The End of Cursive
A number of Michigan schools are making cursive handwriting optional. I remember learning to write in “cursive” as opposed to “printing” somewhere around third grade. At the time (and even now) I never really understood why, after learning one perfectly good way of writing (and much more legible in my opinion), we then were basically told to forget it and move on to use cursive. But then, later on in my academic career, it was completely forgotten. What a waste of time. Printing, for me, was so much faster, so much easier to read. I could write upside down or sideways as need be, and I could always read it. The only thing I use cursive for is my signature, which has evolved into basically a longer version of my initials. Printing is just easier. There are too many intricacies to cursive and one wrong motion and you’ve got a different letter. So I’m happy in one sense that this useless (in my opinion) form of writing is going away. However to the point that handwriting in general is becoming useless – that I would save for another blog entry.