Cursive Writing

Well I must admit that I was shocked to hear that the basic skill of cursive writing is no longer a requirement in any school and very few still make it part of their curriculum. Personally, I’m guessing they gave up on the doctors first, long ago, and the rest of us were so busy playing video games and texting that we just didn’t notice, but it’s true. In Tennessee there is now a movement to bring it back and it’s got quite a following; all started when a young student received a paper back from his teacher only to discover he could not read the comments she had put on his paper … all in cursive writing.

There are no doubt quite a few out there that think it’s a thing of the past, replaced by eMail and all sorts of technology that make it passé and I can’t completely agree with that. Most of us still leave notes, write down directions, etc. on a near daily basis and if you think a doctors handwriting looks bad, you should try to read some of this chicken scrawling that so many adults put out. WOW … I never fully understood how large an advantage this is! I’m one of those that took it a few steps forward years ago when I learned basic calligraphy and have adapted it into my every day life, in fact I write several thank-you notes each week using my own calligraphic style and you would not believe the number of phone calls I get just gushing all over me about how much they enjoy it … oh yeah, and a lot want to know if I do wedding invitations too … LOL.

Honestly, there are many benefits to learning and using cursive writing. Yes, it is slower, but the advantage to that is that it causes your brain to slow down and think things through before you write, creating a much better formed and thought out sentence, paragraph, etc. It also vastly improves the writers manual dexterity & visual activity simply by using the brain and hand / eye coordination; yep, that also gets a good work out. Hard to believe that this simple activity can have so many benefits. Oh yes, and another one is that the students cannot cut & paste their next research paper together. When they have to write it out, they understand it and when they understand it, they actually are learning the subject rather than how to just assemble something quickly that they have no idea about.

Taking a page out of my own book, years ago I taught a bunch of young engineers how to use the basic slide rule (good luck finding those on Amazon!) after they could not do calculations on material feed rates next to a very large electric furnace (large EMP sphere). After seeing how it worked, several proclaimed it was the most useful “new technology” they had ever seen! I got a laugh out of that, but they learned an important lesson; that older technology wasn’t necessarily useless, especially when you considered how it could be applied. Sadly, a decent slide rule today will set you back $100-250, if you can find them, but for furnace engineers they are invaluable.

There is a tremendous movement towards these so called “preppers” that are all getting ready for society to collapse but I’m not sure they have thought out how people will communicate directions, instructions, etc. if they cannot simply write them down. I once got a Christmas card from a photographer in NYC. His wife was holding a view camera lens in her mouth while he held the shutter. The inscription was “the old equipment is still the best equipment” …. So true Alfred, so damn true!