Cursive – Who Thought This was a Good Idea?
I have a vivid memory from a very young age of scribbling a bunch of loops on a piece of paper with a blue ballpoint pen. My young mind was intrigued with how long swirls and peaks could form words. Of course, since I was still too young to read I was writing gibberish.
As I grew older writing became a constant part of my life. Much of my early education involved drawing block letters in large spaces on lined paper. Every year the spaces grew smaller in order to refine my handiwork. I always knew that my artistic skills were not great when it came to drawing lines, and my simple block letters were no exception.
In third grade I finally reached what I thought was the holy grail of writing. In Mrs. Powers’ class I learned to write in cursive. I learned the letters, and how to string them together easily. Of course, my cursive writing was only legible if I wrote slowly and carefully. In addition I had adopted special forms of certain letters such as the capitalized T and F from Mrs. Powers’ own style, rather than her lessons. She taught the “proper” way, but I preferred the letters as she wrote them. To me it was as much a preference in style as it was in legibility.
The next few years I dutifully wrote cursive in class. I pitied my poor teachers who had to read my writing, and I still do. My cursive legibility relied as much on the readers’ expectations as my own skills. This, I learned later, was a common thread between most writers of the cursive script. Honestly, can you say that you’ve never found a beautifully written page that had words that could only be discerned based on the words around them?
After Mrs. Powers, the most important person in my life of the handwritten word was my 8th grade history teacher, Mr. Keith. One day Mr. Keith pulled me out of class and had a very frank discussion with me.
“David,” he said, “your handwriting is terrible. Some letters angle to the left. Some angle to the right. They should all angle to the right because the eye flows better that way.”
His next words changed my life.
“Honestly, if you can’t write any better than that, then print.”
It really was that simple. The rigid requirements of school said that I should use cursive script, because it was a skill I should practice. Another requirement was that my writing be legible enough to read. The two requirements, in my case, were contrary. I had, though, been trying to meet both requirements. Mr. Keith helped me understand that there could be a choice.
From that day forward I turned in my classwork in printed form. I would have turned in my homework the same way, except that I rarely saw homework as a requirement.
Every year most teachers would approach me and inform me that I should be turning in my assignments in cursive. Printing my assignments was not acceptable, because I was expected to use cursive script. Since I had learned a bit about making decisions on my own in the face of conflicting instructions, I knew what to do. I would smile, nod, and agree to use cursive script.
I would then turn in my next assignment in cursive, without the care required to make my assignment reasonably legible. After that one assignment I would return to my printed words without a word, or a complaint from the teacher.
Cursive, I learned, was pretty but useless. As a system of communication, cursive was imprecise. With practice my writing never improved beyond what I learned in third grade. I had gained in speed, but not legibility. Cursive writing was not for me, and I began to think it wasn’t so great for everyone else either.
Several years ago the news came out that schools were no longer pushing cursive writing skills as a necessity. I was thrilled with the news. Not only would the new kids no longer be forced to learn a form of communication that was barely effective across the general population, but also there was hope that one day I could read a prescription form.
Now when I write by hand I prefer an all-caps block lettering. Occasionally I throw in a lower-case vowel such as when I write the word “email.”
I think the biggest lesson I learned through all of this wasn’t really about cursive script at all. It was about rules. To my teachers writing cursive was the rule. I was expected to follow the rule. The rule, as it turns out, wasn’t 100% right. Learning the difference between rule and right is important to us all, and cursive script was a tool that helped me understand.
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