IS CURSIVE A CURSE?

My young grandson is a masterful reader and enjoys books well beyond his grade level. The only time he’s stumped, according to our daughter, is in reading cursive writing. And he is not alone.

While I’m not surprised at this, since cursive writing (and, thus, reading cursive) is not formally taught any longer and was dropped from the Common Core curriculum standards in 2013, I am concerned about the implications.Imagine the wealth of information—all locked in cursive code—that will be unavailable to future generations who cannot decipher their ornamental treasures, including letters from grandparents (yes, I still write them). Or the handwritten text of other important documents like our Declaration of Independence.

Opinions are polarized around this topic. According to an editorial published in the Los Angeles Times in 2013 in response to the new curriculum standards, “States and schools shouldn’t cling to cursive based on the romantic idea that it’s a tradition, an art form or a basic skill whose disappearance would be a cultural tragedy. Of course, everyone needs to be able to write without computers, but longhand printing generally works fine.”

The editorial, submitted by The Times Editorial Board, went on to say, “Many of today’s young adults, even though they were taught cursive, have abandoned it in favor of printing. Print is clearer and easier to read than script. For many, it’s easier to write and just about as fast.”

Others say that learning is more profound when combined with writing by hand.

Edouard Gentaz, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Geneva, says in The Guardian, “Handwriting is a complex task which requires various skills—feeling the pen and paper, moving the writing implement, and directing movement by thought. Children take several years to master this precise motor exercise: you need to hold the scripting tool firmly while moving it in such a way as to leave a different mark for each letter.”

Stephen Graham, a professor at Arizona State University told The Providence Journal, “the reason cursive is disappearing and printing is not is simply because, in the United States, printing is introduced first, so it is more convenient to keep because the youngest students already know it.”

Take this a step further, and again referencing the Common Core standards, students must be proficient in typing by the time they reach the fourth grade. So it seems that we’re preparing our kids for an overwhelmingly technological future, where keyboards reign and pens and pencils take a backseat.

But is handwriting, cursive in particular, just a moldy, romantic notion seen through the rearview mirror of a changing society as some suggest, or is it more elemental to our evolution and development? Hard to say, so I’ll add a romantic notion of my own. When visiting the British Library years ago, I was transfixed by the plethora of original manuscripts on display. Their inky imperfection—replete with edits, corrections and signatures—connected me to the world in a way that I’d never experienced before. Handwritten. Transformational. Generative.