Why do they bother to teach us cursive in school?
I too was the bright child who could not deal with penmanship. To this day I am in awe of people who can, neatly and beautifully, print or write, evenly, in the allotted space. I abandoned writing as soon as allowed. I developed a fast printing style. Latter, I learned to print very neatly to fill coding forms in some of those ancient programming languages. Still latter, I learned to type very fast. Sadly for me, I also couldn’t deal with spelling, so I had two strokes against me in grade school. I don’t deal with memorization, the tedium is actually painful to me. Somehow, like magic, I started spelling properly. I am amazed every time I click spell-check and find no mistakes. (and puzzled by mistakes I still always make) I embrace the idea that 3rd grade is no place to demand kids replace their printing skills with this other crap. Typing and grammar are far more appropriate in today’s world.
This must be an age thing. I’m in my late 30s, and I almost never print. I dunno. I’m in my mid-thirties, and I haven’t written anything except my signature in cursive since sixth grade. Every second that I spent learning it was a waste of my time. I have nothing against those who enjoy it or find it useful, but I don’t see why it should be required. My ‘penmanship’ is poor, I suppose, but you’ll never know, since you’ll never receive a written note or letter from me.
Cursive, or rather handwriting with linked letters, is much more revealing than print. Handwriting experts would not seek to abolish it. So cursive can be used to put you in jail. Good reason for it. When I took an introductory course about handwriting from an expert, we learned that people who prefer to print are generally less sociable and more guarded than those who write in normal handwriting. And did the expert show that handwriting analysis was a more useful guide to psychology than phrenology, astrology, or palmistry? Was there any evidence to back up the claim that handwriting analysis was of any real value whatsoever and not just plain-old (if popular) quackery? Just as children need to progress through certain movements in infancy to develop areas of their brain, certain parts of cursive writing can stimulate the brain as well. If that’s true, and Mexico doesn’t teach cursive writing, then we would expect all Mexicans educated in Mexico to be functionally retarded. Is this so
I share the left handers common outrage at cursive. It did nothing but discriminate against my writing, and it caused me MUCH grief as I agonised over each letter. It seems to me it is a vestige from nibbed pens, and I suspect we might have even been told that, as I remember one class where we used fountain pens and blotting paper to show us how it used to be done.
In my mid-20’s, and I now almost always write in cursive. Initially in highschool I simply printed, but decided to force myself back into cursive because I thought it more aesthetic. Another fact, I’ve been in a managerial position in which I reviewed handwritten resumes. Call it my own bias, but the resumes written in nice cursive always got placed on top of the stack, unless the answers were simply inanely stupid. “Have you ever been fired?” “Yeah, for being late and not showing up for work, but I was going to quit anyways.” I think one reason that cursive is not so prevalent today is ismply the lack of enforcement of penmanship. Both my parents write in cursive and so did their parents. I had one teacher who required papers to be written in ink and cursive, all the rest simply didn’t care.
