Cursive Writing! Is It Bad If Schools Don't Teach It Anymore? Is Cursive Like Latin? Does Our Society Lose Anything If Our Kids Can't Read the Actual Original Founding Documents?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: It was a good book, the student told the 14 others in the undergraduate seminar I was teaching, and it included a number of excellent illustrations, such as photographs of relevant Civil War manuscripts. But, he continued, those weren’t very helpful to him, because of course he couldn’t read cursive.  Had I heard him correctly? Who else can’t read cursive? I asked the class. The answer: about two-thirds. And who can’t write it? Even more. What did they do about signatures? They had invented them by combining vestiges of whatever cursive instruction they may have had with creative squiggles and flourishes. Amused by my astonishment, the students offered reflections about the place—or absence—of handwriting in their lives. Instead of the Civil War past, we found ourselves exploring a different set of historical changes. In my ignorance, I became their pupil as well as a kind of historical artifact, a Rip van Winkle confronting a transformed world. This paragraph comes from an essay in The Atlantic.  The essay is titled: "Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive."  The author is Drew Gilpin Faust.  You  can read the full essay here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/gen-z-handwriting-teaching-cursive-history/671246/   Zac and Don talk about cursive writing.  They had to learn it in school.  Their children and their classmates do not have to learn it.  They discuss if this is a big deal or not.  They wonder if our society lose anything if we can't read and write in cursive? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bestparagraph/message