A lost art -- writing in cursive

I had a very well prepared and attentive group of teenage boys in agenealogy class recently. They all had a Spanish speaking heritage. Theyall came prepared to the class with information about theirgrandparents who were born in Mexico. With the new records onFamilySearch's Record Search, we were able to find some of their familyrecords right online. As I showed them the records we had found, one ofthe boys raised his hand and said, "Mr. Tanner, we can't read cursive."This was not just one of the boys, none of them had ever been taught toread or write cursive!

I soon learned that writing in cursive, for anyone younger than twentyyears old, is fast becoming a lost art. News articles from major newssources like, USA Today, have headlines that read, "Schools debate: Is cursive writing worth teaching?" In another article in the NYDaily News, the questions is asked, "Cursive writing is a fading skill, but do we care enough to save it?"There is a real debate about whether or not cursive writing has a placein the "modern" school curriculum. (Hmm, there are those of us whowonder if anything is taught in schools today at all, but that isanother issue).

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This is an excellent point to raise, James. And it's not simply among school-age children. I recently "unearthed" two hand-written historical letters in collections and received copies to send along to a distant cousin whose family was the subject of the letters. The cousin is a bank manager and he couldn't make "heads or tails" of the cursive writing (which seemed quite clear to me). This ties in also (which you correctly state as "another subject") with the skill of reading properly spelled words instead of the "texted" spelling too prevalent among the young and even older folk today. While I agree that language is "organic" in the sense that it adapts, changes, grows, it seems rather amazing that what many of us consider simple and basic skills and literacy is becoming "a lost art".

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Comments

Wilma McLean July 22, 2011 at 11:22am

Cursive writing should be taught in school just becasue all records are not computer generated. How are our child going to read anything that is not computer generated? Are we going to go back to our old records and translated them so that the future generation can read them. Something to think about!!!
William S Dean October 13, 2010 at 9:56am

This is an excellent point to raise, James. And it's not simply among school-age children. I recently "unearthed" two hand-written historical letters in collections and received copies to send along to a distant cousin whose family was the subject of the letters. The cousin is a bank manager and he couldn't make "heads or tails" of the cursive writing (which seemed quite clear to me). This ties in also (which you correctly state as "another subject") with the skill of reading properly spelled words instead of the "texted" spelling too prevalent among the young and even older folk today. While I agree that language is "organic" in the sense that it adapts, changes, grows, it seems rather amazing that what many of us consider simple and basic skills and literacy is becoming "a lost art".

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