In 2011, the American state of Indiana announced that its schools will no longer be required to teach cursive writing, and instead will teach “keyboard proficiency”. (Wikipedia) This caused me to think about my handwriting experiences way back then and now thus this column.
Most people my age were taught to write in the cursive style and fortunately, for me, also to write in a print or block (manuscript) style. Without the latter, I would be lost if I had to write otherwise. One motive for learning the cursive style, reportedly, is that it allows the writer to write faster since the letters are generally connected making a more “flowing” style.
I do not know much about the teaching of handwriting, but I suppose the student is first taught to write in what I call “block” letters since it obviously does take some hand/eye coordination to write otherwise, and little ones have not yet reached that stage of development.
When would you ordinarily even use the cursive style anyhow? I generally TRY to use it when I sign my name, write a check or on rare occasions when I find it absolutely necessary to write a more formal “personal” note for instance thanking someone for a gift or a kindness.
I have described my Hamer first grade classroom (Miss Maggie was the teacher.) where cards (Seems they were black with upper and lower case with white letters.) were posted above the blackboard. Decades later as I look at the examples of such cursive writing, I think that there were a few of the letters (notably the ‘q’ and ‘z’ that I probably never did master.
When I was faced with writing either, I would (and do) simply print the letter. The capital ‘q’ is still baffling to me today.
Fortunately I hardly ever have use of that particular letter. But for 99.99% of the time, I have a life saver: the computer keyboard. IT solves a lot of handwriting problems.
In the case of Indiana, the new emphasis is centered on developing keyboard skills since on a typical program (Microsoft WORD) there are literally scores of available typefaces (fonts) that are available to the writer including several I would define as cursive. So if your manual handwriting skills are lacking, crank up the computer and fire away!
One defense of the cursive style is that without being able to read it, much of the past writing when this was the preferred style will be lost or at least will require a specialist in handwriting to translate it into a style then currently understood.
Diaries, letters, legal documents and all kinds of certificates come to mind. But as someone has suggested, by the time, there will be a computer program that will take care of that little problem.
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Bill Lee
PO Box 128
Hamer, SC 29547
