Cursive! Foiled again

It was in the news last week that Indiana lawmakers were looking to pass legislation to require that the Indiana Department of Education require the teaching of cursive in schools. This raises numerous questions like “Are these the same legislators that decided that daylight savings time did not exist until three years ago?” or “Didn’t they once almost pass a bill that stated that the value of Pi was three?” or “Wow, I didn’t even think Indiana had a department of education?” But mainly it makes you wonder about writing in cursive and what skills from my youth are no longer necessary.

(By the way, I am not kidding about the whole Pi being equal to three thing. There literally was a bill that nearly passed the Indiana legislature which would have made that true. One of my favorite pieces of math trivia ever. Also, I must be the only person who not only has a favorite piece of math trivia but also has numerous lesser quality pieces of math trivia in his repertoire. Sigh.)

I don’t know about anyone else but I was taught how to write in cursive in third grade on that weird three line paper with the light line to show how high to make the smaller letters. I will say that I was taught cursive but I don’t think I can say that I ever mastered it. My handwriting was always atrocious. I knew what all the letters looked like (including the fact that a capital Q looked way to much like a 2 than it should) but I could never write them in any manner that anyone else could read. I’m pretty sure teachers never read anything that I wrote, they just assumed that I was smart and graded appropriately. Throughout grade school I was forced to write in cursive and once I was given some more flexibility in high school I started printing everything. My handwriting still sucks but it is at least vaguely legible now. The only thing I write in cursive is my signature.

In fact, I am probably old fashioned in the way that I still write down anything. At least at work I have my daily notes for the day written in a notebook and I will always write my to do lists on paper. Most people would just use their laptops to keep notes and text or email messages. I know that I am the last person to have actually written a letter and I bet most students would rather take notes electronically than in a battered notebook. Cursive seems like a completely foreign skill.

I’m not sure where I fall in the debate, though. You certainly do not need cursive in order to survive in modern society. I honestly can’t remember the last time that I have needed to read cursive in real life. From a practical matter it is a completely useless skill that does not provide you with any measurable advantage. But there is a part of me that still remembers learning cursive as being a major portion of growing up for one reason…

As a kid I would go to the library and check out collections of Peanuts cartoons. I would read them and always be upset when I got to a series of strips with Charlie Brown writing to his pencil pal. Since he wrote in cursive I could never understand the strips. Learning cursive in third grade allowed me to get the jokes. In some way that made me feel like I was growing up. I think kids need to have those little victories. Makes life a little easier to handle.