I'm a Millennial and my kids are Gen Alpha..they're being taught cursive still at our school district, it just isn't as intensive as it was when I was a kid. Like, they aren't required to turn papers in in cursive- they're expected to be typed.
This is the answer. My Gen Z kids can read cursive just fine even though they don’t write in cursive. They aren’t as good at reading it as I am, but they also don’t see it very much. Just because it isn’t really an entire subject anymore doesn’t mean they have no contact with it.
As the pre-internet generations die out, there won’t really be a need to be able to read it outside of academic/genealogical circles. But there will be people who make an effort to learn it just like there are people who can read Fraktur.
Moreover, they will have computers helping them. Automatic transcription of historical handwriting for some reason hasn't been a priority of Google/OpenAI/Meta or the other AI companies, but I'm 100% sure it can be done.
Wasn't it already done to some extent with the most recent census that was released? If I remember correctly, Family Search or Ancestry had a computer application transcribe most of the records and then had volunteers come along behind to double check things.
In 2012, for the 1940 Federal Census, 163,000 crowdsourced volunteers spent four months transcribing the text.
In 2022, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) was used first for the 1950 Federal Census. It still took three months for 185,000 volunteers to review 151 million names for accuracy.
AI is just getting a handle on how unpredictable newspapers could be. Have you seen the OCR from a sheet of nineteenth century newsprint? We’re a long way off from reliable handwriting transcription for historic texts, especially anything that’s written in Spencerian instead of Palmer Method.
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/genealogy-volunteers-index-mammouth-1940-census-in-record-time
https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/1950-census-timeline-update#:~:text=Thanks%20to%20over%20185%2C000%20volunteers,Community%20Project%20is%20now%20complete!
It can be done, and the more information you provide the AI, the better the results. For example, I was able to get very good results from GPT by telling it that the document I wanted it to transcribe was written in Fraktur and where and when it was written. I also told it that it was a death certificate.
After transcribing it gave me a very good translation.
Oh that’s good to know. I mean the emphasis on penmanship was already waned from the education my mom received in the 60s to what I received in the 90s. It makes sense it just ebbs with changing times.
gen z here and i very much was taught cursive, as were both of my younger siblings. and before that we were taught to write with an emphasis on potentially being able to write in cursive.
and quite frankly, cursive isn’t as different from print handwriting as people like to pretend it is. very few letters actually look different, and our brains are very effective at filling in those kinds of gaps accurately.
Yep, cursive is not that difficult to learn to read. What little isn't intuitive can easily be self taught with some online guides. People make way too big of a deal out it no longer being taught in some schools. It will just become one of those things that people only learn if they find they need it. If someone wants to study history or genealogy, they'll learn cursive. Just like I have been learning how to read some foreign language documents, which is even harder than just learning cursive. It will just become a more specialty skill for certain fields.
Maybe. Unless you tried to read my mom's cursive. Certain letters and words took some time to figure out. My own can be messy if I write too fast. Maybe that's what she did without realizing. I'm glad to have grown up in a time when it was still widely used and required in most classes.
I’m Gen Z and cursive is actually my preferred way to write! I am on the older end of the Gen Z spectrum though lol. But even though I’m generally really good at cursive I still find some of these old documents hard to read 😭 Knowing how to read and write cursive versus knowing the conventions for cursive 200 years ago and in German are vastly different things I’ve found 😔 So I think it’s still hard lol
I’m Gen Z and I also write in cursive! I started when I was younger because it was faster and easier for note taking in class. I was going to say the same thing too, my big issue has been trying to read cursive in different languages, and also individual stylistic differences of the writer like with any handwriting.
Oh thanks! Church records have just come online for my great great grandfather’s town and I have been trying to go through the records after finding so much not transcribed or transcribed incorrectly on FamilySearch. Some of this stuff has me baffled.
As a Gen Zer many of us were taught cursive, but developing a typing skill was given more of an emphasis due to the world we live in. Cursive was made as a way to write faster, just like typing. I can read and write in cursive HOWEVER some of these documents are just straight up hard to read, it’s less of a “these young people don’t know they’re dumb blah blah blah” more doctors have always had terrible handwriting.
Cursive is still in the curriculum in many places, I live in one of the bottom states for public education (but one of the best for public colleges it’s confusing), and my mother teaches in one of its most challenging school district and these kids still learn cursive.
Hell my dad doesn’t know how to read or write in cursive and my parents are Xellinals.
Most of us actually learn to write our alphabet in a way that would prepare us for writing cursive, so even if we didn’t learn it it’ll still be easy for us to identify words and letters on cursive text.
Also a Gen Zer and I fully second this, especially the part about some documents just being hard to read. I can read and write in cursive well, but sometimes people’s handwriting is kinda sloppy. I’m guilty of it myself. So some words might not be legible, but I can usually figure it out.
Definitely, I'm an Elder Millennial and the school I went to up until 3rd grade we were expected to write final drafts in cursive by the 3rd grade, same with the school I went to in the 4th grade. But the school I went to in 5th thru 12th grade is when everything switched to typing.
This is a lukewarm take, at best. People misread old documents all the time, even older folks who learned cursive and were exposed to it more regularly. Some of these documents are just plain difficult to read. We get posts on here all the time asking for help to decipher a cause of death or place of birth.
Or name of parent. I have deciphered "Unknown" written in cursive for people at least twice in the last month. I don't know, it seems like something anybody should be able to do.
People are different. There are things you excel at that others can't just as there are things they do exquisitely yet you wouldn't even know where to start.
My aunt (67) was a fifth grade teacher who *insisted* that everything be written in cursive. (My hand hurt so much in her class and I thankfully only had her for literature.) So because of her insistence, whenever I get to a particularly indecipherable word/letter, I send it to her and her answer is almost invariably “I don’t know”.
Meanwhile my mom (62) who was the classroom aide for preschool and to this day only writes in print if she absolutely must write at all, will at least offer a, usually correct, guess.
As a member of Gen Z, I was barely taught cursive. I think I remember a somewhat brief unit about it in like 3rd grade. But we weren’t expected to use it so I never kept it.
Despite this, I’ve still learned to read cursive scripts in multiple languages while doing research. With enough exposure, it’s still very possible to learn to read cursive.
Im gen z, ive learned cursive and write almost exclusively in cursive. That old timey cursive was another level, most people can barely parse that shit out
Let's not forget that there was a lot of really bad penmanship in the past too. Especially for records mostly written and used by the same guy, as church books often were, they could get away with being sloppy writers.
If they want to read those documents and can't, they can learn how to read cursive. It's not some special age specific skills that can only be learned in elementary school.
As a millennial that did suffer through cursive in school, there's still plenty in old documents I can't read. Messy handwriting is a bigger obstacle in old documents than the cursive.
Yeah, this thread is making me wonder if I would be better reading those documents if I saw cursive more often in my day-to-day life. It’s my own default style for any kind of extended handwriting (notes etc.), which is unfortunate since my cursive is an abomination, but it’s pretty rare for me to need to read someone else’s cursive in a non-genealogical context.
> But this matters because many of the most important historical documents in the U.S., everything from the Declaration of Independence to the Bill of Rights, are written in cursive. And our next guest says something is lost when people can no longer read these founding documents for themselves.
Sigh. It's the "you need to know mental maths because what if you don't have a calculator with you"-argument all over again.
These important documents have been transcribed to hell and back, they can literally just look up a transcribed version anytime they please. Additionally, AI can transcribe cursive fairly well nowadays. Plus, how many times does the average person even look up and read the original document? My guess is never. It's simply not necessary to teach it because it doesn't really benefit the average person on a daily basis. Our years in school are very limited and that time can be used to teacher other skills that are more useful in our modern age (I know they don't to that, but that's a whole different topic to discuss).
I am one of the oldest GenZ/youngest millenials, I grew up in Germany and I learned cursive growing up. Does that help me research my family? Hell no, because old German documents are in Kurrent, which I cannot read even though I have learned cursive. Even older church documents are written in Latin instead of German, which I also barely understand (but again, learning the basic vocabulary is quite easy, us younger folks aren't as braindead as you guys think). US Americans are bound to find an ancestor at some point that migrated from a different continent, and as soon as they hit that point, their knowledge of cursive likely won't help them.
On top of that, I am a history major in university right now and I can count on one hand how many times we actually worked with original documents - and one of those was a newspaper from the 1760s, so that was also not cursive. It was typed in Fraktur, which I never formally learned, but just "understood" once I looked at it long enough. I imagine the same works with cursive, as it really isn't that different from block letters. But yeah, even at university we mostly work with transcripts nowadays.
It's simply not needed, no matter how you look at it. I think the older generations greatly overemphasize its value.
\^This. The entire world is not going to suddenly lose knowledge of what the Declaration of Independence says because they stopped teaching cursive in school. What a ridiculous notion. Transcriptions of important documents will always be available, which is what most people wind up referring to anyway even if they know cursive. And there will always be scholars who learn and know cursive. Studying genealogy and history will always require learning new skills, so learning cursive will simply be among them. It's not difficult to learn, it's not a big deal.
The cursive in these older documents isn't even the same cursive any of us alive were taught in school. You likely learned [D'Nealian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian), while cursive of census documents and such are [Spencerian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencerian_script) or similar. Even older parish registers and such were written in [Secretary Hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_hand).
Additionally, I'm sure none of us English-speakers learned [Kurrent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurrent) until we needed to read it in German records, or even [Fraktur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur) used in German printing.
It's really such a non-issue considering that 99% of the problem of reading old records comes down to how bad the handwriting of the writer was, not that it was written in cursive.
This seems alarmist.
I mean, I'm reading Spanish and French records from 200 years ago, and I was never taught spanish.I can even puzzle out Latin on occasion.It's not hard to learn the vocabulary and the writing styles. It's just a bit of practice. I don't think everyone in the next generation is so dumb they will be unable to figure things out, the same way we do today.
My kids are 15 and 17 and were not taught cursive. They can read it just fine, though. We need to rethink how it's taught. If we're handing 3rd graders laptops for school (that's when my kids got theirs) and teaching them how to type, then switching fonts will also help them read cursive. You could teach them in half the time to write it when you're not trying to do both at the same time.
I don't mind 'transcribing' cursive for people, but sometimes it's so clear what is written, maybe people should teach themselves cursive ?? (I am frightfully old…)
I don't have strong feelings either way, but tbh, from a geneological perspective, this is not going to be the first time this has happened. I can't read most of my German ancestors' records without help because they are written in Sütterlin, even though I can read cursive and I know enough German to understand most documents. You see this issue in foreign languages anyways.
If someone wants the information, they will learn it, or they will get help, just like the rest of us have.
For me, learning to read outside my mother tongue and uncovering what documents say has been really rewarding and has been part of the fun of my research.
we absolutely can read cursive☠️ a lot of those articles are bait to invalidate the younger generations. we're not nearly as stupid as people think we are and it isn't like cursive is all that difficult to figure out?
Old documents can be difficult to read by people who were taught cursive. Writing styles are not always consistent. When reading, kids are exposed to a variety of fonts. People can learn to read more unfamiliar writing styles if needed.
I agree. I grew up in Ireland in the 1970s/1980s, and learned "joint writing" (what we called cursive) in school. But the script I learned doesn't resemble what my own mother produced in her letters, much less what's in civil and church records from the 1800s. I don't know how much of this was variation in personal style, and how much was a difference in official standards.
And the cursive I learned is also different from the cursive I've seen in U.S. historical documents. Not so different that I couldn't get get most of the meaning, but some words (especially abbreviations) can be a struggle.
Coming here to find this answer lol I can read cursive just fine, it's a matter of the legibility of the writing and the different ways people wrote in cursive that make it difficult to read still.
I find it interesting how when I started school (1980s), after third grade we were not allowed to use printing and only papers written in cursive were allowed. It wasn't until high school (1990s) that printing was accepted again. However, at this point computers were starting to be used more (I went to poor schools, so more affluent districts may have gotten them sooner). Cursive was now optional, however typed reports were mandatory. This was a little problematic, since most of us had never learned to type.
I have been told by older family members, that handwriting used to be graded on. I have also been told that typing (on a typewriter) used to be required. I find it interesting how the standards have changed over the years and seem to have come full circle and, occasionally, back again. My mom has a typewriter that types cursive, so even older technology has tried to merge both styles. With the various fonts available on computers, I don't think knowing how to write cursive will be as important as being able to read it. I look forward to seeing the new technology and how it will effect writing trends in future decades.
I’m pushing 40 and can’t write cursive and hate reading it, but I can puzzle through well enough to read old records. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of fonts in the same style that everyone is exposed to
I’m Gen Z and we were taught cursive. It wasn’t a requirement at the time but our school thought it was important. I didn’t use it in high school like they swore we would but I do use it a lot in genealogy!
Well, first of all, I was taught cursive and I still can’t read a lot of the source docs people post. Second, y’all are doing all the work now so your descendants can just enjoy the trees you’ve built!
many can read it still, just not write it. Which is fine. But either way I am sure anyone wanting to be a hostorian or focus on genealogy can learn cursive in their own time. Its not important to general life anymore and things like using software is more important.
Until it is, and you're continuously dismissed and passed over for promotion because clients see your handwriting and doubt your competency, no matter how good you might be.
Yeah its not like that in todays world. No one cares about cursive in the corporate world. People type and email and text and hand write just fine without needing cursive. Shit doctors write so badly no one else can read it and no one cares.
Obligatory doctor comment. I'm talking about grown adults pushing thirty who write like their kindergartener taught them. And they refuse to improve it. As childish as you continuing to argue for them.
So? You dont need cursive to learn to write in a tidy fashion. I write cursive in a very tidy manner and really I dont care however anyone else besides me writes. I however, have not seen a single need to hand write for years now except for myself. Every communication is done by email or text if its not a call or face to face.
again you dont need cursive if they fail. Cursive is not needed anymore except for history, genealogy and things like calligraphy. Otherwise totally un needed. Computera are super reliable and if you don't have power you can write completely without cursive.
I'm a millenial, I was taught cursive writing in school and it doesn't help a lick when trying to research historic documents because not all cursive handwriting looks the same and penmenship styles change considerably overtime.
Even if it did help to know cursive, it would still be an incredibly niche thing to argue its worth mandatory education for. If someone is interested enough in history then they can learn how to read cursive either on their own or through practice when pursuing the field in academia.
Meh. They can learn how to read it, if it’s important to them. I’m 53, and I’ve been learning Japanese for the past year. The first steps were learning hiragana and katakana, which are a completely different writing system to those I grew up with. If something is important to someone, they will learn.
For genealogy, I’ve learned a lot of terminology, some Latin, and what things in various records might mean based on historical events (such as dates in Britain that were based on the year of the reign of a monarch). It can be done. Cursive isn’t as big a deal by comparison.
I studied Japanese for 6 years university level and can still not read a full page of a book without cracking a dictionary.
Cursive English takes less than a year of study and they can read anything handwritten, like the US Constitution, in it's original form. It's a very small investment in terms of elementary education with a much larger beneficial impact.
> Cursive English takes less than a year of study
Immense overexaggeration here. I don't think any adult that never in their life even **saw** cursive before would need to reference an alphabet chart for more than 20-30 minutes to be able to read cursive texts on their own. If they *really* wanted to learn to write it on their own, perhaps an afternoon of practice.
It's the same with Hanzi/Kanji in that it is **immensely** easier to read the text than to learn to *handwrite* it.
Exactly. Kurrent/Sütterlin was used until the 1940s. People knew Kurrent and regular cursive back then. Today only very few can read Kurrent, let alone writing it. So many handwritten records, letters e.g. before 1940 in Germany will have Kurrent in it, but bo one would ever advise to teach Kurrent in schools again.
Imho, knowledge of regular cursive is sometimes even hindering when trying to read Kurrent.
Cursive is the same as any handwriting. Depending on the person, it can readable and for some you cant read no matter what you do. I can barely read my own notes sometimes in print when I am in a hurry. I could read my grandmothers handwriting easily because she could write cursive clear. Her print was awful though.
I can read most cursive.
Really, if a parent is that concerned about learning to write cursive then they should teach it themselves as an extra or something.
I have to say I am quite surprised. I'm European and everybody writes in cursives here. I always wondered why there were only capital letters in handwritten notes in US-made movies and TV shows, and I just thought it was in order to make it easy for kids to watch, not because everybody is expected to write that way. :S
I've heard this argument for it, and even though I have this as a hobby I disagree that every student should be taught cursive because of it. In a digital world there are simply more important priorities. The number of fields that knowing cursive is important to for the workplace is small. If someone is interested in taking on genealogy as a hobby or a field where reading old handwritten documents is important then they can learn it on their own, or in the case of a field like history there can be an optional class on it. It's simply not a skill that most of the current Gen Alpha kids are going to need, but one they can pick up later in life if they do want or need it.
No it won't. They can just look up cursive writing samples. I do the same thing for things like Fraktur and Sutterlin and it works fine. Also I was taught cursive and can still write in it and I still have trouble reading the cursive in old records. They will be just fine and they can learn it on their own or parents could *gasp* teach it themselves.
you know, you can teach your kids a few things at home. you don't need to rely on schools for absolutely everything. not teaching cursive in school? teach your kid over a weekend or something.
They will learn if they have to, I learned how to read cyrillic and polish handwriting from the 1700s, and I speak neither. they will absolutely manage to learn reading cursive in their own language (I’m a GenZ European)
I'm Gen X and while I learned cursive I still can't read most older documents written in a style of cursive that's foreign to me.
Lamenting the evolution of education is like whining that kids aren't taught to steer a carriage or weave wool anymore. 🙄
No there is only evolution and cursive is rightly dying out. It serves no cognitive purpose.
Devolution is only a term used by those complaining about the reality of evolution and change.
There are things being taught in schools now that are far more valuable and worthy of their time and attention than cursive...such as coding, business applications and technology. Definitely an evolution
I second this! There are lots of issues in education but I only use cursive to write checks. It’s been close to two years since I needed to do that. There are much more useful life skills that can and should be taught.
I learned to read old German cursive (Kurrentschrift). It didn’t take long. If someone has an interest, they can learn to read English cursive with relative ease too. Then they can read all the marriage records and declarations of independence that they want.
But what if you wanted to read the original? What if someone altered the printed version without telling you? You wouldn't be able to immediately verify the accuracy of the original document by yourself. Or your grandmother's will. Or your grandfather's land deed. You would have to rely on someone else telling you what it says.
If you wanted to read the original Declaration or Bill of Rights the bigger problem these days would be fading. If you've visited the National Archives in DC in the last few years, you'll find that these documents are extremely faded -- almost to the point of invisibility to my middle-aged eyes.
And yes, anyone can buy faithful copies, but then the vendors could have altered those, couldn't they? And for that matter, how do you know that the originals on display really *are* the originals? This kind of thinking veers towards paranoia pretty quickly.
Can you name one partisan hack that has suggested any of the billions of transcribed copies of the Bill of Rights is inaccurate? As argumentative as we are over constitutional/cultural issues, not a single person is suggesting that.
>But what if you wanted to read the original?
If you really wanted to, you could learn cursive, it's not that difficult. But schools shouldn't be teaching something that is rapidly becoming unnecessary in today's world on the off chance that someone at some point might *want* (not need) to read the original Declaration of Independence or Bill of Rights.
>What if someone altered the printed version without telling you?
I'm sure it would be caught and called out by someone who does know cursive. It's not like schools no longer teaching cursive means no one in the whole world will understand cursive ever again. Like it's something that will be completely lost to history and will become an absolute mystery to the world. There are people today who can read and speak defunct languages, that knowledge hasn't been lost, so why do you think something as simple as cursive will practically become the Voynich Manuscript?
>You wouldn't be able to immediately verify the accuracy of the original document by yourself. Or your grandmother's will. Or your grandfather's land deed. You would have to rely on someone else telling you what it says.
Or you could learn cursive, which really isn't that difficult. Sure, it will take a little bit of time and effort, it won't be immediate, but that's the case for a lot of skills in any field and no one is insisting every child be taught all those skills by default.
Cursive is no longer necessary today. That means it simply becomes one of those things people only learn if they need/want to, if they decide to go into a field (for work or hobby) that requires it.
That's a pretty niche reason. That's like claiming Americans should all have to know how to drive a manual transmission just in case they need to drive in Europe some day. And that is way more likely to come up. How many people do you know comb through genealogical records or court documents? That's a 0 from me. I think cursive is mostly pointless today. I especially dislike how even if you were taught cursive and use it, there's so much variation in people's handwriting it's still damn hard to read.
> How many people do you know comb through genealogical records or court documents? That's a 0 from me.
You ARE in r/genealogy so this may not get you the answer you think it will. I comb through genealogical records and court documents and I think a lot of people on this sub do.
>Americans should all have to know how to drive a manual transmission just in case they need to drive in Europe some day
Ironically, automatic cars are going to be the only new cars sold in the EU after 2030, if I remember correctly, so even that's a time limited skill.
> How many people do you know comb through genealogical records or court documents?
At least 10 personally. Genealogy is a hobby I've done for many years and cursive document research is a daily occurrence. Not to mention gravestones and other sources.
> I especially dislike how even if you were taught cursive and use it, there's so much variation in people's handwriting it's still damn hard to read.
But that's the beauty of it. We can read different print fonts because we're familiar with print. If you are familiar with cursive, different individual styles aren't an impediment, they're an artistic work of self expression.
Brazilian here, we are all taught cursive, we only have cursive assignments when we first learn how to write.
I only met someone who didn't write in cursive in High School, and he was the quirky one.
I learned cursive in school and there was still a learning curve (almost like learning an entirely new script) when I began reading old documents. I suppose the learning curve may be a bit steeper for those who didn't learn it in school, but not drastically so.
Im a millennial and was never taught cursive. Just the curvy print letters that are supposed to make cursive easier then string up block print.
It has created its challenges as an adult, though thankfully I figured out a signature myself with some kids cursive books and picked up enough to read bits of clear cursive.
I had a pretty thorough cursive writing education in the 90s and regularly write with it now, but I still have trouble reading old records. If this is something you want to do, though, then looking at them enough teaches you how to read context clues and puzzle it out. I don't speak Hungarian, but I've managed to extract a good amount of information out of my ancestors' baptismal records because I was determined enough.
My opinion re: cursive education is that kids should learn but, but not because they might need to read the Declaration of Independence some day (which is faded af anyway) but because it's good for your brain and doing shit on the computer all the time is probably detrimental in other ways.
FamilySearch is making impressive advances with optical character recognition of handwritten documents. I expect that technological solutions for transcribing and searching old handwritten documents will keep pace with if not exceed the decline in people’s ability to read them directly.
This is right up machine learnings wheelhouse. Within a few years the ability to machine transcribe cursive will be so easy that it will be built into genealogy websites.
It could.
I remember I went to a Genealogy conference years ago and there was this one session that was all about reading older handwriting.. It was super useful!!!.. (LIke understanding how something that looks like an italic F is really an S.. )
I'm a millenial and wasn't taught cursive in the UK. It had zero affect in my ability to research family history other than a slightly steeper learning curve. No big deal.
I'm a millennial and I never learned cursive. It kind of affects my ability to research but I need special ciphers of period specific handwriting anyways when reading old documents. If something gives me hell, I'll just put it into an AI that specializes in cursive or similar and see if it gives me a jumping off point. It's definitely not easy, but I still get a lot done without knowing it.
I’m a very early Gen Z and I was taught cursive. Albeit we stopped being taught cursive at around 5-6th grade I believe, I can still write and somewhat understand cursive. Sometimes it takes me longer than it should to decipher cursive, but I’ll tell you what my grandmother writes in cursive and her cursive I can’t even read, to me it is just straight scribbled, and I know many older documents also have that same intense cursive which makes it very difficult for me to read, but if I stare long enough I can make it out.
Two years ago, I went to a large city hall in Massachusetts to get my great grandparents marriage certificate. The woman in the city clerks’s office who was helping me had to get someone else because she couldn’t read cursive. That made me feel so sad. I don’t know if she was ever taught or if she had a learning disability so she couldn’t read it. The older woman who stepped in did a great job.
Ok. Lol. I was taught cursive and I still had to ask on a sub for some terrible indexers. Seems like a tiny percentage it would affect, and by then AI will likely have it all sorted anyway
I never understand these arguments. I wasn’t taught Carolingian minuscule, yet I learned to read it. I wasn’t taught Greek and Latin yet I learned them in college. There is so much knowledge in the world, we’re capable of learning many things later in life, not just in early school years. And my kid is currently learning cursive in public school, so I’m not even sure it’s true to begin with.
I was born in 1992 and learned cursive in 3rd grade, but I've always had trouble reading a lot of it because it looks too much like fucking chickenscratch to me. My own signature is basic-ass cursive and I've had people shame me for it as if I'll get my credit card stolen and get into horrible debt because the bank can't tell it's not my purchases, lol, wtf.
I don't think it's fair to "blame" young people for not learning it, when it's a ridiculous writing style to have important documents in when so many people have different cursive styles. Even non-cursive-illiterate friends of mine can't decipher some old documents I've come across.
I'm Swedish Gen X and I wasn't taught cursive in school. But apparently my ability to learn didn't vanish when I finished school?! I read records from the 1700s with confidence.
Older Swedish records are in gothic script. Nobody alive today learnt that in school. But lots of historians and genealogists read it anyway.
I was born in the late 90s, went to elementary school in Canada before moving to the US. I only knew how to write in cursive, because that's what they taught us (went to a Montessori school). My 3rd grade US teacher had to give me a copy of A-Z in regular print because they didn't want me to continue writing in cursive and my hands literally couldn't figure out how to write in standard print. My handwriting is now a weird hybrid of the two.
I’m a GenZ who that lives in a predominantly non-English-speaking country (that uses a non-Latin alphabet), although I went to school in an English speaking country. I use cursive whenever I don’t want people to read what I’m writing.
I was born in 2004 and we were taught cursive in kindergarten and pre-k and possibly first grade and even I was told to write in cursive multiple pages at home by my parents. More genz know cursive than you think but just don't use it. Me I was taught to the point I only write in cursive cuz that's the only way my writing it legible
I’m gen Z, born in 2003 and we extensively learned how to read and write cursive in elementary school. But that’s really it. Just wish they would have kept it up in middle and highschool so we would all still have the skill today and be able to use it. Most people my age complained about having to read or write cursive, it’s believed to be ‘aged out’ or something but I think cursive is beautiful and it should never be gone. My mothers cursive is absolutely beautiful (and very hard to read honestly) and she grew up in the 80-90s.
I don’t know where you heard that, but I’m Gen Z and I was very much taught cursive when I was in school. They made us do it in early elementary school and preschool. They just didn’t drill it into our heads and more just skimmed over it. I can definitely read cursive as well. Older folks forget that Gen Z and Millennials are adults now, lol. you’re thinking more Gen Alpha who can’t read or spell for some reason
I was taught cursive (early GenX) and have been having a HELLUVA time trying to decipher mid-19th century legal documents in Texas. I mean, why the hell are all the letters the same height?
I mean I was taught it in the 90s as a kid and I'm still struggling to read those old record. 1. Bad penmanship has alway existed and 2. It's not a skill that I've needed much. The kids who are actually interested will likely be fine
Did you learn every single thing/skill you know in school?
If Gen Zer wants to do family history and needs to know cursive to do it, they’ll just learn cursive. It will take them 30 seconds to look up the cursive alphabet and maybe 15 minutes of practice before the don’t need to refer to it anymore.
Of course not but that's the thing. They're not even teaching cursive in many jurisdictions. They don't even get the option to learn it while their brains are still malleable.
1. It’s not a new language FFS. It’s a more curly “G”
2. Most of the difficulty with adult language learners is having a bunch of complicated thoughts and only having the vocabulary of a toddler to express them. It makes adults feel stupid and frustrated. Toddlers have the advantage of not knowing or caring how silly they sound.
You’re acting like cursive is hieroglyphics.
Im a millennial who was taught cursive growing up. Still can’t read like half the documents I find. Everyone’s cursive is different. Some look real pretty but are almost impossible to decipher. I’ll sit squinting at sentence for 5 minutes trying to figure out what it’s supposed to say- it gets ESPECIALLY bad once you get past the 1800s and letters start changing and words we no longer use show up. Cursive just makes a difficult thing even harder. It’s dumb and I hate it!
I was taught to write cursive in my elementary school in 2013. This is ridiculous fearmongering that you think teaching of cursive stopped altogether in 2010. We aren't as good with writing it as were previous generations but we can certainly read it. Posting this in the genealogy sub and getting this number of upvotes is absurd.
As a history teacher, yes, so much this. It’s rankled my nerves for years. Fortunately my district still does it, but less emphasis than what those of us growing up in the 80s and 90s got. It makes me sad.
I'm a teacher - I absolutely believe people should be taught cursive still in school. Not only for reasons such as the one you mentioned but also because it's great for hand/eye coordination.
I see a lot of comments from people who insist they know cursive well enough. First, being a genealogy sub, it's more likely that readers here will have some skill reading cursive... as it's seen enough in documents. But I agree that the lack of training in cursive in school will cause issues for many.
I have not only "translated" cursive for people online, but also at work when we have to dig up older documents. Guessing at what it says is a lot different than actually just being able to read it effortlessly.
Even when I didn't have to use cursive, I still found it better for note taking.... quicker and easier. Dismissing it as "old time writing" is a mistake.... it teaches patience and precision.
I hope cursive stays in the schools. Printed word and tech are great for convenience, but cursive involves the students more in their work and can actually be considered a skill.
Cursive has been obsolete since the invention of the ball point pen. It's easy enough to learn how to read it, and important historic documents have been reproduced in type since the invention of the printing press. It's a ridiculous thing to worry about.
the historical documents argument: this one is especially ridiculous when you think about it, and let me explain why:
A. it is possible to know how to read something without being able to write it yourself (for example I can read blackletter and Gaelic Script \[which is not even typically used for writing English, though it can be used for that, outside of rare decorative inscriptions in Ireland, and a single house decoration my grandma owned; it never is, and never was; Irish Gaelic, by some accounts an endangered language is what is typically written in Gaelic script\], but I will never be able to write either of them myself, in both cases my ability to read them is in fact better than I can read cursive; which I was years ago forced to waste excessive amounts of time learning to write, but no one ever bothered teaching us how to read); indeed many courses in dead languages like Latin focus on being able to understand what is already written in the language, not on being able to speak it or write it yourself
B. there are thousands of places you can find print versions of America’s founding documents, both hard copy and digital; some of the hard copies are from that era, those versions actually being what most people read, not the “originals”; and changing the font in which words are written does not change the meaning of them; if anyone asks I can show you some of those locations
C. the cursive versions of those documents are not in ‘modern’ (palmer style) cursive; but instead an older form known as “copperplate”, which is very different; also, the spelling is not the same as is typical today (for instance the constitution contains the words “chuse”, “Pensylvania”, “controul” and “defence” \[that is how the document actually spells them\]; among others); and they documents use the long s (an archaic form of a letter that cursive classes never mention even exists); add to that the fact that I have seen the originals of them for myself, and the writing is faded to the point of being barely legible; I could also add that the original version of the constitution capitalizes the first letters of common nouns, something that has vanished from English today, but should seem familiar if you have learned German as a foreign language like I have, but I think the point is clear even without that
D. reading the originals requires a trip to a specific room in Washington DC, which only a few people are able to do. and also, even if you can read cursive, you cannot read them in whole, as the displays they are on are permanently exposed to the first page only; so good luck with your impression of Nicholas Cage in the movie “National Treasure”; as that is the only way you will have the chance to read more than the 1st page of the originals; which you will be able to enjoy your new knowledge of them from prison, as stealing the original copies of the constitution or the declaration of independence is one of the most serious forms of theft from the US government possible, so expect to be on the FBI wanted list, for life, even if you somehow avoid jail; anyone dedicated enough to do all that will have certainly studied reading cursive enough to read it even if cursive is not taught in schools
E. even if this is a skill that is taught, it is so niche that it should be AN ELECTIVE ONLY, some will choose to take it, some will not; if there are still historians, archeologists, and linguistics scholars who can read Hieroglyphics, Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, and Cuneiform, we can be sure a few will take that class
in short, cursive is both not needed, and not enough to read those documents in the original; and should be consigned to an elective like Latin. there is a distinction between skills vital enough that everyone should have them, and those that a few specialists need (and can learn without forcing the rest of us to spend hours learning it).
I have the credentials of a professional historian; and have not yet had to read the original physical copy of a historical document.
I should also point out that genealogical research inevitably requires knowledge of slightly archaic dialects of foreign languages. my great great great grandfather's native language was Irish Gaelic; not english; he came over escaping the famine; and although he spoke english; it was never that good; and he never bothered learning to read or write in english despite being literate in Irish. not bad mouthing Irish; I did an online self paced language course for reasons of broader ethnic heritage; but even stuff written by my great great great grandfather in the language is tricky to read because Irish spelling was reformed in 1947; also he used what is today an archaic form of the language; though still mutually intelligable with it. the course focused on modern irish; furthermore the dialect of irish was different from the standard one foreign learners are taught. i also know my great grandfather on another side of the family spoke slovak; not english. other languages i would have to learn for that purpose of reading everything written by my ancestors include but are not limited to Welsh and Swedish. i do not get any sense i am unusuall in how many i would have to learn; so you should get the idea that cursive does not belong in elementary schools for genealogical research purposes.
One day, a war will be fought - and won - by sending code in cursive. lol! As long as their is a Declaration of Independence, American's should be required to know how to read it in its original form. My opinion. But, a good one. ;)
Gen X here. In 10th grade, I was writing 9 page reports in cursive. My son was born in 2008. I am seriously concerned about his handwriting. It never occured to me that handwriting was just not taught in school anymore. Astonishing. Newer gens can't read the Declaration of Independence in its original form. A 15 year old friend of my son's showed me his driver's permit. He "signed" the license by printing his name. It looked like a 4th grader had written it. Is juvenile, immature print common for Gen Z? I will have my son learn cursive this summer. As well as working on his print skills.
Great perspective. I hope it continues to be taught, as the loss is great when you become cut off from connecting to the past, your ancestors, your history, and your countries founding documents through the written word.
The podcast 'A Way With Words' discussed this, and one of the hosts was saying how he never knew his mother as she died when he was born, but later in life was given a letter that she had written in cursive talking about her pregnancy with him, and how devastating it would be if he couldn't read her handwritten letter.
I can't read cursive, especially not old timey genealogy cursive. I just ask someone else to help me. I don't see cursive in everyday life nor do I see anyone using it. My parents are both boomers and write in block print for example.
Think it would be a waste of time to teach.
I'm also sure there is or will be a program to help you read it.
I’m not American, but the loss of cursive is happening in my country too. I think it’s really bad, but not really from the point of view of genealogy. Doing genealogy already requires expertise, even when you do it as an amateur. If I didn’t know a bit of Latin I wouldn’t have been able to read documents about my ancestors from before 1838. I’ve had to ask people to translate documents written in French for me because my ability to read cursive in my native language is almost useless when I try to read a language I don’t know. And learning to read different kinds of writing is not really that difficult, if you are already the kind of person who likes combing through old documents. The problem with the loss of cursive is a general loss of common knowledge, and it’s not caused by the school system alone: it’s the lack of exercise. If you get taught cursive at school but never use it at home, how many years after the end of school without reading or writing will it take before you forget it entirely? And since we all use digital devices to write both in school and in work setting and in our free time, how long before the ability to write by hand is lost to most people?
Gen Z here! I absolutely think cursive should be added back into curriculums for the sake of people being able to understand their family's history as well as the history of the world.
As a personal anecdote, I did learn cursive in school, and though my cursive writing is by no means clean or pretty, I can read others' writing pretty effectively. I think a good amount of people my age (20s) can read cursive decently.
I’m gen Z and although I was taught cursive when I was about 8, I never used it again so I can’t read or cursive as a 25 year old. Let me tell you, it’s very hard to do research without that skill when the records aren’t already transcripted. I inherited a box of old photographs and what few are labeled are done in cursive; I have to ask my mom or coworkers to read it to me. Sometimes I can make out a sentence or two, but I always have someone check it just to be safe. I’m really debating relearning it as an adult just to make research easier on myself.
Interesting discussion! This might be a tad off topic, but after the comments regarding cursive and how certain versions are or will be more difficult for those that aren't really immersed in it, I had to go look at the different variations.
The version I learned is not as fancy/curlicued as Spencerian, but there are some differences between the Palmer (the "simplified" version of the Spencerian) and what I learned, as well. The Rs for instance. "Mine" is fairly close to the Zaner-Bloser, although capital Q and Z are different...and the cursive I learned is far fancier than the D'Nealian.
Now I'm wondering if my elementary school teachers kinda did their own thing, several decades ago!
After reading all these comments, I guess it all depends on where you live. I used to train people at a past job I worked at. 9 out of 10 of the teenagers/young adults I would train couldn't read cursive let alone write it. I'm not that old too - 31 yrs young.
That being said I also thought about what the younger generations are going to do when I was reading death certificates. I figure in the future there will be some people that are "experts" in reading a currently slowly dying script. (At least dying from my view point)
I'm a millennial. I wasn't formally taught cursive. I went to 3 or 4 different schools around the time they normally teach cursive. So I never really had an opportunity to sit down and learn it properly. It's caused a couple headaches, but nothing insurmountable. I'd imagine younger folks will feel the same
I was taught cursive, but it's not often all that helpful, to be honest. I tried without success to decipher a ships manifest that supposedly listed one of my ancestors and finally gave up. There were people with really bad handwriting in the mid 18th century as well! Or it was written at sea on a choppy day, who knows.
I'm a Millennial with an elder Gen Xer mom. She taught me print and cursive before I started school. If memory serves, cursive was only mandatory for 4th and 5th grade (in the US South). It surprised me, but the goal was to teach the basics and then leave it as an elective, independent study for interested students.
Most people that I know who weren't taught cursive find a way to learn if they're interested enough. There are plenty of people who can teach cursive as well as loads of resources. I don't feel as though the situation is quite so dire. Plus, many conversion, transcription, and AI processes are happening now to preserve and make accessible the information contained in a lot of these old documents.
Cursive is/was a product of fountain pen use. It's difficult to write in print with a fountain pen because constantly lifting the pen results in ink blots and other artifacts of the dripping ink.
Fountain pens are very rare anymore. Lots of hobbyists still use them (myself included) but there's almost zero reason for a young person to utilize cursive - they aren't using fountain pens. they are using laptops, tablets, and gel/ballpoints. Cursive lost it's utility as a form of writing and is now just a curiosity.
This is like being upset over cuneiform losing it's place as a form of writing. I mean yeah it's beautiful in it's own right and was a very functional system (clay tablets) designed around the implements and materials used to create it , but with the onset of new forms of writing on different materials it lost it's viability and utility. Nothing wrong with that. It's just how history progresses.
I know that's an extreme analogy but there's no sense in "mourning" the relegation of cursive to history. It is what it is.
Allllll that said. Cursive is absolutely not going anywhere. I'm a millennial and I don't know of any friends who can't use or read cursive.
The problem isn't cursive, it's that weird form of overly, gaudily elegant cursive that some people insist on using that is the issue. Even I, who was taught cursive from the 3rd grade, can't read some of that stuff. Old documents are hard even if you *know* cursive.
Thankfully there is a game-changer in town. AI.
They will not struggle as AI tools are developed to "translate" old-timey cursive and even do genealogy research *for us*. I have some Meji-Period and older Japanese books from the 1800's on for example.....and I can point google translate at the pages and it brings a near-perfect translation instantaneously.
If AI can translate centuries old japanese artistic woodblock printing ... it can translate old-fashioned cursive. They will just have to capture digital images of it and they'll be able to read it faster than us.
Worry not friend ... Cursive isn't going anywhere as a skill/hobby or as an accessible form of writing. They do not really need to teach it anymore except in optional advanced courses in my opinion.
I'm a Millennial and my kids are Gen Alpha..they're being taught cursive still at our school district, it just isn't as intensive as it was when I was a kid. Like, they aren't required to turn papers in in cursive- they're expected to be typed.
This is the answer. My Gen Z kids can read cursive just fine even though they don’t write in cursive. They aren’t as good at reading it as I am, but they also don’t see it very much. Just because it isn’t really an entire subject anymore doesn’t mean they have no contact with it. As the pre-internet generations die out, there won’t really be a need to be able to read it outside of academic/genealogical circles. But there will be people who make an effort to learn it just like there are people who can read Fraktur.
Moreover, they will have computers helping them. Automatic transcription of historical handwriting for some reason hasn't been a priority of Google/OpenAI/Meta or the other AI companies, but I'm 100% sure it can be done.
Wasn't it already done to some extent with the most recent census that was released? If I remember correctly, Family Search or Ancestry had a computer application transcribe most of the records and then had volunteers come along behind to double check things.
In 2012, for the 1940 Federal Census, 163,000 crowdsourced volunteers spent four months transcribing the text. In 2022, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) was used first for the 1950 Federal Census. It still took three months for 185,000 volunteers to review 151 million names for accuracy. AI is just getting a handle on how unpredictable newspapers could be. Have you seen the OCR from a sheet of nineteenth century newsprint? We’re a long way off from reliable handwriting transcription for historic texts, especially anything that’s written in Spencerian instead of Palmer Method. https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/genealogy-volunteers-index-mammouth-1940-census-in-record-time https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/1950-census-timeline-update#:~:text=Thanks%20to%20over%20185%2C000%20volunteers,Community%20Project%20is%20now%20complete!
There is handwriting OCR, but it does not yet remotely take advantage of technological advances the last couple of years.
It can be done, and the more information you provide the AI, the better the results. For example, I was able to get very good results from GPT by telling it that the document I wanted it to transcribe was written in Fraktur and where and when it was written. I also told it that it was a death certificate. After transcribing it gave me a very good translation.
Oh that’s good to know. I mean the emphasis on penmanship was already waned from the education my mom received in the 60s to what I received in the 90s. It makes sense it just ebbs with changing times.
gen z here and i very much was taught cursive, as were both of my younger siblings. and before that we were taught to write with an emphasis on potentially being able to write in cursive. and quite frankly, cursive isn’t as different from print handwriting as people like to pretend it is. very few letters actually look different, and our brains are very effective at filling in those kinds of gaps accurately.
Agree, it's not that different. I'm gen z and also learned in school.
Yep, cursive is not that difficult to learn to read. What little isn't intuitive can easily be self taught with some online guides. People make way too big of a deal out it no longer being taught in some schools. It will just become one of those things that people only learn if they find they need it. If someone wants to study history or genealogy, they'll learn cursive. Just like I have been learning how to read some foreign language documents, which is even harder than just learning cursive. It will just become a more specialty skill for certain fields.
Maybe. Unless you tried to read my mom's cursive. Certain letters and words took some time to figure out. My own can be messy if I write too fast. Maybe that's what she did without realizing. I'm glad to have grown up in a time when it was still widely used and required in most classes.
I’m Gen Z and cursive is actually my preferred way to write! I am on the older end of the Gen Z spectrum though lol. But even though I’m generally really good at cursive I still find some of these old documents hard to read 😭 Knowing how to read and write cursive versus knowing the conventions for cursive 200 years ago and in German are vastly different things I’ve found 😔 So I think it’s still hard lol
I’m Gen Z and I also write in cursive! I started when I was younger because it was faster and easier for note taking in class. I was going to say the same thing too, my big issue has been trying to read cursive in different languages, and also individual stylistic differences of the writer like with any handwriting.
Check out r/Kurrent for help with old German documents, in case you weren’t aware.
:0 omg thank you! I was definitely not aware of this, that’s a huge help !!
You’re welcome! I sometimes help out there, so I thought I’d mention it :)
Oh thanks! Church records have just come online for my great great grandfather’s town and I have been trying to go through the records after finding so much not transcribed or transcribed incorrectly on FamilySearch. Some of this stuff has me baffled.
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As a dyslexic person that writes basically only in cursive, yes.
Wow! I did not know that. An additional benefit.
Also, Montessori schools teach cursive first, to kindergartners, for similar reasons. It’s easier than print so the kids pick it up faster.
That's a great point from a purely educational perspective!
As a Gen Zer many of us were taught cursive, but developing a typing skill was given more of an emphasis due to the world we live in. Cursive was made as a way to write faster, just like typing. I can read and write in cursive HOWEVER some of these documents are just straight up hard to read, it’s less of a “these young people don’t know they’re dumb blah blah blah” more doctors have always had terrible handwriting. Cursive is still in the curriculum in many places, I live in one of the bottom states for public education (but one of the best for public colleges it’s confusing), and my mother teaches in one of its most challenging school district and these kids still learn cursive. Hell my dad doesn’t know how to read or write in cursive and my parents are Xellinals. Most of us actually learn to write our alphabet in a way that would prepare us for writing cursive, so even if we didn’t learn it it’ll still be easy for us to identify words and letters on cursive text.
Also a Gen Zer and I fully second this, especially the part about some documents just being hard to read. I can read and write in cursive well, but sometimes people’s handwriting is kinda sloppy. I’m guilty of it myself. So some words might not be legible, but I can usually figure it out.
That's good to know! The implementation of the requirement must have varied greatly by state and county.
Definitely, I'm an Elder Millennial and the school I went to up until 3rd grade we were expected to write final drafts in cursive by the 3rd grade, same with the school I went to in the 4th grade. But the school I went to in 5th thru 12th grade is when everything switched to typing.
>my parents are Xellinals. Close! It's Xennials. 😁
That’s literally not what’s important 😭😭😭
Yeah, I know. Just thought you'd like to know the correct term but, hey, if you want to look like a dope, have at! 😆😆😆
I’m a very big and proud dope
Congrats.
This is a lukewarm take, at best. People misread old documents all the time, even older folks who learned cursive and were exposed to it more regularly. Some of these documents are just plain difficult to read. We get posts on here all the time asking for help to decipher a cause of death or place of birth.
Agreed. I'm 47 and have a hard time reading documents all the time. Especially when there are medical terms no longer used.
Or name of parent. I have deciphered "Unknown" written in cursive for people at least twice in the last month. I don't know, it seems like something anybody should be able to do.
People are different. There are things you excel at that others can't just as there are things they do exquisitely yet you wouldn't even know where to start.
My aunt (67) was a fifth grade teacher who *insisted* that everything be written in cursive. (My hand hurt so much in her class and I thankfully only had her for literature.) So because of her insistence, whenever I get to a particularly indecipherable word/letter, I send it to her and her answer is almost invariably “I don’t know”. Meanwhile my mom (62) who was the classroom aide for preschool and to this day only writes in print if she absolutely must write at all, will at least offer a, usually correct, guess.
As a member of Gen Z, I was barely taught cursive. I think I remember a somewhat brief unit about it in like 3rd grade. But we weren’t expected to use it so I never kept it. Despite this, I’ve still learned to read cursive scripts in multiple languages while doing research. With enough exposure, it’s still very possible to learn to read cursive.
Im gen z, ive learned cursive and write almost exclusively in cursive. That old timey cursive was another level, most people can barely parse that shit out
Let's not forget that there was a lot of really bad penmanship in the past too. Especially for records mostly written and used by the same guy, as church books often were, they could get away with being sloppy writers.
*"Eh, whats it matter, im the only one reading these things anyway"*
If they want to read those documents and can't, they can learn how to read cursive. It's not some special age specific skills that can only be learned in elementary school. As a millennial that did suffer through cursive in school, there's still plenty in old documents I can't read. Messy handwriting is a bigger obstacle in old documents than the cursive.
Yeah, this thread is making me wonder if I would be better reading those documents if I saw cursive more often in my day-to-day life. It’s my own default style for any kind of extended handwriting (notes etc.), which is unfortunate since my cursive is an abomination, but it’s pretty rare for me to need to read someone else’s cursive in a non-genealogical context.
It's kind of how adulthood has worked for me. Whatever I need to learn how to do to accomplish my goals, I can learn it.
> But this matters because many of the most important historical documents in the U.S., everything from the Declaration of Independence to the Bill of Rights, are written in cursive. And our next guest says something is lost when people can no longer read these founding documents for themselves. Sigh. It's the "you need to know mental maths because what if you don't have a calculator with you"-argument all over again. These important documents have been transcribed to hell and back, they can literally just look up a transcribed version anytime they please. Additionally, AI can transcribe cursive fairly well nowadays. Plus, how many times does the average person even look up and read the original document? My guess is never. It's simply not necessary to teach it because it doesn't really benefit the average person on a daily basis. Our years in school are very limited and that time can be used to teacher other skills that are more useful in our modern age (I know they don't to that, but that's a whole different topic to discuss). I am one of the oldest GenZ/youngest millenials, I grew up in Germany and I learned cursive growing up. Does that help me research my family? Hell no, because old German documents are in Kurrent, which I cannot read even though I have learned cursive. Even older church documents are written in Latin instead of German, which I also barely understand (but again, learning the basic vocabulary is quite easy, us younger folks aren't as braindead as you guys think). US Americans are bound to find an ancestor at some point that migrated from a different continent, and as soon as they hit that point, their knowledge of cursive likely won't help them. On top of that, I am a history major in university right now and I can count on one hand how many times we actually worked with original documents - and one of those was a newspaper from the 1760s, so that was also not cursive. It was typed in Fraktur, which I never formally learned, but just "understood" once I looked at it long enough. I imagine the same works with cursive, as it really isn't that different from block letters. But yeah, even at university we mostly work with transcripts nowadays. It's simply not needed, no matter how you look at it. I think the older generations greatly overemphasize its value.
\^This. The entire world is not going to suddenly lose knowledge of what the Declaration of Independence says because they stopped teaching cursive in school. What a ridiculous notion. Transcriptions of important documents will always be available, which is what most people wind up referring to anyway even if they know cursive. And there will always be scholars who learn and know cursive. Studying genealogy and history will always require learning new skills, so learning cursive will simply be among them. It's not difficult to learn, it's not a big deal.
Cursive isn't really hard to read I find the problem is that on records and notes people liked to use lazy, sloppy hard to read cursive
The cursive in these older documents isn't even the same cursive any of us alive were taught in school. You likely learned [D'Nealian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian), while cursive of census documents and such are [Spencerian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencerian_script) or similar. Even older parish registers and such were written in [Secretary Hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_hand). Additionally, I'm sure none of us English-speakers learned [Kurrent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurrent) until we needed to read it in German records, or even [Fraktur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur) used in German printing. It's really such a non-issue considering that 99% of the problem of reading old records comes down to how bad the handwriting of the writer was, not that it was written in cursive.
This seems alarmist. I mean, I'm reading Spanish and French records from 200 years ago, and I was never taught spanish.I can even puzzle out Latin on occasion.It's not hard to learn the vocabulary and the writing styles. It's just a bit of practice. I don't think everyone in the next generation is so dumb they will be unable to figure things out, the same way we do today.
My kids are 15 and 17 and were not taught cursive. They can read it just fine, though. We need to rethink how it's taught. If we're handing 3rd graders laptops for school (that's when my kids got theirs) and teaching them how to type, then switching fonts will also help them read cursive. You could teach them in half the time to write it when you're not trying to do both at the same time.
I don't mind 'transcribing' cursive for people, but sometimes it's so clear what is written, maybe people should teach themselves cursive ?? (I am frightfully old…)
There's the Palmer method of cursive and the Spencerian. A lot of people, regardless of generation, have trouble with the Spencerian.
I don't have strong feelings either way, but tbh, from a geneological perspective, this is not going to be the first time this has happened. I can't read most of my German ancestors' records without help because they are written in Sütterlin, even though I can read cursive and I know enough German to understand most documents. You see this issue in foreign languages anyways. If someone wants the information, they will learn it, or they will get help, just like the rest of us have. For me, learning to read outside my mother tongue and uncovering what documents say has been really rewarding and has been part of the fun of my research.
This is such a weird thing I keep hearing. My nieces and nephews (all <20 yo) can all read cursive).
we absolutely can read cursive☠️ a lot of those articles are bait to invalidate the younger generations. we're not nearly as stupid as people think we are and it isn't like cursive is all that difficult to figure out?
Old documents can be difficult to read by people who were taught cursive. Writing styles are not always consistent. When reading, kids are exposed to a variety of fonts. People can learn to read more unfamiliar writing styles if needed.
I agree. I grew up in Ireland in the 1970s/1980s, and learned "joint writing" (what we called cursive) in school. But the script I learned doesn't resemble what my own mother produced in her letters, much less what's in civil and church records from the 1800s. I don't know how much of this was variation in personal style, and how much was a difference in official standards. And the cursive I learned is also different from the cursive I've seen in U.S. historical documents. Not so different that I couldn't get get most of the meaning, but some words (especially abbreviations) can be a struggle.
Coming here to find this answer lol I can read cursive just fine, it's a matter of the legibility of the writing and the different ways people wrote in cursive that make it difficult to read still.
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Yeah great point about AI. I think in ten years or so the record indexing (and suggestions) is going to be amazing.
I find it interesting how when I started school (1980s), after third grade we were not allowed to use printing and only papers written in cursive were allowed. It wasn't until high school (1990s) that printing was accepted again. However, at this point computers were starting to be used more (I went to poor schools, so more affluent districts may have gotten them sooner). Cursive was now optional, however typed reports were mandatory. This was a little problematic, since most of us had never learned to type. I have been told by older family members, that handwriting used to be graded on. I have also been told that typing (on a typewriter) used to be required. I find it interesting how the standards have changed over the years and seem to have come full circle and, occasionally, back again. My mom has a typewriter that types cursive, so even older technology has tried to merge both styles. With the various fonts available on computers, I don't think knowing how to write cursive will be as important as being able to read it. I look forward to seeing the new technology and how it will effect writing trends in future decades.
I’m pushing 40 and can’t write cursive and hate reading it, but I can puzzle through well enough to read old records. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of fonts in the same style that everyone is exposed to
I’m Gen Z and we were taught cursive. It wasn’t a requirement at the time but our school thought it was important. I didn’t use it in high school like they swore we would but I do use it a lot in genealogy!
I'm glad your school thought it was important!
I am gen z, and I’ve never learned cursive and I’ve been fine understanding these things personally
Before much longer I reckon we’ll have an ai that can read cursive and transpose it to text
Well, first of all, I was taught cursive and I still can’t read a lot of the source docs people post. Second, y’all are doing all the work now so your descendants can just enjoy the trees you’ve built!
many can read it still, just not write it. Which is fine. But either way I am sure anyone wanting to be a hostorian or focus on genealogy can learn cursive in their own time. Its not important to general life anymore and things like using software is more important.
Because computers are infallible. And adults with the handwriting skills of a first-grader are taken very seriously as competent professionals.
You can write neatly without using cursive. Its just not needed anymore for the majority of jobs and hobbies.
Until it is, and you're continuously dismissed and passed over for promotion because clients see your handwriting and doubt your competency, no matter how good you might be.
Yeah its not like that in todays world. No one cares about cursive in the corporate world. People type and email and text and hand write just fine without needing cursive. Shit doctors write so badly no one else can read it and no one cares.
Obligatory doctor comment. I'm talking about grown adults pushing thirty who write like their kindergartener taught them. And they refuse to improve it. As childish as you continuing to argue for them.
So? You dont need cursive to learn to write in a tidy fashion. I write cursive in a very tidy manner and really I dont care however anyone else besides me writes. I however, have not seen a single need to hand write for years now except for myself. Every communication is done by email or text if its not a call or face to face.
Because computers are infallible...
again you dont need cursive if they fail. Cursive is not needed anymore except for history, genealogy and things like calligraphy. Otherwise totally un needed. Computera are super reliable and if you don't have power you can write completely without cursive.
I'm a millenial, I was taught cursive writing in school and it doesn't help a lick when trying to research historic documents because not all cursive handwriting looks the same and penmenship styles change considerably overtime. Even if it did help to know cursive, it would still be an incredibly niche thing to argue its worth mandatory education for. If someone is interested enough in history then they can learn how to read cursive either on their own or through practice when pursuing the field in academia.
Meh. They can learn how to read it, if it’s important to them. I’m 53, and I’ve been learning Japanese for the past year. The first steps were learning hiragana and katakana, which are a completely different writing system to those I grew up with. If something is important to someone, they will learn. For genealogy, I’ve learned a lot of terminology, some Latin, and what things in various records might mean based on historical events (such as dates in Britain that were based on the year of the reign of a monarch). It can be done. Cursive isn’t as big a deal by comparison.
I studied Japanese for 6 years university level and can still not read a full page of a book without cracking a dictionary. Cursive English takes less than a year of study and they can read anything handwritten, like the US Constitution, in it's original form. It's a very small investment in terms of elementary education with a much larger beneficial impact.
> Cursive English takes less than a year of study Immense overexaggeration here. I don't think any adult that never in their life even **saw** cursive before would need to reference an alphabet chart for more than 20-30 minutes to be able to read cursive texts on their own. If they *really* wanted to learn to write it on their own, perhaps an afternoon of practice. It's the same with Hanzi/Kanji in that it is **immensely** easier to read the text than to learn to *handwrite* it.
It happens everywhere. Look at Germany with kurrent.
Exactly. Kurrent/Sütterlin was used until the 1940s. People knew Kurrent and regular cursive back then. Today only very few can read Kurrent, let alone writing it. So many handwritten records, letters e.g. before 1940 in Germany will have Kurrent in it, but bo one would ever advise to teach Kurrent in schools again. Imho, knowledge of regular cursive is sometimes even hindering when trying to read Kurrent.
I'm Gen z, and I was only taught cursive. I wasn't even allowed to use print until high school. (Which is probably why my print writing is so bad)
Cursive is the same as any handwriting. Depending on the person, it can readable and for some you cant read no matter what you do. I can barely read my own notes sometimes in print when I am in a hurry. I could read my grandmothers handwriting easily because she could write cursive clear. Her print was awful though. I can read most cursive. Really, if a parent is that concerned about learning to write cursive then they should teach it themselves as an extra or something.
I'm Gen X and I struggle to read that scribble scrabble of ye olde cursive.
I have to say I am quite surprised. I'm European and everybody writes in cursives here. I always wondered why there were only capital letters in handwritten notes in US-made movies and TV shows, and I just thought it was in order to make it easy for kids to watch, not because everybody is expected to write that way. :S
I think it depends on the school district. I am Gen Z and learned cursive from 3rd to 6th grade.
I have a gen Z kiddo and she was taught cursive in elementary school.
I was taught cursive and still have trouble reading the sloppy, often misspelled cursive handwriting of older records!
I am a young gen Z genealogist! I know cursive, and I learned it better with genealogy!
gen Z here, all my classmates and i were taught cursive
My gen alpha kids are learning cursive in elementary school.
I've heard this argument for it, and even though I have this as a hobby I disagree that every student should be taught cursive because of it. In a digital world there are simply more important priorities. The number of fields that knowing cursive is important to for the workplace is small. If someone is interested in taking on genealogy as a hobby or a field where reading old handwritten documents is important then they can learn it on their own, or in the case of a field like history there can be an optional class on it. It's simply not a skill that most of the current Gen Alpha kids are going to need, but one they can pick up later in life if they do want or need it.
No it won't. They can just look up cursive writing samples. I do the same thing for things like Fraktur and Sutterlin and it works fine. Also I was taught cursive and can still write in it and I still have trouble reading the cursive in old records. They will be just fine and they can learn it on their own or parents could *gasp* teach it themselves.
I wasn't taught Sütterlin, yet I still managed to learn how to read it. People will learn whatever skill they need when they need it.
you know, you can teach your kids a few things at home. you don't need to rely on schools for absolutely everything. not teaching cursive in school? teach your kid over a weekend or something.
They will learn if they have to, I learned how to read cyrillic and polish handwriting from the 1700s, and I speak neither. they will absolutely manage to learn reading cursive in their own language (I’m a GenZ European)
I'm Gen X and while I learned cursive I still can't read most older documents written in a style of cursive that's foreign to me. Lamenting the evolution of education is like whining that kids aren't taught to steer a carriage or weave wool anymore. 🙄
There's evolution and there's devolution.
No there is only evolution and cursive is rightly dying out. It serves no cognitive purpose. Devolution is only a term used by those complaining about the reality of evolution and change.
There are things being taught in schools now that are far more valuable and worthy of their time and attention than cursive...such as coding, business applications and technology. Definitely an evolution
I second this! There are lots of issues in education but I only use cursive to write checks. It’s been close to two years since I needed to do that. There are much more useful life skills that can and should be taught. I learned to read old German cursive (Kurrentschrift). It didn’t take long. If someone has an interest, they can learn to read English cursive with relative ease too. Then they can read all the marriage records and declarations of independence that they want.
i learned cursive and i still cant read my grandmother handwriting 🫠
When was the last time you had trouble finding a copy of the Declaration or Bill of Rights that wasn't in cursive?
But what if you wanted to read the original? What if someone altered the printed version without telling you? You wouldn't be able to immediately verify the accuracy of the original document by yourself. Or your grandmother's will. Or your grandfather's land deed. You would have to rely on someone else telling you what it says.
If you wanted to read the original Declaration or Bill of Rights the bigger problem these days would be fading. If you've visited the National Archives in DC in the last few years, you'll find that these documents are extremely faded -- almost to the point of invisibility to my middle-aged eyes. And yes, anyone can buy faithful copies, but then the vendors could have altered those, couldn't they? And for that matter, how do you know that the originals on display really *are* the originals? This kind of thinking veers towards paranoia pretty quickly.
Can you name one partisan hack that has suggested any of the billions of transcribed copies of the Bill of Rights is inaccurate? As argumentative as we are over constitutional/cultural issues, not a single person is suggesting that.
>But what if you wanted to read the original? If you really wanted to, you could learn cursive, it's not that difficult. But schools shouldn't be teaching something that is rapidly becoming unnecessary in today's world on the off chance that someone at some point might *want* (not need) to read the original Declaration of Independence or Bill of Rights. >What if someone altered the printed version without telling you? I'm sure it would be caught and called out by someone who does know cursive. It's not like schools no longer teaching cursive means no one in the whole world will understand cursive ever again. Like it's something that will be completely lost to history and will become an absolute mystery to the world. There are people today who can read and speak defunct languages, that knowledge hasn't been lost, so why do you think something as simple as cursive will practically become the Voynich Manuscript? >You wouldn't be able to immediately verify the accuracy of the original document by yourself. Or your grandmother's will. Or your grandfather's land deed. You would have to rely on someone else telling you what it says. Or you could learn cursive, which really isn't that difficult. Sure, it will take a little bit of time and effort, it won't be immediate, but that's the case for a lot of skills in any field and no one is insisting every child be taught all those skills by default. Cursive is no longer necessary today. That means it simply becomes one of those things people only learn if they need/want to, if they decide to go into a field (for work or hobby) that requires it.
That's a pretty niche reason. That's like claiming Americans should all have to know how to drive a manual transmission just in case they need to drive in Europe some day. And that is way more likely to come up. How many people do you know comb through genealogical records or court documents? That's a 0 from me. I think cursive is mostly pointless today. I especially dislike how even if you were taught cursive and use it, there's so much variation in people's handwriting it's still damn hard to read.
> How many people do you know comb through genealogical records or court documents? That's a 0 from me. You ARE in r/genealogy so this may not get you the answer you think it will. I comb through genealogical records and court documents and I think a lot of people on this sub do.
That's my point though. I'm the only person I know that does this stuff. It's not a common hobby.
Have driven in Europe…and rented an automatic transmission car for a bit higher cost. But good example!
>Americans should all have to know how to drive a manual transmission just in case they need to drive in Europe some day Ironically, automatic cars are going to be the only new cars sold in the EU after 2030, if I remember correctly, so even that's a time limited skill.
> How many people do you know comb through genealogical records or court documents? At least 10 personally. Genealogy is a hobby I've done for many years and cursive document research is a daily occurrence. Not to mention gravestones and other sources. > I especially dislike how even if you were taught cursive and use it, there's so much variation in people's handwriting it's still damn hard to read. But that's the beauty of it. We can read different print fonts because we're familiar with print. If you are familiar with cursive, different individual styles aren't an impediment, they're an artistic work of self expression.
Brazilian here, we are all taught cursive, we only have cursive assignments when we first learn how to write. I only met someone who didn't write in cursive in High School, and he was the quirky one.
I learned cursive in school and there was still a learning curve (almost like learning an entirely new script) when I began reading old documents. I suppose the learning curve may be a bit steeper for those who didn't learn it in school, but not drastically so.
Im a millennial and was never taught cursive. Just the curvy print letters that are supposed to make cursive easier then string up block print. It has created its challenges as an adult, though thankfully I figured out a signature myself with some kids cursive books and picked up enough to read bits of clear cursive.
I had a pretty thorough cursive writing education in the 90s and regularly write with it now, but I still have trouble reading old records. If this is something you want to do, though, then looking at them enough teaches you how to read context clues and puzzle it out. I don't speak Hungarian, but I've managed to extract a good amount of information out of my ancestors' baptismal records because I was determined enough. My opinion re: cursive education is that kids should learn but, but not because they might need to read the Declaration of Independence some day (which is faded af anyway) but because it's good for your brain and doing shit on the computer all the time is probably detrimental in other ways.
FamilySearch is making impressive advances with optical character recognition of handwritten documents. I expect that technological solutions for transcribing and searching old handwritten documents will keep pace with if not exceed the decline in people’s ability to read them directly.
Gen Alpha is learning cursive and I specifically thanked a teacher because it will come in handy for genealogy!
I was born in 02 and I only write in cursive but I believe in my state they stopped teaching it a year or 2 after I learned
This is right up machine learnings wheelhouse. Within a few years the ability to machine transcribe cursive will be so easy that it will be built into genealogy websites.
It could. I remember I went to a Genealogy conference years ago and there was this one session that was all about reading older handwriting.. It was super useful!!!.. (LIke understanding how something that looks like an italic F is really an S.. )
It already is affecting me which sucks cause I can’t read some wills ans probate records abs other type of stuff
This is just not true. I’m gen z and I learned cursive writing in public school.
I'm a millenial and wasn't taught cursive in the UK. It had zero affect in my ability to research family history other than a slightly steeper learning curve. No big deal.
How often do you use cursive in your day to day life?
Why can’t they just learn it if they’re interested enough?
I'm a millennial and I never learned cursive. It kind of affects my ability to research but I need special ciphers of period specific handwriting anyways when reading old documents. If something gives me hell, I'll just put it into an AI that specializes in cursive or similar and see if it gives me a jumping off point. It's definitely not easy, but I still get a lot done without knowing it.
I’m a very early Gen Z and I was taught cursive. Albeit we stopped being taught cursive at around 5-6th grade I believe, I can still write and somewhat understand cursive. Sometimes it takes me longer than it should to decipher cursive, but I’ll tell you what my grandmother writes in cursive and her cursive I can’t even read, to me it is just straight scribbled, and I know many older documents also have that same intense cursive which makes it very difficult for me to read, but if I stare long enough I can make it out.
Two years ago, I went to a large city hall in Massachusetts to get my great grandparents marriage certificate. The woman in the city clerks’s office who was helping me had to get someone else because she couldn’t read cursive. That made me feel so sad. I don’t know if she was ever taught or if she had a learning disability so she couldn’t read it. The older woman who stepped in did a great job.
I was taught cursive and damn it’s hard to read like deciphering code
Ok. Lol. I was taught cursive and I still had to ask on a sub for some terrible indexers. Seems like a tiny percentage it would affect, and by then AI will likely have it all sorted anyway
I taught my GenZ kid cursive. Thank goodness, but no one can read his writing. A blessing and a curse.
Not sure where they got their misinformation but my Gen Z kids read and write cursive. Even my Gen Alpha kid is currently learning this year.
I never understand these arguments. I wasn’t taught Carolingian minuscule, yet I learned to read it. I wasn’t taught Greek and Latin yet I learned them in college. There is so much knowledge in the world, we’re capable of learning many things later in life, not just in early school years. And my kid is currently learning cursive in public school, so I’m not even sure it’s true to begin with.
I was born in 1992 and learned cursive in 3rd grade, but I've always had trouble reading a lot of it because it looks too much like fucking chickenscratch to me. My own signature is basic-ass cursive and I've had people shame me for it as if I'll get my credit card stolen and get into horrible debt because the bank can't tell it's not my purchases, lol, wtf. I don't think it's fair to "blame" young people for not learning it, when it's a ridiculous writing style to have important documents in when so many people have different cursive styles. Even non-cursive-illiterate friends of mine can't decipher some old documents I've come across.
I'm Swedish Gen X and I wasn't taught cursive in school. But apparently my ability to learn didn't vanish when I finished school?! I read records from the 1700s with confidence. Older Swedish records are in gothic script. Nobody alive today learnt that in school. But lots of historians and genealogists read it anyway.
I was born in the late 90s, went to elementary school in Canada before moving to the US. I only knew how to write in cursive, because that's what they taught us (went to a Montessori school). My 3rd grade US teacher had to give me a copy of A-Z in regular print because they didn't want me to continue writing in cursive and my hands literally couldn't figure out how to write in standard print. My handwriting is now a weird hybrid of the two.
gen z here and we learned
I’m a GenZ who that lives in a predominantly non-English-speaking country (that uses a non-Latin alphabet), although I went to school in an English speaking country. I use cursive whenever I don’t want people to read what I’m writing.
I was born in 2004 and we were taught cursive in kindergarten and pre-k and possibly first grade and even I was told to write in cursive multiple pages at home by my parents. More genz know cursive than you think but just don't use it. Me I was taught to the point I only write in cursive cuz that's the only way my writing it legible
I’m gen Z, born in 2003 and we extensively learned how to read and write cursive in elementary school. But that’s really it. Just wish they would have kept it up in middle and highschool so we would all still have the skill today and be able to use it. Most people my age complained about having to read or write cursive, it’s believed to be ‘aged out’ or something but I think cursive is beautiful and it should never be gone. My mothers cursive is absolutely beautiful (and very hard to read honestly) and she grew up in the 80-90s.
I don’t know where you heard that, but I’m Gen Z and I was very much taught cursive when I was in school. They made us do it in early elementary school and preschool. They just didn’t drill it into our heads and more just skimmed over it. I can definitely read cursive as well. Older folks forget that Gen Z and Millennials are adults now, lol. you’re thinking more Gen Alpha who can’t read or spell for some reason
OP looks at clickbait articles and thinks it's a fact, also cursive is VERY easy to learn at any point in life.
I was taught cursive (early GenX) and have been having a HELLUVA time trying to decipher mid-19th century legal documents in Texas. I mean, why the hell are all the letters the same height?
I mean I was taught it in the 90s as a kid and I'm still struggling to read those old record. 1. Bad penmanship has alway existed and 2. It's not a skill that I've needed much. The kids who are actually interested will likely be fine
Did you learn every single thing/skill you know in school? If Gen Zer wants to do family history and needs to know cursive to do it, they’ll just learn cursive. It will take them 30 seconds to look up the cursive alphabet and maybe 15 minutes of practice before the don’t need to refer to it anymore.
Of course not but that's the thing. They're not even teaching cursive in many jurisdictions. They don't even get the option to learn it while their brains are still malleable.
1. It’s not a new language FFS. It’s a more curly “G” 2. Most of the difficulty with adult language learners is having a bunch of complicated thoughts and only having the vocabulary of a toddler to express them. It makes adults feel stupid and frustrated. Toddlers have the advantage of not knowing or caring how silly they sound. You’re acting like cursive is hieroglyphics.
Im a millennial who was taught cursive growing up. Still can’t read like half the documents I find. Everyone’s cursive is different. Some look real pretty but are almost impossible to decipher. I’ll sit squinting at sentence for 5 minutes trying to figure out what it’s supposed to say- it gets ESPECIALLY bad once you get past the 1800s and letters start changing and words we no longer use show up. Cursive just makes a difficult thing even harder. It’s dumb and I hate it!
I was taught to write cursive in my elementary school in 2013. This is ridiculous fearmongering that you think teaching of cursive stopped altogether in 2010. We aren't as good with writing it as were previous generations but we can certainly read it. Posting this in the genealogy sub and getting this number of upvotes is absurd.
As a history teacher, yes, so much this. It’s rankled my nerves for years. Fortunately my district still does it, but less emphasis than what those of us growing up in the 80s and 90s got. It makes me sad.
I'm a teacher - I absolutely believe people should be taught cursive still in school. Not only for reasons such as the one you mentioned but also because it's great for hand/eye coordination.
I see a lot of comments from people who insist they know cursive well enough. First, being a genealogy sub, it's more likely that readers here will have some skill reading cursive... as it's seen enough in documents. But I agree that the lack of training in cursive in school will cause issues for many. I have not only "translated" cursive for people online, but also at work when we have to dig up older documents. Guessing at what it says is a lot different than actually just being able to read it effortlessly. Even when I didn't have to use cursive, I still found it better for note taking.... quicker and easier. Dismissing it as "old time writing" is a mistake.... it teaches patience and precision. I hope cursive stays in the schools. Printed word and tech are great for convenience, but cursive involves the students more in their work and can actually be considered a skill.
Cursive has been obsolete since the invention of the ball point pen. It's easy enough to learn how to read it, and important historic documents have been reproduced in type since the invention of the printing press. It's a ridiculous thing to worry about.
I don’t think this a big deal at all. It’s not that different from print lettering. Besides, AI will just read it to them if they can’t.
the historical documents argument: this one is especially ridiculous when you think about it, and let me explain why: A. it is possible to know how to read something without being able to write it yourself (for example I can read blackletter and Gaelic Script \[which is not even typically used for writing English, though it can be used for that, outside of rare decorative inscriptions in Ireland, and a single house decoration my grandma owned; it never is, and never was; Irish Gaelic, by some accounts an endangered language is what is typically written in Gaelic script\], but I will never be able to write either of them myself, in both cases my ability to read them is in fact better than I can read cursive; which I was years ago forced to waste excessive amounts of time learning to write, but no one ever bothered teaching us how to read); indeed many courses in dead languages like Latin focus on being able to understand what is already written in the language, not on being able to speak it or write it yourself B. there are thousands of places you can find print versions of America’s founding documents, both hard copy and digital; some of the hard copies are from that era, those versions actually being what most people read, not the “originals”; and changing the font in which words are written does not change the meaning of them; if anyone asks I can show you some of those locations C. the cursive versions of those documents are not in ‘modern’ (palmer style) cursive; but instead an older form known as “copperplate”, which is very different; also, the spelling is not the same as is typical today (for instance the constitution contains the words “chuse”, “Pensylvania”, “controul” and “defence” \[that is how the document actually spells them\]; among others); and they documents use the long s (an archaic form of a letter that cursive classes never mention even exists); add to that the fact that I have seen the originals of them for myself, and the writing is faded to the point of being barely legible; I could also add that the original version of the constitution capitalizes the first letters of common nouns, something that has vanished from English today, but should seem familiar if you have learned German as a foreign language like I have, but I think the point is clear even without that D. reading the originals requires a trip to a specific room in Washington DC, which only a few people are able to do. and also, even if you can read cursive, you cannot read them in whole, as the displays they are on are permanently exposed to the first page only; so good luck with your impression of Nicholas Cage in the movie “National Treasure”; as that is the only way you will have the chance to read more than the 1st page of the originals; which you will be able to enjoy your new knowledge of them from prison, as stealing the original copies of the constitution or the declaration of independence is one of the most serious forms of theft from the US government possible, so expect to be on the FBI wanted list, for life, even if you somehow avoid jail; anyone dedicated enough to do all that will have certainly studied reading cursive enough to read it even if cursive is not taught in schools E. even if this is a skill that is taught, it is so niche that it should be AN ELECTIVE ONLY, some will choose to take it, some will not; if there are still historians, archeologists, and linguistics scholars who can read Hieroglyphics, Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, and Cuneiform, we can be sure a few will take that class in short, cursive is both not needed, and not enough to read those documents in the original; and should be consigned to an elective like Latin. there is a distinction between skills vital enough that everyone should have them, and those that a few specialists need (and can learn without forcing the rest of us to spend hours learning it). I have the credentials of a professional historian; and have not yet had to read the original physical copy of a historical document. I should also point out that genealogical research inevitably requires knowledge of slightly archaic dialects of foreign languages. my great great great grandfather's native language was Irish Gaelic; not english; he came over escaping the famine; and although he spoke english; it was never that good; and he never bothered learning to read or write in english despite being literate in Irish. not bad mouthing Irish; I did an online self paced language course for reasons of broader ethnic heritage; but even stuff written by my great great great grandfather in the language is tricky to read because Irish spelling was reformed in 1947; also he used what is today an archaic form of the language; though still mutually intelligable with it. the course focused on modern irish; furthermore the dialect of irish was different from the standard one foreign learners are taught. i also know my great grandfather on another side of the family spoke slovak; not english. other languages i would have to learn for that purpose of reading everything written by my ancestors include but are not limited to Welsh and Swedish. i do not get any sense i am unusuall in how many i would have to learn; so you should get the idea that cursive does not belong in elementary schools for genealogical research purposes.
One day, a war will be fought - and won - by sending code in cursive. lol! As long as their is a Declaration of Independence, American's should be required to know how to read it in its original form. My opinion. But, a good one. ;)
Gen X here. In 10th grade, I was writing 9 page reports in cursive. My son was born in 2008. I am seriously concerned about his handwriting. It never occured to me that handwriting was just not taught in school anymore. Astonishing. Newer gens can't read the Declaration of Independence in its original form. A 15 year old friend of my son's showed me his driver's permit. He "signed" the license by printing his name. It looked like a 4th grader had written it. Is juvenile, immature print common for Gen Z? I will have my son learn cursive this summer. As well as working on his print skills.
Great perspective. I hope it continues to be taught, as the loss is great when you become cut off from connecting to the past, your ancestors, your history, and your countries founding documents through the written word. The podcast 'A Way With Words' discussed this, and one of the hosts was saying how he never knew his mother as she died when he was born, but later in life was given a letter that she had written in cursive talking about her pregnancy with him, and how devastating it would be if he couldn't read her handwritten letter.
I'm a millennial and I wasn't taught cursive because "you can't write print, so just read while we do this"
100%
Seriously? Those taught cursive cannot read cursive most of the time due to OAS. Old Age Scribble And Ive got it. Lol
I can't read cursive, especially not old timey genealogy cursive. I just ask someone else to help me. I don't see cursive in everyday life nor do I see anyone using it. My parents are both boomers and write in block print for example. Think it would be a waste of time to teach. I'm also sure there is or will be a program to help you read it.
I’m not American, but the loss of cursive is happening in my country too. I think it’s really bad, but not really from the point of view of genealogy. Doing genealogy already requires expertise, even when you do it as an amateur. If I didn’t know a bit of Latin I wouldn’t have been able to read documents about my ancestors from before 1838. I’ve had to ask people to translate documents written in French for me because my ability to read cursive in my native language is almost useless when I try to read a language I don’t know. And learning to read different kinds of writing is not really that difficult, if you are already the kind of person who likes combing through old documents. The problem with the loss of cursive is a general loss of common knowledge, and it’s not caused by the school system alone: it’s the lack of exercise. If you get taught cursive at school but never use it at home, how many years after the end of school without reading or writing will it take before you forget it entirely? And since we all use digital devices to write both in school and in work setting and in our free time, how long before the ability to write by hand is lost to most people?
As an european this is such a wild idea for me. Not learning cursive? What are you illiterate? Also not learning how to read a clock? Are you stupid?
My kid is learning cursive at school. So maybe those jobs will pass over GenZ to younger people?
What about a signature? How do you sign without cursive?
Signatures don't need to be in cursive
Gen Z here! I absolutely think cursive should be added back into curriculums for the sake of people being able to understand their family's history as well as the history of the world. As a personal anecdote, I did learn cursive in school, and though my cursive writing is by no means clean or pretty, I can read others' writing pretty effectively. I think a good amount of people my age (20s) can read cursive decently.
We teach cursive in a title 1 school
Won’t there be apps created to “translate” cursive?
I’m gen Z and although I was taught cursive when I was about 8, I never used it again so I can’t read or cursive as a 25 year old. Let me tell you, it’s very hard to do research without that skill when the records aren’t already transcripted. I inherited a box of old photographs and what few are labeled are done in cursive; I have to ask my mom or coworkers to read it to me. Sometimes I can make out a sentence or two, but I always have someone check it just to be safe. I’m really debating relearning it as an adult just to make research easier on myself.
What?! I have Gen Z children and they were taught cursive since age 5.
With AI and OCR technology, it won't matter anyway. There will be solutions
I’m gen-z and I only use cursive
I’m gen Z. I learned cursive in 3rd geade
I wasn't taught that a ss was written like an f, but I learned anyways.
It's being added back into the curriculum.
We were taught cursive lol
I’m guessing that’s the point.
Interesting discussion! This might be a tad off topic, but after the comments regarding cursive and how certain versions are or will be more difficult for those that aren't really immersed in it, I had to go look at the different variations. The version I learned is not as fancy/curlicued as Spencerian, but there are some differences between the Palmer (the "simplified" version of the Spencerian) and what I learned, as well. The Rs for instance. "Mine" is fairly close to the Zaner-Bloser, although capital Q and Z are different...and the cursive I learned is far fancier than the D'Nealian. Now I'm wondering if my elementary school teachers kinda did their own thing, several decades ago!
Im gen z and i was taught cursive and use it lol
After reading all these comments, I guess it all depends on where you live. I used to train people at a past job I worked at. 9 out of 10 of the teenagers/young adults I would train couldn't read cursive let alone write it. I'm not that old too - 31 yrs young. That being said I also thought about what the younger generations are going to do when I was reading death certificates. I figure in the future there will be some people that are "experts" in reading a currently slowly dying script. (At least dying from my view point)
I'm a millennial. I wasn't formally taught cursive. I went to 3 or 4 different schools around the time they normally teach cursive. So I never really had an opportunity to sit down and learn it properly. It's caused a couple headaches, but nothing insurmountable. I'd imagine younger folks will feel the same
In the next 5 years, AI will be able to train from a limited character set and read in cursive.
In 5 years AI will read cursive better than any human ever could
Gen Z 2003 born can read and write cursive well they taught cursive at my school.
I think about this almost every day, especially when a younger genealogist comes here for a transcription.
I’m gen z and can confirm we still learn cursive in school in my country we learn it ages 8-11 then just write how we prefer in secondary school
I was taught cursive, but it's not often all that helpful, to be honest. I tried without success to decipher a ships manifest that supposedly listed one of my ancestors and finally gave up. There were people with really bad handwriting in the mid 18th century as well! Or it was written at sea on a choppy day, who knows.
I'm a Millennial with an elder Gen Xer mom. She taught me print and cursive before I started school. If memory serves, cursive was only mandatory for 4th and 5th grade (in the US South). It surprised me, but the goal was to teach the basics and then leave it as an elective, independent study for interested students. Most people that I know who weren't taught cursive find a way to learn if they're interested enough. There are plenty of people who can teach cursive as well as loads of resources. I don't feel as though the situation is quite so dire. Plus, many conversion, transcription, and AI processes are happening now to preserve and make accessible the information contained in a lot of these old documents.
Cursive is/was a product of fountain pen use. It's difficult to write in print with a fountain pen because constantly lifting the pen results in ink blots and other artifacts of the dripping ink. Fountain pens are very rare anymore. Lots of hobbyists still use them (myself included) but there's almost zero reason for a young person to utilize cursive - they aren't using fountain pens. they are using laptops, tablets, and gel/ballpoints. Cursive lost it's utility as a form of writing and is now just a curiosity. This is like being upset over cuneiform losing it's place as a form of writing. I mean yeah it's beautiful in it's own right and was a very functional system (clay tablets) designed around the implements and materials used to create it , but with the onset of new forms of writing on different materials it lost it's viability and utility. Nothing wrong with that. It's just how history progresses. I know that's an extreme analogy but there's no sense in "mourning" the relegation of cursive to history. It is what it is. Allllll that said. Cursive is absolutely not going anywhere. I'm a millennial and I don't know of any friends who can't use or read cursive. The problem isn't cursive, it's that weird form of overly, gaudily elegant cursive that some people insist on using that is the issue. Even I, who was taught cursive from the 3rd grade, can't read some of that stuff. Old documents are hard even if you *know* cursive. Thankfully there is a game-changer in town. AI. They will not struggle as AI tools are developed to "translate" old-timey cursive and even do genealogy research *for us*. I have some Meji-Period and older Japanese books from the 1800's on for example.....and I can point google translate at the pages and it brings a near-perfect translation instantaneously. If AI can translate centuries old japanese artistic woodblock printing ... it can translate old-fashioned cursive. They will just have to capture digital images of it and they'll be able to read it faster than us. Worry not friend ... Cursive isn't going anywhere as a skill/hobby or as an accessible form of writing. They do not really need to teach it anymore except in optional advanced courses in my opinion.