a connection. Sure, some kids are going to be idiots and need to be re-taught things no matter what, but why exacerbate matters with 90 days with no math beyond counting how many levels are left before their Night Elf can get a Flying Mount?


Now what?

C. They get fatter. Brains aren't the only things that degrade when kids are left to three months of Halo 3 and nut-kick videos -- they also eat worse. Kids gain body mass twice as fast during the summer as during the school year. Most parents can't afford to take three months off work and babysit, or pay for day care, so without adults policing their intake, many kids are left to their own waddlesome devices.

Why We're Stuck With It:

And yet, more than two-thirds of people oppose the idea of year-round schooling. Summer vacation hasn't changed much in the last 100 years, and though a few schools are trying year-round classes, it's hard to imagine it catching on countrywide. Simply put, Americans just love their summers. They've been romanticized through adult memories and storybooks of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn spending their long summer days committing grifts and helping slaves escape. What could be more American than that?

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Maybe the Statue of Liberty giving the finger to winter.

Now, nobody's suggesting getting rid of vacations entirely -- after all, kids need to recharge, especially those who don't particularly like school. We also don't have the money to pay teachers and keep buildings open year-round, or to clean up after the riots that would inevitably ensue if such a thing were ever actually instituted.

But maybe we could spread the vacations around, like many of the countries that are kicking our ass do. Take the hottest month of summer off to save AC costs, and take the coldest month of winter off to save on heating. A one- or two- month summer is long enough to take family trips, take up a crappy summer job and prevent teachers from spiraling into a three-month abyss of dread and alcoholism.