Schools Phasing Out Cursive →
It’s about damn time. I never understood why such emphasis was put on an arcane form of penmanship. They may as well teach architectural lettering… at least it is legible.Well, this breaks my heart. My mother has beautiful penmanship. Her mother did, too. I spent hours as a child staring at her lovely, lilting letters and practicing my own.When I am at my least stable mentally my handwriting is large and illegible. When I am at my most stable my handwriting is symmetric and rounded. I have always felt that my voice as a writer and the style of my handwriting are intrinsically connected. You can leaf through the journals I’ve kept over the last decade and see how the shape of my words changes, and reflects the emotion of what I am writing.
I’m no luddite, I understand that life surges forward and that our way of life represents that progress. Still, it is sad to me that children going forward may not know their mother’s penmanship with the same familiarity that they know her scent or her voice.
I see this as nothing but a loss for the world, even if it is one most will never notice or care about. Technology is great, but hand writing is communicative art at its most basic level. You can glean a lot about the writer and his or her mood through handwriting, but communication will continue to lose nuance and potential insight in name of efficiency and progress. Maybe I’m sentimental because of my study of medieval manuscripts and my general love of page after page of handwritten notes.
I realize when my mother one day passes on that I will probably never see another handwritten letter in my life, but any missive where someone has taken the time to sit down and write you note will always mean more than an e-mail or typewritten letter. The only thing I can do is write more.
This is sad. I guess on one hand I can understand time budgeting concerns, but completely phasing it out seems ridiculous to me. Of course, I am a huge fan of letter writing and it’s not uncommon for me to send out at least a few handwritten letters in a month.
I’m all for technology, but kids still need to be taught to function without it.
I agree. My cursive was gorgeous, but I stopped using it after middle school and now I can’t write in cursive for shit. My print is nice when I want it to be, but seriously. I miss being lauded for having pretty handwriting.
