How do you feel about the death of cursive handwriting?

[6Cuda6]

Not being able to write cursive in and of itself isn't lethal. But the discipline to learn it, the practice necessary to make it second nature, the mental struggle to master it helps the young mind to grow in ways that are vital and necessary to live in the world. Hand-to-eye coordination is exercised, the ability to adapt and conquer new skills develops, the drive to overcome challenges - not to mention the building of confidence - are all qualities that everyone needs regardless of what occupation they choose.
What other skills have schools dropped? Think slide rules, letter writing, music, dancing, home economics, auto mechanics, basic math, history, the periodic table - the list goes on and on. Who needs slide rules - we have calculators for that? Who writes letters anymore, because everyone texts? I don't need to learn how to fix my car - I call the mechanic. What happens when the calculator breaks, or the cell battery dies, or your car quits without warning? Oh, there's AAA! (You forgot - your cell phone is dead!) These are skills everyone needs. And - if you're lucky enough that none of these things happen to you - the skills and disciplines you've learned from getting these skills overflow into other areas of your life.

And dancing? Well - besides being able to not run into your partner - it teaches coordination, timing, the ability to multitask (listen, seeing, moving, anticipate, etc), stamina, physical conditioning. Plus (for men) it teaches them a little of how to handle a lady. Call me old fashioned, but, I think young men today are SORELY lacking here. (And there's plenty of lack from the other end as well). How to hold a woman, how you lead her, teach her AND learn from her while working together. (I wish I'd paid more attention in dance class). The point here is - even if you're not a professional dancer - these skills are important. And I think we're doing a dis-service to kids by not teaching them.

Very well put sir...totally agree!!

 

[snowman]

While I do agree the quality of education has declined, I cannot get on board with the cause of it being that cursive writing has been deemed obsolete.

The notion that learning cursive writing is necessary to train the mind and teach discipline feels wrong to me. Certainly teaching an 11 year old basic PC coding and coding languages teaches discipline, sense of accomplishment, etc. I would argue an 11 year old will get much more use from learning coding than learning cursive writing. If the logic of teaching the old ways being best held true, then those of us over 50 would have been taught how to shoe a horse and run a spinning wheel. How useful would that have been in 1970 I wonder?
Yet I've no doubt some old gentlemen in 1970 complained that kids were no longer taking horseshoeing classes.

Back to the OPs question of how I feel about cursive writing being no longer taught. I don't care. With the exception of my signature I haven't written in cursive in 40 years and I believe it to be a form of communication that's no longer useful, thus, why teach it in general public curriculum. I would argue it's better suited as an elective much like a second language.

 

[Alacrity59]

People I know graduating today have typing skills that put mine to shame. That being said I think typing will be next to go. Dictation while your self driving car takes you to work seems pretty likely in the next few years.

 

[Chango]

Many people these days cant even make change in their head without being able to look at the cash register, which is also slowly being phased out. A friend enjoys the BSOD expression they make when he hands them an amount of money they dont understand lol. Instead of handing them say $1.25 for a $1.10 item, he'll hand them a $2 "toonie" (yes I'm Canadian) and a dime so he can get a "loonie" back. The confused look on their face when confronted with that dime, I must admit, is entertaining lol.

Soon, we'll be back to making an X on the line instead of writing out our signature lol.

I was actually going to start a thread about this!! I was in a mom and pop convenience store recently and the young girl behind the register actually counted back my change like they did when I was a kid. I was amazed!! She looked to be about 13-15 years old and must have been the owners' daughter. I gave her a big smile and told her that it was years since someone counted my change back like that. She didn't seem too impressed and gave me a look like "what's the big deal??"

I think our signature will one day be fingerprint or retinal scan. ;-)

 

[Chango]

Some great points made on this thread. A lot parallel my own debate with the importance of cursive. It prompted me to ask my 4th grade son about cursive writing when I picked him up from school today. He says he actually likes writing in cursive because only a couple kids in his grade can read and write script. He told me a story about how a bunch of kids came by his desk once to watch him write things in cursive. That actually made me feel pretty good. But then I suggested that he do his vocab homework in cursive this evening and I got an emphatic NO THANKS! Oh well.

 

[DCRIII]

All of our founding documents are written in cursive.

America's Founding Documents

Exactly! Imagine what could happen if no one is able to read those documents any more!
This is why I plan on teaching my daughter how to red and write in cursive.

 

[Traveling Man]

I am a high school Social Studies and English teacher. As most of my life is spent evaluating historical documents, yeah, cursive is pretty important.

I am a fountain pen geek. It's rare that I don't have two on me, and I usually have two or three others inked up in my writing desk at home. Yes, I have a drop-top writing desk. Again, you can say it's important to me.

I keep a supply of inexpensive fountain pens in my desk at work. When I have a student come through who has nice writing or shows and interest in one of my pens, I give them a fountain pen. In today's age of cell phones and tablets, the kids I give fountain pens ... you'd think I gave them a sack of gold.

While technology is important to help us advance, abandoning things such as cursive is giving up a portion of the human spirit. I see it as my job to educate and enlighten people, not create more drones.

 

[TheKman]

I'm hearing the old man inside me moaning.

My kids are learning "Victorian Script" at school just like I did 35 years ago. I had to re-teach myself to write neatly again after 20 years in the technology business. It's fun! By right-hand middle finger is still bent from years spent with a pen.

Anyway, you're all correct, every point made is a valid one. It occurs to me that every new generation will have a set of skills that the one before won't understand, and the previous generation with expect kids to learn skills which they have. Future employers will expect skills we don't have and accept weaknesses which we find intolerable. As technology shift accelerates this gap becomes larger in an unprecedented way... just like it did with the last generation.

 

[Esox]

I think our signature will one day be fingerprint or retinal scan. ;-)

I'll go live in the bush at that point lol.

 

[oc_in_fw]

One can even push this further....there was a document released discussing dropping the "period" in sentenses....the gammot of the story was no one writes full sentense anyways so it was just as well to drop it.

No math, no writing, no reading because of accomodations....we are going back in evelutions to Neanderthal times...ironic that we have smart phones that are making society dumber....lol..

First they went after the double space after the period, now they are going after the period? (Oh, I am a double space guy).

 

[Mullen88]

In my opinion it's a very valuable skill. I personally love fountain pens and keep a daily journal and other notebooks of different subjects. The ability to write, review, and store thoughts and ideas without worrying about a battery is very appealing to me. And there is no spellcheck, so it promotes learning and retaining proper spelling and grammar which is another valuable skill. It's a shame that we're losing touch with such an important and beautiful art form.

 

[John Rose]

I gave it up in college. If I tried taking notes in cursive, I couldn't read them. Much easier to decipher my chicken scratch printing.

I pretty much did the same thing, mixing both and gradually reducing the percentage of cursive. A lot of the notes involved math expressions, which didn't suit using cursive. I will still use cursive for some common letter combinations, so they work sorta' like ligatures.

 

[tukyou]

My first thought is ..... if you don't learn cursive then how do you develop a signature. I understand that more and more we are becoming a digital world and at some point will rarely if ever pick up a pen but documents and contracts legal or otherwise still require a signature. I (being a mechanic ) hardly write anything ever, my work orders and repair descriptions are put into a computer (but funny enough still fill out a time card by hand). I still sign my name several times a day on various documents. Every place I pick up parts from for instance requires a signature even if the bill is electronically sent to the purchasing department. Some of the venders and even the UPS guy that shows up to my house use a digital pad for me to sign on that prints the signature onto the receipt but there is still a signature required. This reminds me of the fact that my nieces and nephews cant tell me what time it is when they ask what time it is and I show them my watch or point to the clock on the wall!

 

[snowman]

I have software on my iPad I use to digitally sign contracts that are emailed to me by my suppliers and customers. It utilizes my thumbprint to recreate my signature on the electronic document and returns it to the other party for their counter-signature.

I would estimate I've used this method to digitally sign 150 - 200 documents this year. The number of legally binding documents I've signed with a pen and paper this year...maybe 2 or 3.

Just sayin....the future is now. Saddle up those ponies and head for the bush fella's.

 

[Viseguy]

"Who needs handwriting?" was the subject of a Freakonomics radio episode.

 

[RazorPete]

In my opinion it's a very valuable skill. I personally love fountain pens and keep a daily journal and other notebooks of different subjects. The ability to write, review, and store thoughts and ideas without worrying about a battery is very appealing to me. And there is no spellcheck, so it promotes learning and retaining proper spelling and grammar which is another valuable skill. It's a shame that we're losing touch with such an important and beautiful art form.

+1
I lost the cursive I had learned in grade school and just printed letters for most of my life, like I suspect most everyone else. If you had asked me during that time I would have said ah who needs cursive.

However in the last couple years I have retaught myself cursive. First I learned business penmanship from a 1903 book by EC Mills. Now I am learning an earlier form of cursive from the late 1800's called Spencerian and using a flexible fountain pen.

So if you ask me now I would say that cursive is very cool. It is liberating not to have to lift your pen on and off the paper so much compared to printing and the shading, the control of the thickness and thinness of your lines, the ability to flourish - all of this adds a new dimension and much greater individuality in your written expression.

Next question is since I am a convert, do I feel the need to foist it on everyone else i.e. make it mandatory for everyone to learn? No, I think it should be an individual's right to decide for themselves if they want to take the time to learn cursive.

Writing by hand survived the dark ages when only a few people knew how to do this, and then it made a great resurgence. The age of computers and word processing is yet another test of survival for hand writing. I hope some people at least can help it survive. I'm doing my part...

 

[Quijote]

My second grade daughter asked me a week ago if I would teach her cursive. She loves learning things. Last year, she taught herself multiplication. We didn't even realize she was doing it until we took our kids and the neighbor's kids out to dinner. We are starting asking her different addition questions, she didn't want the neighbor boy to be left out (he was in fourth grade), so she started asking him multiplication problems and telling him if he was right.

 

[Traveling Man]

It's really no different than learning to read a map. Yes, most of us have car and phone mapping that will lead us right where we want to go. Those might not always be available or working, so it's nice to know I can unfold a big sheet of paper and navigate.

Technology is great ... when it works. When it doesn't, if you don't have a backup, you are out of luck.

The big push in education right now is technology in the classroom - and rightly so. Buuuut, a perfect example came one day when all the computers went down across the entire system. All these young teachers with their flashy technology were in a panic and tailspin. I calmly walked over to my filing cabinet, took out a couple of folders and went on about my workday as usual.

 

[ZJ68]

Good riddance.

All of our founding documents are written in cursive.

America's Founding Documents

Should we bring back the long "s"? No one miƒses that.

 

[christhechap]

I work in the IT industry (goodness knows why!) and all of the notes I take, and most of the emails which I send, are composed by hand using a fountain pen and cursive script. With the exception of forums like this where one can trade ideas with likeminded individuals many miles away, I abhor much of modern technology.

My daughter is not yet old enough to write, she is only just learning to eat crayons, but when she is old enough I'll be sure to teach her to write properly with a pen and paper. There is nothing nice than receiving a hand written letter through the post and it would be a shame to see this entirely disappear and be replaced only by electronic mails.