Robert Berry's Web Site

The following news comes to us courtesy of the Olsen Twins’ Web site:

According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 90 percent of Americans between the age of five and 17 use computers and many kids can type 20 to 30 words a minute by the time they finish elementary school. As a result, many educators and parents around the country are worried that the popularity of e-mail, IM’s (Instant Messages) and other electronic communication is causing young students to lose the skill and the desire to write in cursive!

To which I reply: Many educators and parents are morons.

Here’s a quiz. (Sign painters and manuscript illuminators need not answer):

1. When is the last time your job required you to write in cursive?
2. When is the last time your job required you to be able to type?

That’s what I thought. In most occupations today, cursive writing is utterly worthless. On the other hand, typing is a requirement for almost any professional job. I would have thought that educators would be delighted that kids are mastering an essential skill like typing; as I recently posted, even I didn’t learn to type until the eighth grade, so today’s kids are several years ahead of me. If, as a tradeoff, they are dropping an archaic and obsolete skill, so much the better.

When I was taught cursive in school, I found it confusing and pointless, but I soon learned why I had to learn it: it was going to be an essential skill for later grades, where teachers required that I write papers in cursive. I never quite understood why they wanted me to write in a way that was less legible, but for years I complied. I never wrote in cursive when I was taking notes for my own use, but whenever I had to write any kind of paper or essay, I used cursive. I particularly remember that Mrs. Jackson, the single worst teacher I ever had, made it quite clear that no paper written for her English class would be accepted unless it was written in cursive.

In high school, the teachers weren’t so rigid, but this didn’t dawn on me until sometime in the tenth grade. Eventually I realized that I could revert to actual legible printing, and so I did; and I have never written cursive again. (One could argue that my signature is cursive, but anyone who has ever seen my signature understands that it’s actually a stretch to even call it writing.) Never in my entire life, not once, have I encountered any situation outside of a school setting where cursive writing was required. In other words, these “educators” mentioned above are mourning the loss of a skill no one cares about but them.

In the 1970s, I suppose I can see an argument that cursive could come in handy. Cursive has only one thing going for it, apart from its ornamental value: it can be faster to write in cursive than using print. (That was never the case for me, actually, but I suppose it might be for some people.) When the only way to take notes was by writing longhand (or shorthand), any skill that increased your writing speed could be very valuable for certain occupations. This is why doctors are renowned for having bad handwriting: they actually do a lot of writing, and they don’t have a lot of time to do it. Therein lies the tradeoff of cursive: it may be faster to write, but it’s a lot harder (sometimes impossible) to read.

But this is the 21st century. As the news article I cited indicates, students today — even elementary-school students — are accustomed to using computers and other high-tech devices. Laptops and PDAs are commonplace, and few people write letters on paper anymore. Typing is both faster and more legible than cursive handwriting. So what’s the problem? Most kids today don’t know how to churn butter or hitch a mule to a plow, but I don’t hear a lot of educators fretting about that.

Half a century ago, the Germans finally realized that their antiquated Fraktur script, while perhaps esthetically pleasing, was an obstacle to making themselves understood. Today, Fraktur is of only historical interest, and the only people who bother with it are those who have reasons to decipher old documents. Someday that will be the case with cursive handwriting, and as far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better.