What’s a skill you consider basic, that most people don’t actually know how to do?
Gather around, you young whippersnappers! Let me tell you what school was like back in my day! grumble grumble, dagnabbit …
I remember learning cursive in elementary school. “Fancy writing” that did serve a practical purpose despite how unintuitive and confusing it could be. Cursive allows one to write faster and more efficiently. The line of each letter flows into the next, creating a long string of interconnected symbols that aren’t slowed down by print writing’s need to lift the pencil and move it over to start the next letter.
It’s quite beautiful, actually, but cursive is hampered by a basic fact of modern life:
How often does anybody need pencil and paper anymore?
Typing is all the rage. Keyboard, smartphone, you name it. And those letters on the screen are in print, so how urgent is it to learn cursive? Do they even still teach it in schools nowadays? Well, you whippersnappers? Do they?
Truth be told, as basic and mandatory as cursive once was in my school days, it’s practical value was limited even then. I grew up in the dying days of cursive handwriting, and I certainly don’t use it anymore now. I could likely remember the forms if I was pressed to give a demonstration. Probably. Maybe.
Beautiful, but obsolete. Maybe in another ten years it will become a secret code of sorts. The kids won’t have a clue what you’re writing down in front of their eyes. It’ll be a whole new form of cipher. Faced with cursive letters, people will be at a loss to explain the strange, archaic glyphs. Hmm, that has possibilities …
Maybe the old can find a new purpose, after all.
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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.
I know I’m old – coming up 54 – but the best way to take notes while I’m on my desk phone is with a pen and paper. See, it’s still faster and easier to handwrite than to type, especially when the person you’re talking to is a confused senior trying to remember the title of a book she read once. And yes, I could put the phone on speaker so I had two hands to type, but there are seven other people in my office who would hate that. Cursive isn’t some elite, obsolete affectation. It’s a method of communication and record keeping that works when the power is out, and you don’t need to access the right file type to read it. There’s stuff I committed to computer files back in the late 90’s that is lost forever because the programs to open the files don’t exist anymore. Learn to write.