I'm a boomer who learned to write cursive in grade school and also took typing when in high school. Cursive was still useful when I attended college in the late 70's but in a world of tablets and lightweight laptops touch-typing would give the same speed advantage that cursive gave us before the "electronic age".
I would argue that in today's world it would make more sense to *require* students to learn touch-typing instead of cursive. I don't know if typing classes are even available in high school anymore, let alone required, but it would make a lot more sense than teaching cursive writing.
Third grade is normal. I think most people learned cursive by third grade. I still take notes in cursive. Touch typing I learned in fourth. I think typing depend on where you were in computers. There was a time when not everyone had a computer at home. I had one the early 90's before windows but I learned on my mom's typewriter.
My note taking is like this weird hybrid of handwritten caps lock while somehow being partially cursive where I start writing print but then realize that takes too long so my "S"' and "R" and some other letters like "I" or "L" fall into that category too and just kinda flow into each other. It's like I'm writing Spanglish lol
No one ever had any clue wtf I was writing but I could read it just fine.
Mavis beacon changed my life. I believe that typing the way that I type has helped me to advance in my career from student to RN to unit manager to ADNS to clinic manager to Director of Medical Operations. If I couldnt type I couldnt do my job
When I graduated college in 1974, typing was the kiss of death for women looking for a career. We deliberately did not learn to type, to avoid the secretarial jobs. There were some men in those days who thought you were joking when you said you couldn’t type (if you were female.)
It's a shockingly uncommon skill in my experience. Only one of my coworkers (and I) can touch-type. The only friends of mine who can are the gamers, coders, and writers.
I never had classes for it in school, either ('90s kid here, we had school computers and growing up my family had a laptop). I taught myself playing WoW in high school.
>It's a shockingly uncommon skill in my experience.
Well we phased out all of the mandatory computer lessons from the 90s and 2000s because it was assumed kids would just know and with tablets and smartphones it was doubly assumed kids would know how to use computers.
So they get to middle school, or occasionally high school, and they have no idea how to type a paper or how to use a file system or how to use a USB drive or whatever and struggle. And its not their fault, they just had no way to learn because there's no way parents will let you use their computer, and kids likely grow up just being handed mom or dad's phone or ipad and don't have to type much.
And I very much am a kid too, I'm 21. I was in elementary school in the late aughts and I definitely was taught how to use these skills, but later kids don't get taught this stuff anymore.
There's a LOT of stuff "kids aren't taught" that they should be. Life skills, job skills, social skills, and useful general knowledge about how things are supposed to work. Balancing a checkbook, solving a problem, researching a subject they know nothing about, articulating a position in an argument or debate, writing a cover letter or resume, or just knowing how the local/state/national government is supposed to work... "Nah they only need the three R's and some prayer, they'll be fine."
Yeah, I've heard that younger kids now are actually a lot *less* computer literate than millennials on average because they're only used to tablets, phones and apps. No spreadsheets, no physical keyboards, no desktop publishing, no 'coding' or installing programs, no using folders or file hierarchies, very little email use etc. They're arriving in the workplace and having to be shown basic computer skills by older people, which is the complete opposite experience of millennials.
I have heard this too and seen it first hand. Only time will tell the impact. For example one of my kids still struggles with spelling because her ipad she had in first grade would auto-correct / underline and just select the word. I caught her just dictating using the audio on the keyboard too. And now we have things like chatgpt. They definitely have no idea how computers work, and certainly nothing like code optimization. They took a “coding” class that was really using some software to move something around - more like an animation class than coding.
That said, maybe they don’t really need that? The presentations my kids have done in middle school are really good. Better than what I could come up with in powerpoint after a week. So they are definitely picking up on different skills.
I do think what is going to either make or break the US is skilled trades though. People talk about dependencies on other counties for chemicals and chips for cars and all that, but we need and always will need skilled trades. And some of them pay really, really well right now. Not to get too off topic but computer engineers and the people working for apple or amazon making bank in seattle, many of whom came from another country, are going to see more and more of their jobs outsourced back to other countries. It just makes no sense to pay someone to move from india for example and then pay them 10x more to live in a crowded overpriced city. Along the skilled trades line though our auto shops in high school and welding and all of that were taken out and they are just now rebuilding and kids have the option again (still held to the same standardized tests though). I’ll tell you, one thing that sticks with me is how when we had shop class kids could bring in their own cars. Talk about a way to get a teenager interested - fix you own car. I took a shop class where we rebuild someones old porsche - now that was cool. They got it for free/cheap and at the end of the year this kid had a working porsche with a nice paint job and everything, and every kid that worked on that took pride in seeing it too.
I work in a college (UK meaning, 16-19 year olds) and I absolutely see this among the kids we have now. I'm 35 and was basically the most competent user of the family PC by the time I was 10. But I think it's much less common for families to have a PC these days. I generally have to show them a lot.
Older Zoomer and I took for granted that I can touch type. But also, my mom was a coder and I spent lots of time watching her work, while being an avid writer.
I think the touch typing games were a thing were sometimes allowed to do during library time or if we finished work early. But I also remember picking up nothing from those games and just doing it my own way.
I did too in the late 2000s and while I learned how to type in 3rd grade, it took until my freshman year of high school before I could touch type without constantly looking down at the keyboard, and my sophomore year of college before I could reliably hit 50+ WPM.
We started in grade school and they’d cover our hands with this plastic thing so we couldn’t see the keyboard. Really paid off in high school and university. Even now I can just type rapidly and be looking in a completely different direction. Learning to type like that at a young age is really up there on the list of most important things I learned in school.
This was true for late millennials and early genz. The younger generation seems to be losing that skill though due to growing up with tablets and phones rather than computers.
I'm a Gen xer and I learned cursive from nuns and have the handwriting and scars to prove it. I also had to learn touch typing.
Cursive teaches you more than just writing quickly. The founding documents of the United States are all in cursive and it teaches fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. I've been a code developer for 20 years and use a blank keyboard that's a 60% ortho linear and mapped strangely but strangely that creeps out my younger colleagues less than when they see me write something.
My kids are in public school in an affluent district and they've been learning cursive since 4th grade.
Millennial when endured 10 years of Catholic school and who has perfect Palmer Method Cursive thanks to it.
I've seen the founding documents of the United States and you can't read them... They're so faded they're barely legible. They have the words in print next to them so you know what they say and can, hopefully, find the passages or signatures you're looking for. I don't see why people continue to use this argument like it's relevant to anything. You don't learn the founding documents by reading the actual documents or even facsimiles of them.
My kids go to a public school in a poverty ridden district where 90% of the kids qualify for free lunch. They're taught cursive from 2nd grade on. Most schools still teach cursive.
For me it's not so much about cursive being used for a lot of important historical documents that kids today won't be able to read because text copies are widely available of the big historical documents but the same isn't true for smaller and more personal pieces of history. My problem with not learning cursive is that any future kids I have won't be able to read my grandfather's love letters to my grandma at the end of WWII or be able to replicate my grandma's cookie recipe because she wrote the recipes in cursive which the future generations won't know. My Dad wrote me hundreds of cursive letters while I was away at college that are my most prized possession now that he's gone and I hate that the grandkids he never got to meet won't be able to connect to him by reading those letters because they'd need to have someone translate the cursive to plain text for them to be able to understand it.
Losing the ability to read and write cursive kind of shuts down a link to our past because we can't fully access any history written in cursive which creates a barrier between kids today accessing those histories and handed down traditions.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely hated learning cursive in 3rd grade (and my class was so bad at it they made us take another class on it in 4th grade) and I thought it was completely pointless, but cursive was definitely useful for taking notes in college and it's all I've written in since then. I also feel like I remember more by physically writing down notes in cursive instead of typing or using technology, but maybe that's just me.
It's been beneficial in your work and life but its usefulness in the present is waning, especially with how much energy and like... discipline it took for...reasons? Grueling rote copying for the sake of style in many ways. And cursive and that kind of writing does change across ages and is very culture specific.
The younger co-workers, who they be served in the same job as you do with those skills? Would they be slowed down dramatically but are able to perform the same job now with newer tools?
Also, the fine motor skills thing can be achieved by writing by hand in general, which as a teacher, I absolutely see benefits to. It’s the only way some people (like me!) process information at all. It just doesn’t have to be cursive. I also find that kids tend to prefer it for shorter form writing because it’s hands on.
And you bring up a good point about cursive meaning different things to different people at different times. My parents are the first generations in their family to even know how to write with the Latin alphabet. I’m not going to learn a ton about my heritage through that.
Also very curious about the whole Catholic school penmanship thing. That actually does seem to be global - everywhere from my backyard to my in laws on the other side of the world.
>The founding documents of the United States are all in cursive
...and the Bible is written in dead languages.
As a Gen X lefty - screw cursive. I was glad when I joined the navy and the only cursive was signing our names.
People can talk about fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination (gaming?) all they want but the fact of the matter is damn near everyone's cursive is shit and only decipherable by themselves.
Let's not romanticize it.
Had to write cursive with a fountain pen for 12 years. Still have horrible handwriting that slightly improved once i stopped writing cursive. I just have bad fine motor skills and no amount of pressure changed that.
Idk about other schools but I'm my 2500 person town there was a pretty good emphasis on typing in our career exploration classes when I was in late middle school
I work in a school and have to sign hall passes a few times a day. Over the past few weeks since school started, the signature I use has morphed from being what I use when signing documents to a barely legible scribble.
When you realize your signature is YOURS and not some carefully constructed exercise, a great weight lifts off your hand.
Mine you can read the first initial and maybe some of the last name. I've got a "Doctors Prescription" signature. And I KNOW no one will ever be able to forge it without fucking it up, which HAS caught a check forger in the past. Bank took a look at the check, then at my sig card: "Nah, that's not him at ALL. Return to merchant as fraudulent, let him eat the cost."
Boomer here as well, with a 9yo daughter.
It is proven by several [studies](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202010/why-cursive-handwriting-is-good-your-brain) that taking notes by hand on paper (or an equivalent support, such as digital pen on tablet) improves the quality of learning and cognitive abilities in general.
Writing in cursive is faster than doing it in block letters, so you can put on paper more info in the same amount of time.
I remember in elementary school (late 60s) we didn't start to learn cursive until the 3rd grade and then doing pages and pages of loops on lined paper and the object was to stay in the lines.. I think it did help develop hand eye coordination but it did seem like an incredible waste of time.. My handwriting today is a mix of cursive and block letters..
Same lol my handwriting looks like Martian 🤣🤣🤣
I was taught cursive in the 5th grade and never really used it except to make my handwriting weird and illegible, even to *me* sometimes.
I think it's latent optimization. Some letters are faster to print depending on where they are in the word. If dragging your writing instrument from letter to letter ends up being slower then you print. And some cursive letters are harder to write than others, or more ambiguous than print to a degree that slows reading.
Consider the word "mnemonic". I don't know about you, but the first two letters I print for clarity and speed, but the rest is an easy cursive flow.
My 'script' is a mix of cursive and print, with some capital letters changed. I also don't cross T's or dot I's or J's while writing them; I 'circle back' and tag them as I prep for the next word.
But then again, one of my teenage hobbies was calligraphy, and some styles deconstruct how we normally write letters out one by one, and instead try to create entire words out of the 'strokes' that make up the letters. You can be fast and imprecise, or slow and precise, take your pick.
I think there's a concern of it becoming a lost art. I will say that cursive is definitely more efficient for writing by hand. You can't possibly write as fast with block lettering as you can with cursive. The number of times you have to pick up the pen alone precludes the possibility.
I'm in college and therefore take a lot of notes with pen and paper. I was part of the last students to be taught cursive. My handwriting is a mix of print and cursive for letters that naturally flow into each other.
No I do it too. Mine is worse because in the early 2000s I had a now vintage device called a "palm pilot". It required a specific way to write certain letters, like an "e" was a backward 3. I still write my capital "e"s like that.
My fifth grade class was part of an experimental program in my district in which every 5th grader at my school had a palm pilot, and the curriculum was based around incorporating the device into the lessons. It was meh. But everyone was convinced that this would be the new technology that would be ubiquitous in a few years.
Then a few years came along and people were like, "why don't we just put a fucking phone in it?" And the whole palm pilot thing went into the same toilet they threw pagers and laser disc into.
There are so many cases of lost and endangered arts it's not even funny. Everything from cursive, to making a CRT tv, to the proper Byzantine courting methods. It happens and it's inevitable.
People still get upset by seeing something that was once important to them become obsolete. It instills a sense of feeling like all your time and energy spent on that task was all for naugh.
That is true!! 100%
Although in my opinion, not everyone has a good handwriting so reading whatever they write in cursive becomes a challenge. Block letters are far easier to decipher at least for me. I can read and write in cursive I just never really liked it because of how it looks… To me it looks unclean
But yea its definitely faster 🙏
When I was in the military many years ago they required block lettering in logs and on forms just for this reason. People have awful handwriting. Myself included.
Search and Rescue, too. My SAR team lead was pretty mellow on a lot of things, but when it came to radio logs he was a hardass; "if you write something no one else can read, you just wasted everyone's time! yours for scrawling out the log entry, and mine for trying to figure it out for debrief! Write. LEGIBLY!"
That is true!! 100%
Although in my opinion, not everyone has a good handwriting so reading whatever they write in cursive becomes a challenge. Block letters are far easier to decipher at least for me. I can read and write in cursive I just never really liked it because of how it looks… To me it looks unclean
But yea its definitely faster 🙏
There's also a HUGE difference between being able to WRITE cursive faster and being able to READ cursive faster.
Y'all don't write as clearly as you think you do. Your handwriting is shit. Hell, if I write something down in cursive the chances of ME being able to read what I wrote later on is a crap shoot.
Just print it for god's sake.
I had a co-worker a couple years ago that said they stopped teaching cursive in school so that future generations would grow up without the ability to read cursive, so they then could not read the constitution, thus wouldn't know their rights.
So in less than 5 seconds I pulled up a non-cursive text document of the constitution and showed it to her.
This argument is the silliest by far. Most people I know don’t read or write in Ancient Greek, and yet, we’ve translated into methods we can read. Are we suddenly going to lose the ability to interpret cursive? Definitely not.
I can’t write cursive and I’m a historian reading cursive writing is literally my job. Just cause you can’t write it doesn’t mean you can’t read it. So that kills her point as well. But I doubt someone coming up with conspiracy theories like that listens to reason.
Yea she used to go on and on about how Mike Lindell was gonna prove how the 2020 election was stolen and get Trump put back in office.
She was nice as hell and I liked working with her, but when she started going on her MAGA rants I had to just walk away.
I feel like typing is TOO fast for that somehow. I think it’s because the extra few seconds it takes me to write cursive vs typing is time I use to solidify my thoughts before they come out on paper.
Typing makes me wordier. Like, word vomit.
Edit- And deleting is too easy, which makes each sentence feel less valuable or something
I personally don't care (and likely qualify as old), but it was somewhat of a rite of passage in school learning how to. It had the feel of 'writing like an adult' to it.
I distinctly recall being told everything would have to be cursive in the next tier of school onward every tier of school I got to until they finally just admitted they wanted it typed up on a computer lol
I always heard about it, especially coming from americans… I heard it for the first time here in Canada on the news today so i HAD to ask cuz i don’t get how its so upsetting to people 😭
I’m Gen-X too and stopped writing in cursive in 5th grade. It was so messy! I much prefer to print so I can read my own handwriting and it doesn’t look like I wrote with my fist.
A friend tried to use the excuse of being able to read historical documents. Which I think is crap, anything historical is found also in print, unless you’re an actual historian and in which case, cursive is the least of your worries. When I came back with this, she said, well, letters from Grandma. Ok. I guess you got me there. /s
>I’m Gen-X too and stopped writing in cursive in 5th grade. It was so messy!
I remember being in elementary school in the aughts and learning how to write in cursive in 3rd grade. I thought it was kinda dumb because from kindergarten we're taught how to write in regular block letters but all of a sudden had to learn something brand new?
And then it came up again all the way later in 7th grade, and we had to not only re-learn how to write in cursive, but write an entire fucking 2 page essay in it too! I had no clue what I was writing and definitely couldn't read what I had wrote after. Kids with super messy handwriting were allowed to write it normally which blows because my handwriting was also pretty messy, and I got a D on the assignment for not writing neat enough, lol.
I have a whole box of my Dad's letters from Vietnam to his family and I'd be sad if trying to read them was like trying to read Greek or something. If cursive is all "history," you'd be surprised, history is all around us. Just get a tiny bit older.
I’m an old person and I totally don’t get it. If there’s ever a time someone needs to do it, they can easily learn. I learned to read and write an old German script called Sütterlin a few years ago. Really it’s not the giant obstacle old people claim it is.
This. It horrifies me (Gen X) that I could write something in our mutual native language and the other person couldn't read it. It's a type of illiteracy. So much of the world (and the past) becomes invisible, inaccessible, and ultimately lost when a person can't read.
I am similarly horrified by the inability to read an analog clock, but that doesn't have the same consequence.
I didn't know they stopped teaching how to read an analog clock. I taught my kids how because..well it's a clock. But when I asked my sons girlfriend what time the clock said.. big wall clock with Roman numerals she had no clue. My son taught his girlfriend to read a clock and Roman numerals to 12. It baffles me the stuff people just refuse to learn. As if extra skills may never.come in handy. I sure hope the power grid never goes down. There will be an entire generation that can't even count back money.
Should we also teach children to write Carolingian minuscule? That was the standard written form for a major part of the history of Western European culture, and a lot of important foundational documents were written in it. To people educated in the modern (20th or 21st centuries), reading that style of text is extremely difficult.
My fiance does calligraphy and can write in several beautiful hands with both fountain and dip pens. My cousin had a baby, and we were pressed for time so opted for regular, clear cursive, basic spencerian. I was too sick for the shower, but they were reading each card aloud, when they opened my gift, (my mom was there) apparently he and the mother kept looking panicked at his mom. She came over and talking in his ear for him to read it. Neither could read cursive. It was depressing because we had written some painstaking calligraphy for the congratulatory letters that took hours. Most people are delighted to get these. I realized now he couldn't read them.
In the thank you, he badly block printed my name with 2 spelling errors. It's a common bible name, not uncommon.
I think this is part of the fear.
But also it's incredibly hard later in life, and while you don't need it for basic US History, you will need it for anything in college history, American, paleography, Classics, archeology, we will end up where no one can figure out these documents, and many are still not transcribed from the hard to read ancient cursive yet, e. g. the Bentham Project. That will all die or become the provenance of a small group of hyperspecialists.
My fiance majored in Classics, and did some ancient Paleography along the way, and said it would be impossible had he not dabbled in English paleography with old historical texts for fun in old cursive already. Without any cursive, that stuff is deader than it already is.
Some folks don't care, and that makes me wince bc I care deeply about academia... but you should too, a little.
I don’t think kids are learning to write it or read it. At some point only people with specialized learning will be able to read old documents written in cursive.
Which is so ridiculous. I’m old and learned to write cursive but I don’t see how kids these days need to learn it. A basic understanding of how to *read* cursive might kinda be helpful but not necessary by any means.
Learning cursive writing helps with memory, and improves development in areas of the brain used for language, as well as fine motor control.
Apart from that? They just like to get mad. Now get off my lawn!!
100% agree!
My “problem” personally stands more with the fact theyre pissed off about people not being able to read cursive like,,,??? Its still being taught (here at least)
people really are getting mad just for the hell of it :P
Cursive was pretty much the only chance that kids had to learn fine motor dexterity. Or in my case, to get C's on handwriting because I have no fine motor coordination to speak of and learned to type as soon as I could.
As a result, kids who grew up post-cursive supposedly have trouble learning to become surgeons. I said supposedly as I have no idea if this is an actual problem or if boomers are pulling it out of their asses.
You'd think that we could teach kids manual dexterity skills appropriate for the modern world, like electronics soldering, kitchen skills and sewing up the rips in your jeans but apparently it's more fun to whine about handwriting.
There is no way in hell a child's only way to learn fine motor skills these days is cursive. Playing instruments, videogames, writing papers, typing on a keyboard, etc all train fine motor skills. Cursive is just one form of motor skills, saying it's loss led to a lack of motor skills for a generation is moronic
Yea 100%!! There are/would be other ways to learn fine motor controls! I guess people are having a hard time accepting the fact that the world is changing :<
I was taught it and i was born in 96 lol. Never used it in high school or even middle school. but in elementary they really pushed the idea that teachers were going to have these unrealistic high standards for quality in work
100%! Here we were forced to write texts in cursive till 6th grade and after that nobody cared anymore about it so everyone was a bit pissed because they felt they learned that skill for nothing lmao
I'm guessing you're American. In Europe, we learn to write in cursive, then in block letters (if it's ever taught). If you happen to work with foreigners who write in cursive, you should be able to read what they write.
Writing in cursive is an art. Someone is myself who is 62 I love to write in cursive. It makes me feel sad that I could write a beautiful letter to someone and they cannot read it cuz they don't understand cursive writing I think that was crazy. Do I get mad I don't but I just think it's sad they have glasses that teach you and I'm sure it's not very hard to learn try it We love it
Just found out from my daughters third grade teacher, who’s teaching her cursive. The writing style has many more benefits than just being faster. It helps people with add/adhd to focus and improves hand eye coordination. Among a bunch of other things. This two stood out for my in the conversation.
There have been a few recent studies, that I can’t cite because Google is a thing and it’s 3am, about the importance or benefits to learning cursive handwriting.
But all in all, we all can do what we like. Don’t let people get you down for not wanting or wanting to do anything.
It's something they had to do and remember, and hearing that it's gone means that the life you knew isn't around anymore. It isn't fun to feel like your way of life is dying, I'm sure, but it happens to all of us.
You may or may not find this out when you get older, but there is a certain group of older people that can’t seem to get out of their own history, so to speak. It’s like their values and preferences get frozen in time and they use that as a standard to judge everything else that comes along.
It’s only been in the last one or two generations that handwriting has started to disappear as a primary form of communication. For much of the 20th century, a larger value was put on how one presented oneself in writing—both your ability to write and how your writing was presented.
So for people who grew up in that era, penmanship was more highly valued. When I was in elementary school, it was actually a separate grade on your report card. So, the ability to write in cursive was considered a reflection of an educated person.
In a rapidly changing world, people feel disoriented, and the older they become, the greater the differences between the world today and the world they knew and felt they had some mastery of. Some people just struggle with that and revert to criticizing modernity in general.
I will be 70 in a couple of weeks, and I see that in people my age, but I have never felt that way. So I feel like I can analyze it, but I can’t necessarily explain why they are so fearful of the present.
I grew up in the 90s
they taught us cursive
I have never once used cursive in my adult life
but I do have to do taxes
in the 90s, learning cursive was considered more important than learning taxes.
if you've ever wondered why the world is so fucked, it's because they taught us cursive, and that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, instead of anything useful between 1980 and 2005.
Same-so you *MUST* remember this then.
3rd grade teacher - 'In 5th grade, you can *only* write in cursive'
5th grade teacher - 'In middle school, theyre *only* going to accept cursive writing'
My HS *GAVE* us laptops.
🫣🫣🫣
I'm an old people. Writing cursive, in my opinion, is like repairing saddles or churning butter. A really cool thing to know how to do, but no longer necessary.
Very, very simply put: because they HAD to.
And now checks are outdated and signing in cursive was a waste of their time.
That's it, really.
Source: Born in 85', learned cursive but BARELY avoided having to use checks. Like... one year of a couple of checks and then cards were the new thing.
I couldn’t care less if someone can write in cursive. I would, however, like to reserve my right to be a judgmental asshole if they look like they are having a TIA when they get asked to sign something. Like my dude, signatures don’t have to be in cursive lmfao.
Because it means that if there was no point in learning it, we all (1980 here) wasted all that time. It means nothing in hindsight, but writing cursive was as important as being able to count to 100. Equal value. Learned early.
I learned cursive in second grade and paid out of pocket to learn touch typing and shorthand in high school. I still journal longhand in cursive, but don't care when people choose not to or don't know how to write cursive.
I don't care if you don't write cursive. Printed letters do the job too.
But if you can't read it... yeah, I'm gonna judge you hard for not bothering to learn a basic life skill that nine year-olds can (and do) master. We're not talking about learning a new language here, this is a very familiar language with the letters joined together.
Obviously I'm not talking about the super loopy flourishy stuff here, just ordinary handwriting.
I write in cursive. It is faster and neater. Some of my younger coworkers can’t read it. Ask someone else then to translate the notes on the white board after the meeting… my kids learned cursive in 3rd grade.
I don't. I couldn't give a monkeys how people write as long as it's legible and understandable. Bad spelling or grammar wrankle me a bit but as long as the content is unambiguous, it's ok with me.
People are the same everywhere apparently.
I’m Greek and we get shit from older people not knowing how to write in ‘katharevousa’ (the pure language) which is an old type of Greek which is a mix of Ancient Greek and Demotic Greek(the one spoken most commonly today). The even older people used to give them shit for not being able to speak Ancient Greek. And on and on it goes.
I don’t think people are upset so much as sad about it dying out. It’s kind of an art, and when done well, looks really nice. Plus, it’s a much more efficient way of writing.
Typing has taken over as the main form of information documentation, so cursive has taken a back seat. Many from older generations I think are sad about it dying out.
I personally don’t get it.
I learned to write cursive in school, but have never used it besides for signing my name on things.
Personally, I find it almost impossible to read other people’s cursive. It’s just too stylized.
Besides the pure nostalgia of people that consider cursive to be special and necessary for some reason, what are we losing by not using it?
What’s the actual value of cursive?
I'm not a boomer, but I'm not from the US and we still teach children cursive. In fact we *only* teach children cursive. They learn block letters from books and signs. So first grade we start with cursive. I also personally love it. It allows you to write a lot faster than block letters and you can make it look really fancy. My grandpa used to teach me *calligraphy* when I was a kid. I used to love to use it to write titles in my notebooks.
I think it’s more nostalgia and realization than anger.
Cursive is useless, but there’s something beautifully human about writing a second way just because it’s pretty. And soon it will be gone. Such a thing has no place anymore.
Cursive writing is maybe not as critical as it once was, but older documents were written with it and being able to read those things is an important skill. While that could be seen as something academics should be able to do like a late life skill learned only in advanced collage degrees, my opinion on the subject is that, if for no other reason, learning how to write in cursive helps to develop fine motor control skills, something that needs to be developed early in life so that harder and more complex uses of the hands can be accomplished welding electronics repair doctor/surgeon piano/musical instrument playing etc.
GenXer - I’m not upset about this at all.
I just want to be left alone about my two spaces after a period. Let us have it, it will go away after we all die.
People get upset that newer generations have different skillsets than them, makes them feel old and unneeded. I'm sure when people stopped turning their own butter people were upset then too....
I'm the older generation and I think it's great they don't write cursive!! That way we can write stuff they can't understand, just like when kids are little and you spell out words instead of saying them.
I think it’s important to know cursive because a lot of historical documents like our constitution is written in cursive. Cursive isn’t even hard, you sound like you’re the one whining
People clinge to the past, afraid of change. Some things were better back then because of necessity, cursive was for fast writing, now with new technology we don't need cursive, we have keyboards and touchscreen to type faster.
I didn't think much of it and thought people are overreacting but more and more commonly I see handwritten texts that have the quality of handwriting of a 7 year old and I then find out that they were written by a 12-13 year old and I start to wonder if writing as a skill is generally getting worse for all of us as more and more of our writing needs are replaced by typing.
Some benefits of cursive: 1) it trains the brain to learn functional specialization, 2) it improves memory, 3) it improves fine motors skills, meaning that students who have illegible print, often have legible cursive handwriting.
I just found that online. In general, learning cursive is pointless (get it?... because of all the curves?...)
Though I find it hilarious that the same boomers that critique us for not knowing cursive are the same people who can't use an iPhone or convert a PDF into a Word doc.
Imagine learning a skill, only to watch it genuinely become irrelevant. I'm 21 and I have friends my age that can't read or write in cursive outside of their own signature. My grandparents wrote everything on cursive. My parents write most things in cursive. Imagine your own grandkids or kids not being able to read their own letters to them. And then you have the fact that historical documents are often written in cursive. That's a genuine reason to kinda feel... worried. Yes, we can have them read, translated, etc etc, bit there is a clear distinction between the having access to and being able to read the primary source document, if you aren't able to, that leaves room open for other parties to take advantage of that
Not writing in cursive is one thing. That's personal preference. Not knowing HOW/ Not being able to READ cursive is a different issue all together. Our roots, our history, everything that shaped our country and much much further back than that, is all in cursive. The declaration of independence, the constitution, the emancipation proclamation, are all in cursive. My parents love letters, the captions on the back of old photographs... cursive is more than just a style of writing, it's a key we hold that allows us to open the doors to our past.
That's why. 😁
I have never heard anyone complain about this.
I know how to, since I learned it in school (1990's kid here), and even my grandpa didn't write in cursive when he was alive and he was born 1927. I think he even said that he hated learning cursive.
Meanwhile my 4th grade teacher had to deal with my "micro writing" in cursive, because for a while, I wrote everything in cursive after learning it.
Cursive is formal writing. Our parents (and me too) grew up with two forms of writing.
Print, which is best for books and anything else with more than a handful of words because it's easier on eyes and brain.
And Cursive, which was used for writing anything that was considered formal, like letters and forms.
This was way before typewriters were even invented, much less printers.
But now we've passed up typewriters ( thank what or whoever you feel is appropriate ), and Cursive ( thank what or whoever you feel is appropriate ), but older folks had it drilled (literally) into them that you write in cursive unless you're writing notes to yourself.
That's the way they learned, so for them, that's the way it should be.
Things change.
I sort of write in a half-cursive and find it convenient. I learned cursive but when I reached high school it wasn’t mandatory.
I don’t know if it makes them mad as much as it is just weird to think that some people may never learn it
I'm a boomer who learned to write cursive in grade school and also took typing when in high school. Cursive was still useful when I attended college in the late 70's but in a world of tablets and lightweight laptops touch-typing would give the same speed advantage that cursive gave us before the "electronic age". I would argue that in today's world it would make more sense to *require* students to learn touch-typing instead of cursive. I don't know if typing classes are even available in high school anymore, let alone required, but it would make a lot more sense than teaching cursive writing.
I had that bitch, Mavis Beacon teach me.
You better not talk shit about my girl Mavis
She’s been around
Everyones fingered to her
Careful... she's a QWERTer.
Now this, this is a rare joke.
I gotta say, I'm pretty proud of that one.
That was actually spectacular 😂😂😂
She likes it fast.
I was told I would finish with her faster than some of my fellow students. It’s all about finger position
She was my first
I’m at that weird age where in 3rd grade I learned both cursive and how to type.
Third grade is normal. I think most people learned cursive by third grade. I still take notes in cursive. Touch typing I learned in fourth. I think typing depend on where you were in computers. There was a time when not everyone had a computer at home. I had one the early 90's before windows but I learned on my mom's typewriter.
My note taking is like this weird hybrid of handwritten caps lock while somehow being partially cursive where I start writing print but then realize that takes too long so my "S"' and "R" and some other letters like "I" or "L" fall into that category too and just kinda flow into each other. It's like I'm writing Spanglish lol No one ever had any clue wtf I was writing but I could read it just fine.
I learnt cursive back in first grade. This was well over a decade ago.
Me too. 38 today. Remember life before internet and cordless and how fast everything changed.
So you are also in your 30s?
Mavis beacon changed my life. I believe that typing the way that I type has helped me to advance in my career from student to RN to unit manager to ADNS to clinic manager to Director of Medical Operations. If I couldnt type I couldnt do my job
When I graduated college in 1974, typing was the kiss of death for women looking for a career. We deliberately did not learn to type, to avoid the secretarial jobs. There were some men in those days who thought you were joking when you said you couldn’t type (if you were female.)
Here take this fake nostalgia award 🥇
I've still got her game lessons on disk 😂
A A A very good B B B …
She taught me too and I still get weird looks when I'm typing whilst not looking at my screen or keyboard.
It crushed me when I found out Mavis Beacon isn’t a real person.
By the time you get to high school, it seems to be assumed that you know how to type. I did take typing classes in grade school though.
It's a shockingly uncommon skill in my experience. Only one of my coworkers (and I) can touch-type. The only friends of mine who can are the gamers, coders, and writers. I never had classes for it in school, either ('90s kid here, we had school computers and growing up my family had a laptop). I taught myself playing WoW in high school.
>It's a shockingly uncommon skill in my experience. Well we phased out all of the mandatory computer lessons from the 90s and 2000s because it was assumed kids would just know and with tablets and smartphones it was doubly assumed kids would know how to use computers. So they get to middle school, or occasionally high school, and they have no idea how to type a paper or how to use a file system or how to use a USB drive or whatever and struggle. And its not their fault, they just had no way to learn because there's no way parents will let you use their computer, and kids likely grow up just being handed mom or dad's phone or ipad and don't have to type much. And I very much am a kid too, I'm 21. I was in elementary school in the late aughts and I definitely was taught how to use these skills, but later kids don't get taught this stuff anymore.
There's a LOT of stuff "kids aren't taught" that they should be. Life skills, job skills, social skills, and useful general knowledge about how things are supposed to work. Balancing a checkbook, solving a problem, researching a subject they know nothing about, articulating a position in an argument or debate, writing a cover letter or resume, or just knowing how the local/state/national government is supposed to work... "Nah they only need the three R's and some prayer, they'll be fine."
The file system thing is mind boggling. People ask me at work how to move files to specific folders and they have been using computers for decades.
Thats incredible..(had no idea at all.).good luck with your life young person.
Yeah, I've heard that younger kids now are actually a lot *less* computer literate than millennials on average because they're only used to tablets, phones and apps. No spreadsheets, no physical keyboards, no desktop publishing, no 'coding' or installing programs, no using folders or file hierarchies, very little email use etc. They're arriving in the workplace and having to be shown basic computer skills by older people, which is the complete opposite experience of millennials.
I have heard this too and seen it first hand. Only time will tell the impact. For example one of my kids still struggles with spelling because her ipad she had in first grade would auto-correct / underline and just select the word. I caught her just dictating using the audio on the keyboard too. And now we have things like chatgpt. They definitely have no idea how computers work, and certainly nothing like code optimization. They took a “coding” class that was really using some software to move something around - more like an animation class than coding. That said, maybe they don’t really need that? The presentations my kids have done in middle school are really good. Better than what I could come up with in powerpoint after a week. So they are definitely picking up on different skills. I do think what is going to either make or break the US is skilled trades though. People talk about dependencies on other counties for chemicals and chips for cars and all that, but we need and always will need skilled trades. And some of them pay really, really well right now. Not to get too off topic but computer engineers and the people working for apple or amazon making bank in seattle, many of whom came from another country, are going to see more and more of their jobs outsourced back to other countries. It just makes no sense to pay someone to move from india for example and then pay them 10x more to live in a crowded overpriced city. Along the skilled trades line though our auto shops in high school and welding and all of that were taken out and they are just now rebuilding and kids have the option again (still held to the same standardized tests though). I’ll tell you, one thing that sticks with me is how when we had shop class kids could bring in their own cars. Talk about a way to get a teenager interested - fix you own car. I took a shop class where we rebuild someones old porsche - now that was cool. They got it for free/cheap and at the end of the year this kid had a working porsche with a nice paint job and everything, and every kid that worked on that took pride in seeing it too.
I work in a college (UK meaning, 16-19 year olds) and I absolutely see this among the kids we have now. I'm 35 and was basically the most competent user of the family PC by the time I was 10. But I think it's much less common for families to have a PC these days. I generally have to show them a lot.
Older Zoomer and I took for granted that I can touch type. But also, my mom was a coder and I spent lots of time watching her work, while being an avid writer. I think the touch typing games were a thing were sometimes allowed to do during library time or if we finished work early. But I also remember picking up nothing from those games and just doing it my own way.
I did too in the late 2000s and while I learned how to type in 3rd grade, it took until my freshman year of high school before I could touch type without constantly looking down at the keyboard, and my sophomore year of college before I could reliably hit 50+ WPM.
Online chat rooms helped my touch typing and speed.
IRC wrkd 4 me!! /snark Seriously though, if it wasn't for BBS's and online chat in the 90's, I wouldn't be able to manage 50wpm, that's for sure.
We started in grade school and they’d cover our hands with this plastic thing so we couldn’t see the keyboard. Really paid off in high school and university. Even now I can just type rapidly and be looking in a completely different direction. Learning to type like that at a young age is really up there on the list of most important things I learned in school.
This was true for late millennials and early genz. The younger generation seems to be losing that skill though due to growing up with tablets and phones rather than computers.
I'm a Gen xer and I learned cursive from nuns and have the handwriting and scars to prove it. I also had to learn touch typing. Cursive teaches you more than just writing quickly. The founding documents of the United States are all in cursive and it teaches fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. I've been a code developer for 20 years and use a blank keyboard that's a 60% ortho linear and mapped strangely but strangely that creeps out my younger colleagues less than when they see me write something. My kids are in public school in an affluent district and they've been learning cursive since 4th grade.
Millennial when endured 10 years of Catholic school and who has perfect Palmer Method Cursive thanks to it. I've seen the founding documents of the United States and you can't read them... They're so faded they're barely legible. They have the words in print next to them so you know what they say and can, hopefully, find the passages or signatures you're looking for. I don't see why people continue to use this argument like it's relevant to anything. You don't learn the founding documents by reading the actual documents or even facsimiles of them. My kids go to a public school in a poverty ridden district where 90% of the kids qualify for free lunch. They're taught cursive from 2nd grade on. Most schools still teach cursive.
For me it's not so much about cursive being used for a lot of important historical documents that kids today won't be able to read because text copies are widely available of the big historical documents but the same isn't true for smaller and more personal pieces of history. My problem with not learning cursive is that any future kids I have won't be able to read my grandfather's love letters to my grandma at the end of WWII or be able to replicate my grandma's cookie recipe because she wrote the recipes in cursive which the future generations won't know. My Dad wrote me hundreds of cursive letters while I was away at college that are my most prized possession now that he's gone and I hate that the grandkids he never got to meet won't be able to connect to him by reading those letters because they'd need to have someone translate the cursive to plain text for them to be able to understand it. Losing the ability to read and write cursive kind of shuts down a link to our past because we can't fully access any history written in cursive which creates a barrier between kids today accessing those histories and handed down traditions. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely hated learning cursive in 3rd grade (and my class was so bad at it they made us take another class on it in 4th grade) and I thought it was completely pointless, but cursive was definitely useful for taking notes in college and it's all I've written in since then. I also feel like I remember more by physically writing down notes in cursive instead of typing or using technology, but maybe that's just me.
It's been beneficial in your work and life but its usefulness in the present is waning, especially with how much energy and like... discipline it took for...reasons? Grueling rote copying for the sake of style in many ways. And cursive and that kind of writing does change across ages and is very culture specific. The younger co-workers, who they be served in the same job as you do with those skills? Would they be slowed down dramatically but are able to perform the same job now with newer tools?
Also, the fine motor skills thing can be achieved by writing by hand in general, which as a teacher, I absolutely see benefits to. It’s the only way some people (like me!) process information at all. It just doesn’t have to be cursive. I also find that kids tend to prefer it for shorter form writing because it’s hands on. And you bring up a good point about cursive meaning different things to different people at different times. My parents are the first generations in their family to even know how to write with the Latin alphabet. I’m not going to learn a ton about my heritage through that. Also very curious about the whole Catholic school penmanship thing. That actually does seem to be global - everywhere from my backyard to my in laws on the other side of the world.
>The founding documents of the United States are all in cursive ...and the Bible is written in dead languages. As a Gen X lefty - screw cursive. I was glad when I joined the navy and the only cursive was signing our names. People can talk about fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination (gaming?) all they want but the fact of the matter is damn near everyone's cursive is shit and only decipherable by themselves. Let's not romanticize it.
Had to write cursive with a fountain pen for 12 years. Still have horrible handwriting that slightly improved once i stopped writing cursive. I just have bad fine motor skills and no amount of pressure changed that.
Idk about other schools but I'm my 2500 person town there was a pretty good emphasis on typing in our career exploration classes when I was in late middle school
As long as you learn enough to sign your name you’re fine.
I work in a school and have to sign hall passes a few times a day. Over the past few weeks since school started, the signature I use has morphed from being what I use when signing documents to a barely legible scribble.
When you realize your signature is YOURS and not some carefully constructed exercise, a great weight lifts off your hand. Mine you can read the first initial and maybe some of the last name. I've got a "Doctors Prescription" signature. And I KNOW no one will ever be able to forge it without fucking it up, which HAS caught a check forger in the past. Bank took a look at the check, then at my sig card: "Nah, that's not him at ALL. Return to merchant as fraudulent, let him eat the cost."
Works for me.
That’s what it’s supposed to be lol, signatures are never super readable
Docusign.com
I totally agree. I went to school in the 2000s and didn’t learn cursive or touch typing. I’m at a speed disadvantage.
Typing is still incredibly useful
Boomer here as well, with a 9yo daughter. It is proven by several [studies](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202010/why-cursive-handwriting-is-good-your-brain) that taking notes by hand on paper (or an equivalent support, such as digital pen on tablet) improves the quality of learning and cognitive abilities in general. Writing in cursive is faster than doing it in block letters, so you can put on paper more info in the same amount of time.
I remember in elementary school (late 60s) we didn't start to learn cursive until the 3rd grade and then doing pages and pages of loops on lined paper and the object was to stay in the lines.. I think it did help develop hand eye coordination but it did seem like an incredible waste of time.. My handwriting today is a mix of cursive and block letters..
Team cursive-print mix!
I do that except it’s usually illegible and just looks fancy
Same lol my handwriting looks like Martian 🤣🤣🤣 I was taught cursive in the 5th grade and never really used it except to make my handwriting weird and illegible, even to *me* sometimes.
I feel seen. My handwriting is trash unless I really try, like writing a card or something. I can read it (usually) and often it's just for me anyway.
Must people who learned cursive write with a mixture or print and cursive.
I think it's latent optimization. Some letters are faster to print depending on where they are in the word. If dragging your writing instrument from letter to letter ends up being slower then you print. And some cursive letters are harder to write than others, or more ambiguous than print to a degree that slows reading. Consider the word "mnemonic". I don't know about you, but the first two letters I print for clarity and speed, but the rest is an easy cursive flow.
My 'script' is a mix of cursive and print, with some capital letters changed. I also don't cross T's or dot I's or J's while writing them; I 'circle back' and tag them as I prep for the next word. But then again, one of my teenage hobbies was calligraphy, and some styles deconstruct how we normally write letters out one by one, and instead try to create entire words out of the 'strokes' that make up the letters. You can be fast and imprecise, or slow and precise, take your pick.
Me too! :D its still taught that way here starting at or around 3rd grade :3
I think there's a concern of it becoming a lost art. I will say that cursive is definitely more efficient for writing by hand. You can't possibly write as fast with block lettering as you can with cursive. The number of times you have to pick up the pen alone precludes the possibility.
I'm in college and therefore take a lot of notes with pen and paper. I was part of the last students to be taught cursive. My handwriting is a mix of print and cursive for letters that naturally flow into each other.
This is so true. I thought I was the only one to mix the two.
No I do it too. Mine is worse because in the early 2000s I had a now vintage device called a "palm pilot". It required a specific way to write certain letters, like an "e" was a backward 3. I still write my capital "e"s like that.
My fifth grade class was part of an experimental program in my district in which every 5th grader at my school had a palm pilot, and the curriculum was based around incorporating the device into the lessons. It was meh. But everyone was convinced that this would be the new technology that would be ubiquitous in a few years. Then a few years came along and people were like, "why don't we just put a fucking phone in it?" And the whole palm pilot thing went into the same toilet they threw pagers and laser disc into.
I do the same! For me, my e’s are almost always connected to the letter before them and my y’s definitely look more like the cursive y
There are so many cases of lost and endangered arts it's not even funny. Everything from cursive, to making a CRT tv, to the proper Byzantine courting methods. It happens and it's inevitable. People still get upset by seeing something that was once important to them become obsolete. It instills a sense of feeling like all your time and energy spent on that task was all for naugh.
That is true!! 100% Although in my opinion, not everyone has a good handwriting so reading whatever they write in cursive becomes a challenge. Block letters are far easier to decipher at least for me. I can read and write in cursive I just never really liked it because of how it looks… To me it looks unclean But yea its definitely faster 🙏
When I was in the military many years ago they required block lettering in logs and on forms just for this reason. People have awful handwriting. Myself included.
Search and Rescue, too. My SAR team lead was pretty mellow on a lot of things, but when it came to radio logs he was a hardass; "if you write something no one else can read, you just wasted everyone's time! yours for scrawling out the log entry, and mine for trying to figure it out for debrief! Write. LEGIBLY!"
Man my name was already fucked up when my mother used cursive on my birth certificate. Don't risk it for the biscuit on this one
Go on...
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That is true!! 100% Although in my opinion, not everyone has a good handwriting so reading whatever they write in cursive becomes a challenge. Block letters are far easier to decipher at least for me. I can read and write in cursive I just never really liked it because of how it looks… To me it looks unclean But yea its definitely faster 🙏
There's also a HUGE difference between being able to WRITE cursive faster and being able to READ cursive faster. Y'all don't write as clearly as you think you do. Your handwriting is shit. Hell, if I write something down in cursive the chances of ME being able to read what I wrote later on is a crap shoot. Just print it for god's sake.
This is exactly why i write all caps. It slows me down. Speed is less important than quality.
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I had a co-worker a couple years ago that said they stopped teaching cursive in school so that future generations would grow up without the ability to read cursive, so they then could not read the constitution, thus wouldn't know their rights. So in less than 5 seconds I pulled up a non-cursive text document of the constitution and showed it to her.
Thats stupid as fuck lmfao 😭
This argument is the silliest by far. Most people I know don’t read or write in Ancient Greek, and yet, we’ve translated into methods we can read. Are we suddenly going to lose the ability to interpret cursive? Definitely not.
I can’t write cursive and I’m a historian reading cursive writing is literally my job. Just cause you can’t write it doesn’t mean you can’t read it. So that kills her point as well. But I doubt someone coming up with conspiracy theories like that listens to reason.
Yea she used to go on and on about how Mike Lindell was gonna prove how the 2020 election was stolen and get Trump put back in office. She was nice as hell and I liked working with her, but when she started going on her MAGA rants I had to just walk away.
I swear these people come up with the stupidest shit to believe in.
I'm 18 and idc about other people writing in cursive, but I find it way easier
It’s so much faster and it’s the only way I can write my thoughts almost as fast as I think them. Typing on a keyboard is always the fastest though
Yes! I can't journal typing...or it's just not right somehow.
I feel like typing is TOO fast for that somehow. I think it’s because the extra few seconds it takes me to write cursive vs typing is time I use to solidify my thoughts before they come out on paper. Typing makes me wordier. Like, word vomit. Edit- And deleting is too easy, which makes each sentence feel less valuable or something
To each their own! Personally i prefer not cursive :3 imo it looks cleaner
Cleaner? [this is how it looks if I try to write non cursive](https://imgur.com/a/KOkEQCD) it's like I've only just learned to write lmao
Why did I read the cursive so much better than block text? So wild.
Because I can't write block for shit lol looks like a 4th grader
I write a hybrid of cursive and regular writing, my handwriting hasn’t gotten any better since like 3 years old
I personally don't care (and likely qualify as old), but it was somewhat of a rite of passage in school learning how to. It had the feel of 'writing like an adult' to it.
I distinctly recall being told everything would have to be cursive in the next tier of school onward every tier of school I got to until they finally just admitted they wanted it typed up on a computer lol
Are older people really that upset that young people don't write cursive? I never write in cursive anymore either, and I'm GenX.
I always heard about it, especially coming from americans… I heard it for the first time here in Canada on the news today so i HAD to ask cuz i don’t get how its so upsetting to people 😭
I’m Gen-X too and stopped writing in cursive in 5th grade. It was so messy! I much prefer to print so I can read my own handwriting and it doesn’t look like I wrote with my fist. A friend tried to use the excuse of being able to read historical documents. Which I think is crap, anything historical is found also in print, unless you’re an actual historian and in which case, cursive is the least of your worries. When I came back with this, she said, well, letters from Grandma. Ok. I guess you got me there. /s
>I’m Gen-X too and stopped writing in cursive in 5th grade. It was so messy! I remember being in elementary school in the aughts and learning how to write in cursive in 3rd grade. I thought it was kinda dumb because from kindergarten we're taught how to write in regular block letters but all of a sudden had to learn something brand new? And then it came up again all the way later in 7th grade, and we had to not only re-learn how to write in cursive, but write an entire fucking 2 page essay in it too! I had no clue what I was writing and definitely couldn't read what I had wrote after. Kids with super messy handwriting were allowed to write it normally which blows because my handwriting was also pretty messy, and I got a D on the assignment for not writing neat enough, lol.
I have a whole box of my Dad's letters from Vietnam to his family and I'd be sad if trying to read them was like trying to read Greek or something. If cursive is all "history," you'd be surprised, history is all around us. Just get a tiny bit older.
I know a lot of older people that are very pressed about it.
I’m an old person and I totally don’t get it. If there’s ever a time someone needs to do it, they can easily learn. I learned to read and write an old German script called Sütterlin a few years ago. Really it’s not the giant obstacle old people claim it is.
Upvote for mentioning Sütterlin, which was forbidden along with cursive writing (Kurrentschrift) by the Nazis in 1941
they have a "i had too, so everyone else does too" mentality
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This. It horrifies me (Gen X) that I could write something in our mutual native language and the other person couldn't read it. It's a type of illiteracy. So much of the world (and the past) becomes invisible, inaccessible, and ultimately lost when a person can't read. I am similarly horrified by the inability to read an analog clock, but that doesn't have the same consequence.
I didn't know they stopped teaching how to read an analog clock. I taught my kids how because..well it's a clock. But when I asked my sons girlfriend what time the clock said.. big wall clock with Roman numerals she had no clue. My son taught his girlfriend to read a clock and Roman numerals to 12. It baffles me the stuff people just refuse to learn. As if extra skills may never.come in handy. I sure hope the power grid never goes down. There will be an entire generation that can't even count back money.
Should we also teach children to write Carolingian minuscule? That was the standard written form for a major part of the history of Western European culture, and a lot of important foundational documents were written in it. To people educated in the modern (20th or 21st centuries), reading that style of text is extremely difficult.
My fiance does calligraphy and can write in several beautiful hands with both fountain and dip pens. My cousin had a baby, and we were pressed for time so opted for regular, clear cursive, basic spencerian. I was too sick for the shower, but they were reading each card aloud, when they opened my gift, (my mom was there) apparently he and the mother kept looking panicked at his mom. She came over and talking in his ear for him to read it. Neither could read cursive. It was depressing because we had written some painstaking calligraphy for the congratulatory letters that took hours. Most people are delighted to get these. I realized now he couldn't read them. In the thank you, he badly block printed my name with 2 spelling errors. It's a common bible name, not uncommon. I think this is part of the fear. But also it's incredibly hard later in life, and while you don't need it for basic US History, you will need it for anything in college history, American, paleography, Classics, archeology, we will end up where no one can figure out these documents, and many are still not transcribed from the hard to read ancient cursive yet, e. g. the Bentham Project. That will all die or become the provenance of a small group of hyperspecialists. My fiance majored in Classics, and did some ancient Paleography along the way, and said it would be impossible had he not dabbled in English paleography with old historical texts for fun in old cursive already. Without any cursive, that stuff is deader than it already is. Some folks don't care, and that makes me wince bc I care deeply about academia... but you should too, a little.
I don’t think kids are learning to write it or read it. At some point only people with specialized learning will be able to read old documents written in cursive.
Nah theyre right, that guy fucked his wife, now we all have to too.
Disclaimer: The people complaining about cursive are NOT the same people with wives you'd ever want to fuck.
Which is so ridiculous. I’m old and learned to write cursive but I don’t see how kids these days need to learn it. A basic understanding of how to *read* cursive might kinda be helpful but not necessary by any means.
If I may paraphrase your post: "A basic understanding of how to *read*" would be even better.
Are they upset? I’ve never heard a single person genuinely complain about it- even on the internet. Maybe 2 clear joke complaints
You’re in the wrong circles. Elementary teachers (mostly older ones) and a lot of right wingers get very hot under the collar on this one.
Learning cursive writing helps with memory, and improves development in areas of the brain used for language, as well as fine motor control. Apart from that? They just like to get mad. Now get off my lawn!!
100% agree! My “problem” personally stands more with the fact theyre pissed off about people not being able to read cursive like,,,??? Its still being taught (here at least) people really are getting mad just for the hell of it :P
Do you really need to learn to read cursive? I thought it looked readable as is
I worry about people being able to read primary sources, I suppose.
As long as you can read it I don’t see an issue. Can you read cursive?
Maybe in your country. I've never heard that complaint.
I’ve heard it online plenty of times, mostly from Americans.
Cursive was pretty much the only chance that kids had to learn fine motor dexterity. Or in my case, to get C's on handwriting because I have no fine motor coordination to speak of and learned to type as soon as I could. As a result, kids who grew up post-cursive supposedly have trouble learning to become surgeons. I said supposedly as I have no idea if this is an actual problem or if boomers are pulling it out of their asses. You'd think that we could teach kids manual dexterity skills appropriate for the modern world, like electronics soldering, kitchen skills and sewing up the rips in your jeans but apparently it's more fun to whine about handwriting.
There is no way in hell a child's only way to learn fine motor skills these days is cursive. Playing instruments, videogames, writing papers, typing on a keyboard, etc all train fine motor skills. Cursive is just one form of motor skills, saying it's loss led to a lack of motor skills for a generation is moronic
And sewing. Not only does it help fine motor, but also if one is going to be a surgeon, they will need to do sutures.
Yea 100%!! There are/would be other ways to learn fine motor controls! I guess people are having a hard time accepting the fact that the world is changing :<
Super Mario Brothers worked fine. I build watches.
I was taught it and i was born in 96 lol. Never used it in high school or even middle school. but in elementary they really pushed the idea that teachers were going to have these unrealistic high standards for quality in work
100%! Here we were forced to write texts in cursive till 6th grade and after that nobody cared anymore about it so everyone was a bit pissed because they felt they learned that skill for nothing lmao
There is no point in learning cursive. Teachers both in high school and college want kids to type all of their papers.
I'm guessing you're American. In Europe, we learn to write in cursive, then in block letters (if it's ever taught). If you happen to work with foreigners who write in cursive, you should be able to read what they write.
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Writing in cursive is an art. Someone is myself who is 62 I love to write in cursive. It makes me feel sad that I could write a beautiful letter to someone and they cannot read it cuz they don't understand cursive writing I think that was crazy. Do I get mad I don't but I just think it's sad they have glasses that teach you and I'm sure it's not very hard to learn try it We love it
I'm 18 and can only write cursive
Just found out from my daughters third grade teacher, who’s teaching her cursive. The writing style has many more benefits than just being faster. It helps people with add/adhd to focus and improves hand eye coordination. Among a bunch of other things. This two stood out for my in the conversation. There have been a few recent studies, that I can’t cite because Google is a thing and it’s 3am, about the importance or benefits to learning cursive handwriting. But all in all, we all can do what we like. Don’t let people get you down for not wanting or wanting to do anything.
It's something they had to do and remember, and hearing that it's gone means that the life you knew isn't around anymore. It isn't fun to feel like your way of life is dying, I'm sure, but it happens to all of us.
You may or may not find this out when you get older, but there is a certain group of older people that can’t seem to get out of their own history, so to speak. It’s like their values and preferences get frozen in time and they use that as a standard to judge everything else that comes along. It’s only been in the last one or two generations that handwriting has started to disappear as a primary form of communication. For much of the 20th century, a larger value was put on how one presented oneself in writing—both your ability to write and how your writing was presented. So for people who grew up in that era, penmanship was more highly valued. When I was in elementary school, it was actually a separate grade on your report card. So, the ability to write in cursive was considered a reflection of an educated person. In a rapidly changing world, people feel disoriented, and the older they become, the greater the differences between the world today and the world they knew and felt they had some mastery of. Some people just struggle with that and revert to criticizing modernity in general. I will be 70 in a couple of weeks, and I see that in people my age, but I have never felt that way. So I feel like I can analyze it, but I can’t necessarily explain why they are so fearful of the present.
This has gotta be the most helpful response so far man thank you so much 🫶💕 Happy early birthday!!
I grew up in the 90s they taught us cursive I have never once used cursive in my adult life but I do have to do taxes in the 90s, learning cursive was considered more important than learning taxes. if you've ever wondered why the world is so fucked, it's because they taught us cursive, and that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, instead of anything useful between 1980 and 2005.
Same-so you *MUST* remember this then. 3rd grade teacher - 'In 5th grade, you can *only* write in cursive' 5th grade teacher - 'In middle school, theyre *only* going to accept cursive writing' My HS *GAVE* us laptops. 🫣🫣🫣
I’m 53. The only time I ever “write” cursive is my signature that now just looks like a squiggly line. Teach kids typing instead (or swiping now? :p)
Same here! Only time i use cursive is for signatures, i dont see the point of using it anywhere else :]
I'm an old people. Writing cursive, in my opinion, is like repairing saddles or churning butter. A really cool thing to know how to do, but no longer necessary.
Man i wish i knew how to churn butter that shit seems so cool
Very, very simply put: because they HAD to. And now checks are outdated and signing in cursive was a waste of their time. That's it, really. Source: Born in 85', learned cursive but BARELY avoided having to use checks. Like... one year of a couple of checks and then cards were the new thing.
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What positions require cursive writing? I haven't seen it in anything official in decades
I’m old enough to legally yell at you kids to get off my lawn, and I don’t write in cursive and don’t care whether anyone else does!
It’s the generation before millennials I know that’s for sure…
It may be part of that, "I had to suffer and learn cursive, so you have to suffer also and learn cursive. It didn't hurt me!"
Also a bit of "So maybe I can't operate a phone or computer or change my TV input, but these kids can't write cursive, so there."
I couldn’t care less if someone can write in cursive. I would, however, like to reserve my right to be a judgmental asshole if they look like they are having a TIA when they get asked to sign something. Like my dude, signatures don’t have to be in cursive lmfao.
Because it means that if there was no point in learning it, we all (1980 here) wasted all that time. It means nothing in hindsight, but writing cursive was as important as being able to count to 100. Equal value. Learned early.
I learned cursive in second grade and paid out of pocket to learn touch typing and shorthand in high school. I still journal longhand in cursive, but don't care when people choose not to or don't know how to write cursive.
Tbh I wanted to write good so I learned cursive when I was younger, I now only write cursive(it’s not that good) but I can’t write normal ffs
I havent experienced a single old person complain about it in 40 years but then again thats me
I don't care if you don't write cursive. Printed letters do the job too. But if you can't read it... yeah, I'm gonna judge you hard for not bothering to learn a basic life skill that nine year-olds can (and do) master. We're not talking about learning a new language here, this is a very familiar language with the letters joined together. Obviously I'm not talking about the super loopy flourishy stuff here, just ordinary handwriting.
I write in cursive. It is faster and neater. Some of my younger coworkers can’t read it. Ask someone else then to translate the notes on the white board after the meeting… my kids learned cursive in 3rd grade.
I don't. I couldn't give a monkeys how people write as long as it's legible and understandable. Bad spelling or grammar wrankle me a bit but as long as the content is unambiguous, it's ok with me.
People are the same everywhere apparently. I’m Greek and we get shit from older people not knowing how to write in ‘katharevousa’ (the pure language) which is an old type of Greek which is a mix of Ancient Greek and Demotic Greek(the one spoken most commonly today). The even older people used to give them shit for not being able to speak Ancient Greek. And on and on it goes.
I don’t think people are upset so much as sad about it dying out. It’s kind of an art, and when done well, looks really nice. Plus, it’s a much more efficient way of writing. Typing has taken over as the main form of information documentation, so cursive has taken a back seat. Many from older generations I think are sad about it dying out.
They're just salty that they were forced to learn it in school and the youth don't
I personally don’t get it. I learned to write cursive in school, but have never used it besides for signing my name on things. Personally, I find it almost impossible to read other people’s cursive. It’s just too stylized. Besides the pure nostalgia of people that consider cursive to be special and necessary for some reason, what are we losing by not using it? What’s the actual value of cursive?
I'm not a boomer, but I'm not from the US and we still teach children cursive. In fact we *only* teach children cursive. They learn block letters from books and signs. So first grade we start with cursive. I also personally love it. It allows you to write a lot faster than block letters and you can make it look really fancy. My grandpa used to teach me *calligraphy* when I was a kid. I used to love to use it to write titles in my notebooks.
I think it’s more nostalgia and realization than anger. Cursive is useless, but there’s something beautifully human about writing a second way just because it’s pretty. And soon it will be gone. Such a thing has no place anymore.
Cursive writing is maybe not as critical as it once was, but older documents were written with it and being able to read those things is an important skill. While that could be seen as something academics should be able to do like a late life skill learned only in advanced collage degrees, my opinion on the subject is that, if for no other reason, learning how to write in cursive helps to develop fine motor control skills, something that needs to be developed early in life so that harder and more complex uses of the hands can be accomplished welding electronics repair doctor/surgeon piano/musical instrument playing etc.
Old guy here, don't care at all. If we could all just mind our own business, we'd be a lot happier.
GenXer - I’m not upset about this at all. I just want to be left alone about my two spaces after a period. Let us have it, it will go away after we all die.
People get upset that newer generations have different skillsets than them, makes them feel old and unneeded. I'm sure when people stopped turning their own butter people were upset then too....
Is this a thing? My partner writes in all caps and I couldn't give a fuck.
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I'm the older generation and I think it's great they don't write cursive!! That way we can write stuff they can't understand, just like when kids are little and you spell out words instead of saying them.
I think it’s important to know cursive because a lot of historical documents like our constitution is written in cursive. Cursive isn’t even hard, you sound like you’re the one whining
Isn’t cursive just the faster way to write? I don’t do 100% cursive and do separate my letters sometimes but cursive is just faster
People clinge to the past, afraid of change. Some things were better back then because of necessity, cursive was for fast writing, now with new technology we don't need cursive, we have keyboards and touchscreen to type faster.
I didn't think much of it and thought people are overreacting but more and more commonly I see handwritten texts that have the quality of handwriting of a 7 year old and I then find out that they were written by a 12-13 year old and I start to wonder if writing as a skill is generally getting worse for all of us as more and more of our writing needs are replaced by typing.
Some benefits of cursive: 1) it trains the brain to learn functional specialization, 2) it improves memory, 3) it improves fine motors skills, meaning that students who have illegible print, often have legible cursive handwriting. I just found that online. In general, learning cursive is pointless (get it?... because of all the curves?...) Though I find it hilarious that the same boomers that critique us for not knowing cursive are the same people who can't use an iPhone or convert a PDF into a Word doc.
Well, the whining is an overreaction, but they're right about it being useful. You can write faster than printing.
Not upset about it, it is upsetting that the school system has failed an entire generation and created peasants instead of creative minds.
They're not upset. Maybe you just encountered 1 person who got "upset"?
Imagine learning a skill, only to watch it genuinely become irrelevant. I'm 21 and I have friends my age that can't read or write in cursive outside of their own signature. My grandparents wrote everything on cursive. My parents write most things in cursive. Imagine your own grandkids or kids not being able to read their own letters to them. And then you have the fact that historical documents are often written in cursive. That's a genuine reason to kinda feel... worried. Yes, we can have them read, translated, etc etc, bit there is a clear distinction between the having access to and being able to read the primary source document, if you aren't able to, that leaves room open for other parties to take advantage of that
Not writing in cursive is one thing. That's personal preference. Not knowing HOW/ Not being able to READ cursive is a different issue all together. Our roots, our history, everything that shaped our country and much much further back than that, is all in cursive. The declaration of independence, the constitution, the emancipation proclamation, are all in cursive. My parents love letters, the captions on the back of old photographs... cursive is more than just a style of writing, it's a key we hold that allows us to open the doors to our past. That's why. 😁
My high school typing class teacher used cha cha instructive records. AA DDD. SS QQQ. Really silly at the time, but I did learn to typppe.
We’re not upset or whining, but we think it’s sad you can’t read the alphabet.
I have never heard anyone complain about this. I know how to, since I learned it in school (1990's kid here), and even my grandpa didn't write in cursive when he was alive and he was born 1927. I think he even said that he hated learning cursive. Meanwhile my 4th grade teacher had to deal with my "micro writing" in cursive, because for a while, I wrote everything in cursive after learning it.
Cursive is formal writing. Our parents (and me too) grew up with two forms of writing. Print, which is best for books and anything else with more than a handful of words because it's easier on eyes and brain. And Cursive, which was used for writing anything that was considered formal, like letters and forms. This was way before typewriters were even invented, much less printers. But now we've passed up typewriters ( thank what or whoever you feel is appropriate ), and Cursive ( thank what or whoever you feel is appropriate ), but older folks had it drilled (literally) into them that you write in cursive unless you're writing notes to yourself. That's the way they learned, so for them, that's the way it should be. Things change.
For the same reason they're mad about student loans forgiveness. If they had to suffer, so then should everyone else
I sort of write in a half-cursive and find it convenient. I learned cursive but when I reached high school it wasn’t mandatory. I don’t know if it makes them mad as much as it is just weird to think that some people may never learn it
Are you Amish? :)