Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
"Longhand" Writing Going Away?
I can still remember, vaguely I will admit, trying to learn how to make my hands and fingers behave so that I could write ‘longhand’ using cursive letters. Cursive writing was a real effort for me; so much so that by the time teachers were no longer insisting that cursive be used, I began to print because it was easier and neater and quicker. I think I made that break from the established norm in 6th grade after Miss Sheridan finally quit nagging me.
An article appeared in the week-end Wall Street Journal discussing the fact that the State of Indiana has recently decided to end the requirement for teaching cursive in its public schools statewide. That article also referred generally to other states that had made similar decisions, but didn’t identify any others. My grandson confirmed that he’ll have to learn cursive this coming year in third grade.
The use of keyboards for almost everything today has apparently finally gotten to the level of acceptance that handwriting using cursive simply isn’t a necessity any longer. I am not sure how kids will learn to sign their names since that is a cursive exercise. I imagine that printed signatures will suffice. Maybe ultimately we’ll simply go back to making our “mark”.
There are probably two distinct extremes involved with this change. Kids will be very happy to have been able to avoid this exercise, while hand writing analysts will be hard-pressed to justify their existence.
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