The death of cursive

I can barely write in cursive and have serious issues reading it. And I am not alone. According to a New York Times Article released today, most schools are cutting out most of the cursive curriculum and focusing on more practical skills such as word processing and print letters.

After a quick google search on the topic, I found several other people talking about this. Interestingly, a lot of people are not too happy about this. They seem to think that we are losing something valuable as a society. Before the 1900s, cursive was how all people wrote.  Print writing was introduced to help increase student's literacy of printed materials.   Therefore, reading old journals and letters as well as important documents, such as The Declaration of Independence, is only possible if one can read cursive. Take a look at this letter from 1894. Can you read it? I for one barely can read parts of it and cannot read some parts at all. I have to sound out the words.



My Grandma (see earlier post) still sends me cards in the mail. The sad thing is, I can't always read what she is saying. I sometimes have to get someone like my mom to help me understand certain words. Its like a different language for me.

I for one am glad that no one expects me to be able to write in cursive. My cursive is atrocious and I feel like the expectation for me to write well in it is frivolous. Furthermore, I can type much much faster. And I still can't type faster than I think. When I write by hand, so much stuff gets lost due to the tedious nature of the task.  I get hand cramps and the whole thing is not fun.

The only thing that I am sad about is the fact that I can't read old documents. My solution: someone needs to type them up for me :)  Which in most cases they have (Shakespeare, Declaration of Independence, ect).   However, the more it falls out of vogue, the less it shall be used and the less I shall need this skill.