Cursive: Rewriting Tradition

From going back and dotting the cursive “i’s” in obligatory birthday thank you notes to not lifting our pens off the paper while signing NHS forms, the cursive we learned in third grade has played a part in all of our lives.

When my third grade teacher wrote that cursive was on our agenda for the day, my dreams of learning the fancy font and grown-up style of writing were fulfilled. I had visions of all my assignments boasting the sophisticated calligraphy and believed this would be the way I wrote for the rest of my life — turns out it isn’t as vital to my high school writing abilities as I thought.

The fun script we learned in elementary school is a dying culture — and isn’t seen as often as it should be in high school. Although cursive has been a writing standard for so long, our generation and generations to come are disconnected from it.

If it was required more often in elementary and middle schools, many more people would use it as their main writing style because as we would get better and more familiar with it, it would probably be even faster than the writing we do today.

The Common Core (academic standard for literacy) removed the required handwriting course for cursive in recent years due to a lack of importance. Not only do my cursive g’s look way better (and fancier) than my print ones, but it also teaches students precision and accuracy in its writing technique.

While there are compulsory writing laws for cursive in specific states today like Texas and Florida, which will over time add in cursive to their elementary school’s learning requirements again, each state should come up with their own handwriting laws with reinforcements of the style throughout middle and high school.

Also, with technology becoming more present in our society, it is becoming less important to know writing skills. Kids are tech-savvy more than ever and are relying more on Google spell check than actually learning fundamental writing ideas. With 6-year-olds understanding iPhones more than 60 year olds, it’s safe to say that technology is the future and cursive is not.

Cursive was a part of the school’s common curriculum when most of us high-schoolers learned it. And for the rest of elementary school, cursive was reinforced by my teachers as an option. The teachers who preached cursive wanted to instill the muscle memory of the new writing style into us. But since Mrs. Nelson’s third grade class, the only time I loop my letters is when I sign after swiping my credit card.

While cursive can sometimes be seen as an old, unimportant form of writing, it also carries a different importance among culture and tradition in the world.

With cursive getting less common in our society, people probably think that we don’t need to be able to recognize it anymore. I believe that we should be learning it more because it is getting less common, and should be more aware of it. 

It would greatly increase our writing abilities and effectiveness when writing if this style was more frequently taught in school and we were able to practice it more to improve.

Sure, even though the multiple-paged how-to packets got a little lengthy in elementary school, I now know that it wasn’t just a way of writing, but something that was important at the time for learning and expanding my writing skills. Little did I know, that would be the year in my life I probably used cursive the most.

I know that if cursive was more common in our age demographic, that I would prefer to write in it because when I do whip it out every now and then, it makes my handwriting so much better than normal.

Even if it’s not a big part of today’s society, cursive should still be considered a part of history in the writing and translating aspect from looking at works written hundreds of years ago and being able to interpret that certain penmanship.

While I don’t always write in cursive, I see it in older generations all around me. With some, cursive is commonly used as their sole form of writing because it was taught more prominently when our parents were young. It is likely to say that with our age group however, writing in this polished style will not be as common as we see it today.

When my relatives write me birthday and Christmas cards, it’s always written faintly in cursive and it’s only slightly difficult for me to read the handwriting. My 67-year-old aunt using cursive her whole life made me realize how prominent this writing style was for their generation and how it’s gradually fizzling out for my generation.

To keep the culture alive, teachers should require it more often than they do and make us more comfortable with the style by assigning more handwritten papers and assignments in cursive.

When the next generation wants to go to the bank to deposit a check but isn’t able to because they weren’t taught how to write their name in cursive, they’ll realize the magnitude.

We need to keep cursive in our culture and keep the third graders excited about the cursive lessons — it’s a part of history, and it should remain that way.