Do children still need to learn cursive? Following in our first discussion of whether cursive should be taught, many listeners now in their twenties say they didn’t learn cursive in school and have trouble reading it. Others view it as a lost art, akin to calligraphy, which should be learned and practiced for its aesthetic value. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “More on Learning Cursive”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. We got an email from a guy in Texas named Truman Blocker.
He writes,
I recently celebrated my granddaughter’s 13th birthday, and on the occasion of becoming a teenager and a beautiful young girl and a very bright junior high school student,
I composed a detailed, loving message on a birthday card to her.
Okay, it was a little mushy, but hey, I’m her proud grandfather.
When I thought the time was right, I handed it to her and requested she read it aloud to her parents and friends while I teared up.
Immediately, she handed it back to me and said, Granddad, I don’t read cursive.
Oh. Oh. Oh.
That was sort of his response. Actually, he wrote, he said, ex-squeeze me?
Absolutely. I made you this very nice dinner. Oh, I don’t like that. Can you make me something else?
And, of course, his email was prompted by a conversation we had recently about who, if anyone, reads and writes cursive writing these days.
And we got so many responses.
I’m telling you.
Yeah.
And some of the most interesting ones came from listeners in their 20s who told us that they’re not at all surprised to hear that their peers are having a hard time reading this.
Gordon Sluder is 23.
He lives in San Diego, and he called to say that he wasn’t taught cursive in school.
Gordon told us, I had to privately, on my own, learn how to read cursive.
I still don’t know how to write cursive, but I can read it with great difficulty.
And he emphasized the great.
Yeah.
Well, good for him, though.
He learned his skill.
Yeah, exactly.
We talked about this in the original show.
It’s kind of fallen to the same place as calligraphy.
You only learn it if you want to know the art.
Right.
Well, in fact, John Foster of Vancouver took a different tack.
He writes, I’m 24 and probably part of the last generation where cursive was a required part of the curriculum in grade school, and I’m glad for it.
As someone who has great admiration for some of the skills that have been lost to mainstream society, tying bow ties and shaving with straight razors to name some others, I’ve taken to corresponding with some of my friends by mail.
For these letters, I use a fountain pen, which requires you to write in cursive.
Unlike ballpoint pens, which require a certain amount of pressure to leave a mark, fountain pens will ink the page with just a glancing strike.
As you write, the page rises and falls with the pressure of your pen.
When you write in block letters, you lift your pen only ever so slightly between letters rather than making the large leap over the space between words.
Because you’ve released the pressure, the page rebounds back into the nib of your pen.
So what he’s saying is that if you’re printing the letters with a fountain pen, you’re more likely to have a messy, ink-stained page.
And as a result, John continues,
When I first started writing with a fountain pen, I had my mind blown, as we kids say,
To realize that cursive served a practical purpose as well as an artistic one.
So if we wish to keep cursive writing alive rather than taking up arms against the computer,
We should arm our children with fountain pens and have them realize for themselves the beauty of the handwritten word.
This is one fight in which the pen is truly mightier than the sword.
Well, very good.
I love that aesthetic take on cursive writing.
And I agree. And this is why I don’t think that cursive will ever completely leave us.
It might. It’s on its way out. We heard from a lot of young listeners who said, eh.
It’s too beautiful.
Well, we heard from Alan Peterson in Oklahoma, who’s 22, and he said,
We were forced to learn cursive and write it in fourth and fifth grade.
After that, I never used it again and never looked back.
Wow.
I think you’re going to be hearing it from more and more people like that.
Well, certainly, we’ve received a lot of email, tons of phone calls, lots of social media messages about cursive writing.
Hey, we’ll take some more.
What’s your take on cursive writing?
Do you need it?
Do you know it?
Do you want to know it?
877-929-9673 or email us, words@waywordradio.org.
Does this mean that people will be reverting to “making their mark” on legal documents? I am currently on active duty and routinely have to explain to younger Sailors the difference between “signing” their name to a document and “printing” their name.