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November 24, 2025 • 34 mins

Michael Berry tackles what schools skip—from money basics and practical life skills to the fading art of cursive. Callers weigh in, history quirks surface, and we ask: what really matters for the next generation?

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Time time, luck and load.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
The Michael Verie Show is on the air. I got

(00:41):
an email during the break somebody had.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Said, we should teach our kids money. They should learn
about mortgages and interest rates and compounding and investing. You know,
when I was running for city council the first time
it was the election was in two thousand and one.
But I went around to well respected business leaders around

(01:06):
town and one of them was a guy named Dean Kannally,
and he had a blue chip, well respected boutique trust
company called Kannale Trust, and you had to have a
certain threshold to be a client of his boutique firm.

(01:30):
And at the time it felt like eighty trillion dollars,
but incomes and wealth increased exponentially in the last two
decades in a way they had never on scale like
that before. So let's say you had to have a
million dollars in two thousand to be his client, which

(01:52):
was a big threshold. And I asked for his support
to run for city council and he said, I will
give you my support if you will give me an
hour to talk about the fundamentals of finance personal finance.
I want you to understand how they work, and I
want to explain it to you, and I want you

(02:12):
to listen to me. And I did, and it probably
turned into two hours. And I didn't do a lot
of what he told me to do at the time,
wish I had, but I did some and it stayed
in my mind, and as I got older, and I
started thinking about things like, what if you have a
stroke and can't work anymore, what if you get fired?

Speaker 1 (02:36):
What if? What if? What are you doing to at
least make.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Sure that you got, you know, via any sausages and
salting crackers, for.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
The rest of your life.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
And so I think about all the things that people
don't know, that they either learned the hard way too late,
or never learn and don't understand. And I think that's
unfortunate because we all pay into this school system, whether
we send kids there or not, we all pay into

(03:06):
this school system to teach young people things, and I
think we got lost along the way as to what's important.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
And if I'm being completely honest and.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I'm not insulting women and I'm not insulting teachers, I
think that in most cases you've got teachers who are women,
who themselves don't know anything about finance, are engineering or science?
Who Even the best intended teachers are caregivers. They love children,

(03:38):
They want to see children develop. They care a lot
about a child's confidence, and these sorts of things, which
is good, don't get me wrong.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
But you can't teach what you don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Who is it Seneca who said teaching is learning. When
I give a speech, which I give fewer and fewer
these days, but when I give us each to a
group and they asked me to speak on a particular subject,
instead of just speak, I will often go back and
review facts and figures and things about what I'm going

(04:13):
to talk about. And that's not teaching per se, but
in a sense it is. And I find that at
the end of that I feel very refreshed and invigorated
from that learning process I undertook.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
To get to the point to deliver that speech.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Let's start with Chris, then Kyle, then Gay, Dave, then Heather,
than Mike. Chris, You're on the Michael, But how about that?

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Chris? Kyle? What what? What just happened? Chris? You're up?
Goud I bet Ramon didn't pot him on?

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Go ahead, Chris, Yes, I was just calling to say
how they should teach you, you know, bommon common sense
things like how to change a time, how to change
a light bulb, how to do kind of things that
these kids these days, they don't know what to do.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
They're just agreed.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
I mean, you look ideally a dad out to teach
his kid that, and I think there's a lot of
people who would say, yeah, they ought to, who haven't
done that. You know, sports is such a such an
interesting thing because it's very natural. I grew up playing
youth sports, so I wanted my kids to play youth sports.
I spent so much quality time with my kids, driving
them to and from sports, hitting grounders, catching balls, throwing balls,

(05:37):
throwing hitting up pop flies, teaching them the elements of
the sports. I love that they were then playing. And
it's a very natural and easy thing.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
I think if you.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Didn't grow up learning how to change the tire, change
the light bulb, take things apart, replace them, then you
don't teach it to your child. You know, people teach
their kids to fish because they themselves fished, which's a
great father son. It's not life skill, except maybe it
is because having a hobby, developing a hobby I think

(06:15):
is an important life skill is something I've not been
very good at. My hobby is learning, and I learned
to channel that. But people who love to hunt love
to fish. I think it's an important part of good
sound mindset.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Kyle, you're up, go. What should people learn in school
that they don't now?

Speaker 4 (06:36):
I've got a long laundry list, but my biggest pet
peeve is learning how to hold a writing instrument, how
to form a letter, and how to write in cursive.
Three children that can do neither, and they're all in
their twenties, and it just drives me crazy whenever they
send me a note. There two used to being on
the computer or their phone, and they don't learn the

(07:00):
the basic forming a letter. You know, it's crazy they
don't teach that.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Kyle, let me ask you something, and I'm not disagreeing,
but I've given this some thought. Why is it important
that children learn cursive?

Speaker 4 (07:19):
Because the best form of saying thank you was a
personal handwritten note you're drop in the mailbox, but you.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Can write a handout below that is printed. I've asked
myself this and I can't come up with a good answer.
I wish somebody would answer this for me and help
me out.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
I just believe it looks more formal and as opposed
to thanks and block lettering.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
You know, yeah, that's the opinion.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
I suppose you're right for me. I didn't give you
my answer because I wanted to hear yours for me.
There's something unique about each person's cursive.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Is it loopy? Is it height?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Is it does it lean like italics? Do they press
hard or light? I find all of those things to be,
you know, part of our signature, part of our DNA,
part of our individuality. And I find that interesting. All right, Gay,
Dave and Heather, y'all hold on for just a moment.
And we have phone lines that just opened up seven

(08:22):
one three, nine nine nine one thousand with.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
The Michael Ferry.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
They're all Duncans, and do you know Duncan names?

Speaker 5 (08:28):
Yo, yoll.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
I got an email in the break from full name.
He's okay, he's Greg. His son is Michael.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
And I had asked on Facebook for people, as I
often do, to send me quirky unique startup businesses. Businesses
are nostalgia businesses that our owner occupy, owner operated interesting
business callers. Hold just a moment, I'll be right with you,
and he sent me an email he said, our son

(09:01):
is the founder of a company called Pero pa r
started it from scratch. It's a marketplace for accounting professionals.
It matches accountants their skill sets with clients in need
of fractional services. So, if you think of Percento Technologies,
which has been a sponsor of my show for probably
fifteen years, Ramon I said my show, I'm at our show,

(09:23):
Me and Chad. Percento Technologies was built on the concept
that many companies, even mid sized companies, don't have the IT.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Prowess.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
They don't have a robust enough IT presence to handle
the growth and development.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
And you know that.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Let's say they're going out to spend a million dollars
on technology, just just upgrading computers, which is what Ramon's
wife does for Texas Law Shield. Just buying all new computers. Okay,
are we going to deploy those? How are we going
to do those? How are we going to make it scalable? Well,
how are we staying up with where we're going to
be in a year? I mean, you know, you feel
bad when you're the guy that buys a year model

(10:05):
of a car and you don't get a discount because
that model's going away. And two months later they flip
to a new model and your car looks ten years old.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
You're bummed out right.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Well, it's even worse with computers, and now you've got
security because you got all these hacks into you got
ransomware and all that and performance, speed and everything that
goes with that. So Persento is based on the idea
that you have an IT department that you can't afford
full time, and you and you pay a for fractional
interest of their you know, fractional services, because you don't

(10:33):
need a guy at three hundred thousand dollars a year
or whatever they make full time half the time he's
goofing off. You just need a part of what he's doing.
And I would think that would be true with accounting,
I suppose. I mean, I keep my accountants pretty busy
at DeRos Partners because I want to look at strategically

(10:55):
making good decisions, not just complying with tax codes. I
don't want to I don't want to push the limits
because I have a target on my back. But I
also don't want to miss out on things that are obvious.
So I need full time accounting services. Some folks that
are small, I would assume probably only need a little bit,
and they would be below the threshold of Darroche Partners.

(11:15):
I get a lot of emails from people who will say, hey,
can you send me to your accountants? And I vet
them for Deroche because they're meant for high net worth
individuals and mid size companies and above. They're not efficient
or cost efficient for a guy just trying to do
his personal taxes. So you know, I think there's probably

(11:36):
a niche somewhere in there below what Deroche Partners does.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
All right, Gay Dave, if you're up, Hey, Martins are.

Speaker 5 (11:45):
They need to teach the US Constitution for at least
the whole year so people understand it.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, you know, I wonder you know a lot of
people will tell me, do you grow up in Texas?

Speaker 5 (12:00):
No? I didn't.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
I grew up in New Jersey. That's gay. Do you
know that you have Hey?

Speaker 5 (12:08):
Can I tell you?

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:09):
But hold on, I'll tell you this. You have become
such a resource for our show that every time something
comes up, Ramone will say you should ask Gay Dave,
like what is like There'll be something that happens and
he'll say, we don't have good gator. You should ask
Gay Dave what he thinks about that. But I don't
want to, you know, I don't want to ask you
too many questions.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
But ramone's best time. I can I tell you?

Speaker 5 (12:33):
Can I tell you a quick story about a cursive.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Writing about what?

Speaker 5 (12:37):
When I was in eighth grade, Yeah, cursive writing story.
When I was in eighth grade, I had a history
teacher and I English teach are a history teacher, he
used to take off a point every time I would
write partly in print and not incursive on her tests.
So I get one hundred on the tests and end.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Up with like an eighty.

Speaker 5 (12:54):
So one day she's writing on the talk board.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
And what does she do.

Speaker 5 (12:57):
She does exactly what she used to take every point
off for, and I sit up there like you hit
a creat I went off on her right, and then
she started like yelling back. And then this kid, Jason Cardon,
who never gets in trouble, gets up and starts defending me.
His mom was a teacher in the school, and she
kicks us both at a class who went to we
had to go see the scariest principle ever had mister Dorney,
this big bull of a man. So he get in

(13:19):
there and he's like, what are you two doing in here?
And I tell him the story. He marches us back
to class and he pulls her in the hallway and
he starts going off on her. And I was like,
oh my god, this is awesome. It's like the best
moment and uh and and shut enough. She came back
in with the red face and for the rest of
the year she I mean, she hated me anyway, but

(13:40):
she really really hated me after that.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
But it was awesome. I love it. Thank you go, Dave.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
So this this cursive issue keeps coming up, and look,
I can say, yes, the kids all have.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
To learn cursive.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Cursive is important, but I think it's very important that
you be able to question positions you have and answer
them as if someone else had asked it, answered it,
asked you. So I said earlier, why is it important
that kids learn cursive? I hope they learn cursive because
I learned cursive.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Right.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
I hope they think Dan Pastorini's a great guy, because
I think Dan Pastorin's a great guy. But I don't
know that it's going to make a difference to a
kid's future. I hope they think the Oilers were the
coolest team in the NFL, but I don't think it's
going to make a difference. And if they don't, then
I don't think that's really a position I should be
taken up. So I asked a question, why is it
important that kids learn cursive? I don't disagree, but let's
ask questions. And I keep getting emails from people saying

(14:38):
they have to be able to read the founding documents.
I got ten emails to that effect in the first break,
Can you honestly tell me?

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Ramon, I'll ask you what you to be honest?

Speaker 2 (14:49):
Have you read the Declaration of Independence in the original cursive? No,
you haven't, and you're a history buff and I'm going
to tell you something else. And people don't want to
hear this. Nobody has. When I say nobody, it's a
rounding error because it's less than one percent. Oh no, no, no,

(15:11):
You've looked at the document during a ken Burn's documentary
when they scrolled across the screen. You've seen pictures of it,
and you know you've seen the couple of the letters.
Because if you've actually read it, you should be able
to tell me which letters that we use today were

(15:34):
not used as such in the original. Let's just take
the Declaration of Independence, because people tell me that's important
because they don't use the exact spelling.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
There are certain.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Letters we use today that they did not use in
that form at that time, and you don't know that.
Do you know why you don't know that because you
didn't read that in cursive. It's also very hard to
read their script because they have a very flowing, languid
style of writing.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
So what happened?

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Somebody typed that up? You know what typing is. It's print.
It's easier to read. There's a reason you don't read
books in cursive.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Now. I know we're all.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Supposed to say I miss cursed if I miss cursing, but.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
I think that's people.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Some people are saying, if the old documents are the
reason you're not reading an old documents, curse, I guarantee
you I've got.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Nothing going on down there. Probably you know what strikes me.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
It's a little disappointing, but it strikes me as interesting
how many people get angry if you simply question someone.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
My favorite chocolate that is where I went to school?
Is it? Yes? What were you saying, I don't my
favorite food is chocolate? Really? Is it?

Speaker 6 (16:54):
Well?

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, why would it be? Is it?

Speaker 2 (16:57):
That's that's all as the English was, is it? It's
almost like Okay, So Ramon start asking me questions during
the break and said, you should tell that on the air.
That's interesting, and I said, I think it's boring, but
I'll tell it on the air anyway. So people keep
emailing me, Oh cool, the kids have to learn cursive

(17:20):
so they can read the original documents. Okay, I'm going
to buy in on that. Look, I think they should
learn cursive to preserve history. I just want to be
very clear what we're saying and what we're not if
it's I think certain aspects of history should be preserved.

(17:42):
An earn remains a monument, but I think it's important
to understand that we're preserving them out of vanity, out
of tradition, and those things are also important.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Rituals are preserved. We present of some.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Rituals solely because they are a ritual. They are a
direct connection to the past that we must not be broken.
It must remain unbroken. I don't know why, because it's important.
It's who we are, it's our identity. But I do

(18:20):
find it interesting how many people say they gotta be
outad it old documents which ones declorates independence.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Okay, have you read it incursive in the original script?

Speaker 2 (18:32):
I have?

Speaker 1 (18:33):
You haven't.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
I guarantee you haven't. Okay, if you have, what did
you notice it was odd about it? There's a letter
used there that we don't use. We haven't used in forever.
I think the Broadside Dictionary still use. Nobody else uses it.
You've never seen this letter written. There is a letter
very prominent in there. And not only is it very prominent,
it extends above the other lower case letters and below

(18:57):
the lower case letters. It screams out, look at me,
look at me. I'm the dork that goes and looks
at this document. That's not a humble brag. That is
to tell you that nobody else does. It's weird. Nobody does.
The words are so established in print so many times

(19:18):
and unquestioned for two hundred and fifty years. Nobody is going.
Nobody is saying, well, you're gonna have life in liberty.
But that's all we're giving you.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
No, we get to have happiness too.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Which was supposed to be prosperity. By the way, in
the original it was incursive. We won't happiness too, No, doctor,
Rice of Independence doesn't grant you happiness, just life and liberty.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
It does, I swear it does. Show me.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Let me go get my cursive copy. Well, it says
right here, just life and liberty. It's printed out full stop.
There's no happiness.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Oh man, y'all change the words on us.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
We got an original incursive somewheres and it said happiness.
I'm sure it said it. Nope, this is a document.
It's not even questioned. No one is questioning those documents
that were written in cursive. But you have only ever
read in print. I guarantee you you've only ever read
them in print. And I'll give you an example. There

(20:21):
is something that our history nerds in the crowd will
know is called a long s so little quirk.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And this is why I told you, Ramona. It's no
point in me telling a story. It's very boring.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
But I'm going to tell you because you pissed me off.
So Originally incursive, the letter S would only ever appear
at the end of a word. The letter S in
the middle or at the beginning of a word. Lower
case would never appear as an S.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
It was.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
It would appear as an F. Follow me on the
F an F that had a big curly cue at
the top, like a like a cane. Right, you were
holding a cane, and so it goes straight up and
it would arc over to the right, and it would
come all the way down and it would arc to
the left and curl back up, kind of look like
a sea horse.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Okay, so that F is not actually an F.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
And the difference is when you crossed that F in
the middle, you would only cross it to.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
The to the main of the F. You wouldn't go across.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
And that was known in the printing industry as a
long S. It would stand out because it was taller
than the other letters and went lower than the other letters,
and that distinguished it because an S could only be
used at the end of a word. If you read

(21:43):
the word congress in the original Constitution, you will notice
that it looks like con gr E F S.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
It looks like congress.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
If you don't know that because it is so wriking
the first time you read it, then you didn't read
the Constitution incursive. And I'm not trying to be the
nerd on the front row. I'm simply pointing out there
are many, many people who haven't learned cursive who have
performed just fine. Example, calligraphy died off. I don't do calligraphy.

(22:22):
I think it's awesome. It'd be a thing I think
we should we should preserve. Okay, there are dead languages,
and it's unfortunate that there are dead languages for which
we've lost the ability to read the great texts. Because
the language itself, not the manner of writing it, not
the manner of conveying it. That's different. Nobody is suggesting

(22:44):
we're losing English. I'm not saying we shouldn't learn cursive.
I'm just saying, don't repeat something you heard other people
say because some Fox News hosts had a segment on
it and you.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Thought, yeah, we got bail to read a decoration.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
The Declaration in the same way that every other American
reads it, and that is printed out or on a screen.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
There's so many of those quirks, so many things that
we never read.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
I've read I don't know how much by Adam Smith,
but never in his handwriting. You go to Monticello and
you see Jefferson's writing. Jefferson had the first Xerox machine.
It was a contraption where when you wrote, there was
a rod that came up and went over and went down,
and it mirrored the page there. So whatever he wrote,

(23:33):
he had a duplicate copy of brilliant. And so you
sit there and you read it to see how close
is that to the original, and you go, I can't tell,
because I can't read what he's writing. I don't think
I'm smarter than the average bear, but I don't think
i'm dumber. You go, try to read the journals of
Thomas Jefferson.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
You can't. You can't. It's like a doctor's writing.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Now they could because in the time they wrote in
this style. We've lost forms of cursive over two and
a half centuries. I don't know why I allowed myself
to be pushed into a corner as some person standing
on the principle of nobody reads cursive. I think because

(24:18):
I can't stand for arguments to be repeated without any
thought given to it because someone else said it and
nobody ever stops to give it thought. But I am
for teaching cursive, and my kids do write and read cursive.
I just think you can survive just fine without it
going forward, and I'll leave that at that. I could

(24:41):
have just said that, and then you aggravated me during
the break, and then I got out there and I
got a bunch of old ladies going. I'm not sure
I'm gonna listen to Michael Berry anymore. I thought he
was on our team. You know, he wasn't for Trump
at the beginning. I remember, he wasn't for Trump. He's
come around, but you know, now he's over there. Shoot,
he's he don't even walk no more. I don't know

(25:02):
what he thinks. He wasn't for Trump. Remember he talked
about him. He was, and now he's over there. We
don't need cursive. You've got some upside down f I
don't give a damn.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
I learned curs. If you aws.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Michael Berry's formalware, we have all your formal wear needs,
from morning suits to coordinating accessories. The best explanation I
have heard, and it comes from a law man friend
of mine.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
I didn't see.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Cursive is important zar because it strengthens cognitive development, It
enhances fine motor skills for kids, and it boosts their
overall literacy. I'm not sure that's even true, but that's
very impressive. That's an actual reason. It just makes me

(25:56):
crazy when people say things without any iteration for what
they say in never having thought about it, and then
you challenge it and they pitch a fit.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Got to be.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Able to read the declaration is the lamest answer ever.
You don't care about the declaration? Well if reading the
Declaration of Independence incursive is how you prove whether you
care about the declaration. You don't care about the declaration
because you've not read it incursive, and I'm willing to

(26:27):
go on the It's one of those things like cow
tippin or any number of other things that people will
say they've done. And when you really get down to it, well, yeah,
maybe yes, Like why you love water burger it's right there.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Tell me something that you love about where you live?
What a burger? Okay, great, tell me about it right now? Yeah,
all right, you know, just tell me about it. You're
gonna wa burger bend. Oh it's the best. What makes
it the best? Wherever you are there's a burger? Yeah,
it's always right there. Okay? And then when you get there,

(27:12):
what do you like about it?

Speaker 3 (27:13):
What do you got?

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Whatever you want? You could order whatever you want. Then right.
But there are a lot of places like that.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
So let's say there's a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Sonic,
and a Waterburger all lined up.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Which one do you go to? Right? Right? Why?

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Okay, here's another one I can respect because this is
an honest answer. I favored cursif out of my own
enjoyment of its conveyance of personality and uniqueness. I also
believe it has become a comical way to communicate openly
among younger code workers, like a secret code. One of
Cursiff's flaws is also its benefit. I've observed the preferred

(27:57):
usage of cursif amongst individuals who have poor spell They
can scribble the first two and last two letters and
everything in between is their unique penmanship. If you cannot
admit you have done that in your life, you know
what that's the equivalent of in the gird dun DUNDI, yeah, baby,

(28:20):
How many songs do we not know all the words?

Speaker 1 (28:24):
There's a little girl in our neighborhood, turn to Johnson.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
And good good good, yeah, uh had go see.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
A done and none and none and over to.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
The brother was making chicken in the frying pot, and
her grandma.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Was that is what that is? Cursive allows you that,
Doctor Wright.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, I did hear from a lot of mommies that
their kids have uh dysgraphia and dyslexia, and apparently cursive
helps with that, which is cool.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
I like that. I don't deny it. I don't know
one way or another.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
The most surprising, I guess not surprising because we've had
this conversation before.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Chad Nakanishi is an enigma.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
He's a fascinating cat because his brain processor because half Japanese, is.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Really really good.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
He's really really smart, but his spelling is really really bad.
And it's a running joke. And he's the first to
tell you. He said, I can't read cursive. So the
problem I've come across is that I love to pull
and collect my family history. However, when I pull old
family histories like my great grandparents' marriage license below which
he's attached, I have to ask one of my sisters

(29:37):
to quote unquote translate some of the cursive. Not saying
kids shoot or shouldn't learn cursive, but it is one
of my personal struggles. Even the Census is incursive. By
the way, several of you mentioned the Census and you
wouldn't be able to read the census credit to you.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
I thought that was an interesting one.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
This is the nineteen forty census of my great grandparents
and their kids. It's especially confusing to me because I
knew them all by their generic American names Janet, Mildred, Thomas, Norman, Pauline, Robert,
and Earl, but their legal Japanese names are listed in
the census, which I've had to learn thanks to help translating.

(30:17):
I love these conversations.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
I think it's fascinating, just.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Fascinating, how we retain records, how we go back and
access those records, because they're not just records. They're not
just writing on a paper. They're who we are. They
are our DNA. That's not just a name on a paper,
that is our DNA. You know, Sandy Peterson's making a
sour dough bread. She might have already made it, and

(30:40):
she said that the whatever you call it, the cure,
the whatever, the seedling of it, you know, when you
get to Sardo brand and you bring it home, it's whatever.
That little clump of it that it is is two
hundred and fifty years old. I don't know where she
found it. I mean, you think about, you know, you
propagate a flower with you propagated tree. You think about,

(31:01):
you know how an animal passes one to the next,
to the next to the next, and in three hundred
years this is the lineage. That's some deep stuff, man,
that's really really deep stuff. And that these are the
documents you access to get there. I find that to
be very cool. All right, you folks have to be
fast so I can get all of you on. So
what is the thing they don't teach in school that
they should? I think this is handwriting because it's all women. See,

(31:24):
you can tell topics by sex. Men are like handwriting,
dumb ass, Just learn cursive. Women are going but dyslexia
and dysgraphia and the census because ninety eight point six
percent of people who do ancestry studies are women. Teresa,
go ahead, Hi, Michael, Okay, what should they teach that

(31:50):
they're not teaching?

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Go ahead, sweetheart.

Speaker 6 (31:54):
Well, I still believe in teaching writing by script because
it strengthens the eye and brain connection and it creates
neural pathways for your brain.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
So you're second or third or tenth person to say that,
how do you know that.

Speaker 6 (32:13):
I read it? About twenty years ago.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
I have.

Speaker 6 (32:20):
No I read it in a printed book.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Are you teach?

Speaker 6 (32:27):
Pardon me?

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Are you a former teacher?

Speaker 3 (32:31):
No, I'm a nurse.

Speaker 6 (32:32):
Nurse okay, but I did homeschool my kids a couple
of times, like different My different children had different problems
in school, and just to sort of assist them, I
went homeschool them. And where we lived in Canada, they
had a great provincial system where they could give you

(32:52):
all the materials for the curriculum that year, and so
basically it was all pre set, pre done.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
You know.

Speaker 6 (32:59):
You took the ages at the beginning of the week
out of the big binder, put them in the smaller binders,
and that's all they have to do for that day.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
I miss binders. I still use binders. I have binders
all around me. I have tabs. They're all marked off,
and people will say to me, you can put all
that on the computer.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
I know, I know. I love binders. I love flipping
through binders.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
My show sponsors for each letter of the alphabet I have.
You know AA is Allied Siding, and you know windows
and Allied Custom Roofing and all Star Construction and Allied
Outdoors and then you know, you go to B and
you go to C and you and I enjoy turning
the pages like a I don't know. It's a connection

(33:46):
to the past and it's tactile. I can touch it,
I can turn it. I'm looking at my screen. I've
received over three hundred emails on cursy fascin
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