A recent front-page article in the Denver Post, entitled “Writing Off Cursive” explains that elementary schools are no longer spending the time they once did on teaching cursive handwriting. This time instead is being devoted to meeting the ever-looming state standards. (Is there any subject or discipline of equal importance to those globally written, yet ever-conflicting requirements? I fear over time that we are turning impressionable young minds into regimented automatons capable of passing tests, but incapable of thinking creatively. But I digress.)
As many adults, I gave up writing in cursive many years ago. The flowing letters I created were never that great to begin with. At the same time I,
and most adults, still spend a good deal of time printing our way through life. Fill out a form? Jot yourself a note? Hang a quick sign? In most cases it’s still on paper. I am not a purest who thinks keyboarding is the devil incarnate. That said, legible handwriting is still required in countless situations.
Perhaps over time, we will all navigate from task to task with a digital device in our hands that replaces the pencil and pen and perhaps even reads our minds, but I’m not expecting that anytime soon. In the meantime, we will be inculcating emerging generations with an expectation that all the world is a series of digital navigations.
If cursive is no longer relevant, can we at least teach them to print legibly? Educators will tell you that they learned that in pre-school. Oh were that really true. Besides, once you place a keyboard and mouse in front of children, they will migrate to that out of fascination if nothing else.
As with any skill, writing by hand requires practice and mastery. Simply learning the basics at five years old, does not mean that these individuals will be able to communicate legibly when they are young adults and beyond. Imagine the 18-year old on his first job struggling to write notes, complete forms, and other writing requirements in today’s workplace, not tomorrow’s. For a high school freshman, that can be less than two years away.
School districts are focusing on getting students “keyboard fluent” by sixth grade. Heck, most of them are that way by third. At the same time, managers struggle to understand why there is so much illegible handwriting among young employees. As with much of technology, we become the victims of the law of unintended consequences. This appears to be another example.