As computerization continues formerly essential skills like writing or being a human calculator have perished. It’s hard to get a bead on whether cursive writing is actually going extinct, or if op-ed writers just think it is.
When I was learning to write, I spent many long hours in detention because my cursive writing was so bad and to improve it I spent hours practising under the watchful eye of my grade four teacher.
Reuters reports that in 2010, U.S. schools were no longer required to teach it as part of the education system’s Common Core Standards.
Generally, though, it is up to the individual state to decide if it wants to keep cursive writing as a part of its curriculum, and many have chosen to do so.
In an article published by the National Library of Medicine, cursive writing (as opposed to block printing) helps diagnose spatial and graphical learning problems and helps free up cognitive abilities so that the student can focus on other things, which is what psychology experts call automaticity.
It helps students develop motor skills, learn languages, and can stimulate what Johns Hopkins University calls “true learning” by reinforcing the lessons delivered in other mediums.
That said, the rise of email, digital notetaking and even e-signatures have limited the opportunities to ever show off your fancy penmanship.
A friend of mine who is a writer when we were talking about how we wrote said, “I love the white noise that the keys make when I am working on my computer, it soothes me and helps me focus my attention on my writing.” At the time I was debating between using a typewriter for writing or using a computer. I moved to the computer and never looked back. I take notes from time to time as guideposts to help me along my path, but I sometimes print and sometimes cursive write the notes. I can read cursive writing, but I have been told that some students because they are not teaching cursive writing, cannot read it. That is a shame. Many of my generation and older generations communicate via cursive writing. I want the skill kept so the younger generation does not lose contact with us because many of our stories are not passed orally, they are passed in journals and other writings.
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