A Case For Cursive - For History’s Sake
Last week my folks went on vacation and came back with some souvenirs for my daughter and her cousin - replicas of The Declaration Of Independence.
They presented it to the girls at a family dinner and the hard to miss events that happened next have inspired this post.
My daughter’s response was delight, as she’s a total history buff, and quickly went to open the document and began reading it.
My niece’s response was that of confusion. She opened it up.. looked at it... turned it over... looked at my daughter.. then her Papa and said, “I can’t read this. Is it French?”
The girls are the same age, one has gone to public school her whole life and one is homeschooled. This isn’t a debate about what is better, as both girls are extremely intelligent and will go far in life.
But the fact that my niece had no idea how to even begin reading this thing she had been handed, when my daughter was easily deciphering it, hit me in the gut pretty hard.
I do remember making it a point to teach my daughter cursive writing, as I thought it was important. I have heard many times that schools aren’t teaching it anymore, and felt that was a shame.
But seeing the results of these decisions (on both parts) before my eyes was a pretty intense moment.
Crazy enough, everyone else at the table seemed to realize in that moment the exact same thing... as silence overcame the group.
My daughter looked at her cousin, scooted closer and began reading the document from the beginning aloud to her.. and my nieces eyes lit up.
After dinner my munchkin dug out her old cursive writing curriculum and started working through it with her cousin, then told her she could have it and they could practice by writing letters to each other.
We have a whole generation of individuals who cannot read The Declaration Of Independence, or any other historical document for that matter.
Let that sink in.
Teach your kids cursive, for History’s sake.
It’s never too late.
Much Love,
Justine
Agree, but cursive is not the only writing style that's left to be forgotten into illegibility. Do you remember Fraktur typeface? You know, the writing commonly associated with the Third Reich. Needless to say, they aren't "Nazi letters" or even Gothic for that matter, but yet another writing style that had been in use for centuries, not only in Germany. Of course, it is true that the Nazis did greatly enjoy Fraktur, for being rooted in Northern traditions, and such things they were always suckers for.
What's more, Fraktur has its own cursive! So back in the day kids used to learn, read, and write all four scripts. But since the only benefit they offer is being able to read old texts, they are considered useless, and going rapidly out of style. The only exception I can think of are gang-tatoos or neo-nazi decos, which is quite sad, if you think about it. I know, I've always had a hard time reading Fraktur, though it's all just a matter of practice.
So true, languages or writing styles are “forgotten” often.. which is so insane considering it makes so much of our history.. unknown to so many. Even Latin, said to be a dead language is the base of our language as well as many others. Having an understanding of it allows you to decipher scientific names and even understand a word you may have never seen before, as you understand it’s origins. I find it quite fascinating 🙂
I am so glad you wrote about this - I AGREE! I AGREE! I've raged about this for ages. My mother in law has the most gorgeous penmanship, and although mine is nowhere near, I use cursive quite a lot. My son knows how but I think we might have had to teach him as they phased it out when he was in school. I simply can't imagine not knowing! Have we lost respect for the art of language and communication?
Ah yes! I love looking at the beautiful script writing in old letters.. mine is nothing in comparison and is quite sloppy, but I still use cursive almost exclusively and am very glad I pushed it with my daughter.. she loves deciphering old letters too 🙂
When I went to elementary school we had "penmanship" classes.
No such thing is being taught in today's digital environment.
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So true, we live in a swipe world now. 😕
Interesting... and not something I’d really thought about. I certainly think it takes some study & practice to write cursive well, but I’m surprised there’s that big a legibility issue! The letterforms are so similar overall I feel like you can quickly see the conventions of cursive (looping, interconnected letters) and at least read it; albeit more slowly if not accustomed.
Yes I am surprised at the difficulty if I’m honest.. and this is a common occurrence. Something about our brains won’t process it or something haha.
Honestly, I don't really get what they're teaching kids at school these days and I feel old for saying it, but hell, when I was a kid at school, they made us write like that (well, messier, but you get the point). But nowadays, kids stare as if it's some alien language and it's horrible. Just think how much information is threatened by that :(
They teach them to follow orders 😉
Yeah so dependent on technology and complete inability to read a form of text that is still used by a large majority of the population. It’s crazy 😕
We depend so much on computers as cursive is no longer a thing! Not even signatures are being required to sign digital documents. I went through this as my daughter writes better cursive than me as it has been years since I have done so!
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So true! Babies can used computers now but many high schoolers can’t read cursive. Crazy world we live in haha.
My daughter is already surpassing me in penmanship.. I’ve never had lovely writing.. I blame it on being left handed though haha.
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Ya crazy they would just quit teaching cursive!
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Right? So strange.
written in code, deciphered only by the elders or elite home schooled lol
Lol! Better make some friends with some 😜
I have heard many stories like this though. My aunt hired a younger local girl to do some chores at her house.. wrote her a to do list, poor girl couldn’t read it and had to call her to ask her what she wanted done. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it hah.