None of my students can read cursive

[larryc]

...and so ends an era. There are handwritten documents that I have handed out for years in my history classes. About 6 or 8 years ago a significant number of my students began to have trouble reading them, but even then enough knew the basics that they could power through them with help. A few years later it was worse and I began to abandon any undergrad assignment that required the ability to read cursive. This past year none of my undergrads could read cursive at all, except for one young woman who is doing her family's genealogy. And most of my grad students cannot read it either. Like some Native American languages only recalled by a few elders, cursive will soon be extinct.

I am mostly OK with that. Cursive was doomed the day the first laptops entered the schools. To really teach it, cursive has to be taught for years, students need to submit all of their major written assignments in cursive through middle and high school. It'd be a vast waste of everyone's time to force students to learn something they will never use after high school. I know that there are arguments that cursive is good because reasons. They strike me as grumpy old person bullshit. My students do not know how to plow a field with a mule, or churn butter, or write in cursive.

History majors will soon have apps on their phones to transcribe old cursive documents for them (actually Google Lens is already decent). Everyone else will forget about it. And I am mostly OK with that.

[mamselle]

Sad.

Those of us who enjoy the dusty old books will still want to see them in person, and--speaking for myself--"I don't want no stinkin' machine reading my Carolingian uncials for me..."

M.

[dismalist]

Ah, I miss Fraktur Fraktur, a subcategory of Blackletter Blackletter . I can read Fraktur, but can't write it. I think computer type faces of these exist, though.

World is going down the tubes, and me with it.

[dr_evil]

What a shame, because I find it so much faster and easier to write in cursive. I don't type everything because it's too annoying with mathematical equations and symbols, so I write comments by hand when I grade. While I make sure to print when I use the board in class, I don't always for my comments.

[dismalist]

What a shame, because I find it so much faster and easier to write in cursive. I don't type everything because it's too annoying with mathematical equations and symbols, so I write comments by hand when I grade. While I make sure to print when I use the board in class, I don't always for my comments.

Hell yes! And Word equation editor is a bitch.

[ergative]

Ah, I miss Fraktur Fraktur, a subcategory of Blackletter Blackletter . I can read Fraktur, but can't write it. I think computer type faces of these exist, though.

World is going down the tubes, and me with it.

I mean, the decline started before that. The end began when Anglicana Formata slipped into Bastard Secretary.

[dismalist]

Ah, I miss Fraktur Fraktur, a subcategory of Blackletter Blackletter . I can read Fraktur, but can't write it. I think computer type faces of these exist, though.

World is going down the tubes, and me with it.

I mean, the decline started before that. The end began when Anglicana Formata slipped into Bastard Secretary.

They're both beautiful. We're at the stage where it's less trouble to read a script, which is good, and unnecessary to write such scripts, which is also good. But it's like the move from Michelangelo to photography. Something gets lost.

Cursive was the first villain, making it easier to write, probably to read. Clearly, the typewriter was the second villain. It allowed less educated women to enter the labor force, supplanting the highly trained -- male -- secretaries. Now we have these things called computers with infinite typefaces. We don't have the time for the pretty ones.

For all the things the computer can be trained to write with, we still have the substantive problem that the medium is the message. Who could write "I luv u" in Anglicana Formata? :-)

[ergative]

They're both beautiful. We're at the stage where it's less trouble to read a script, which is good, and unnecessary to write such scripts, which is also good. But it's like the move from Michelangelo to photography. Something gets lost.

Does it, though? There are many, many talented artists working today. Comparing them to Michelangelo would not be fair, but comparing them to the rest of the oil-on-canvas hacks who made a living doing what Michelangelo did so well would not, I think, leave the modern artists at a disadvantage.

Cursive was the first villain, making it easier to write, probably to read. Clearly, the typewriter was the second villain. It allowed less educated women to enter the labor force, supplanting the highly trained -- male -- secretaries. Now we have these things called computers with infinite typefaces. We don't have the time for the pretty ones.

Typing is faster and easier to read than handwriting, so whether the rise of the typewriter and subsequent decline of handwriting was the fault of uneducated lady girls having the temerity to strive for financial independence or the fault of highly trained male secretaries wanting to make their jobs easier seems beside the point.

I do agree, though, that typewriters reduced the importance of handwriting and so reduced training. My mother would also argue that the rise of ballpoint pens--which require more pressure to write with, and a different grasp to accommodate the more vertical angle relative to fountain pens--meant that writing by hand became more uncomfortable. She was born in 1952 and blames ballpoints for her failure ever to learn cursive. She says she went straight from printing to typing.

For all the things the computer can be trained to write with, we still have the substantive problem that the medium is the message. Who could write "I luv u" in Anglicana Formata? :-)

Well, I mean, I could...

But I think that's rather an interesting question: Are these skills to be valued for their formal beauty? If so, there are many, many highly skilled calligraphers and painters and artists doing exquisite work, easily on par with the average level of the historical craft they're emulating. Nothing has been lost.

Or are the skills valuable only inasmuch as they were beautiful things that were functionally woven into the fabric of a society and economy? It is certainly true that, no matter how skilled those modern calligraphers are, the books of hours they write are not intended to be functional prayer objects, and the indentures and charters they produce are not going to serve as functional legal documents.

But in this latter case, then it seems that what we're grieving when we grieve the loss of cursive or fraktur or anglicana formata is not the loss of the skill itself (which is still alive and well and practiced by many artists still), but the loss of the society that it belonged to. And in that case, it's not fair to criticise kids these days for not being part of a society that no longer exists.

[Parasaurolophus]

A couple of weeks ago, a student complimemted me on my "really nice" writing. It's certainly cursive, but it's a scrawl.

[dismalist]

They're both beautiful. We're at the stage where it's less trouble to read a script, which is good, and unnecessary to write such scripts, which is also good. But it's like the move from Michelangelo to photography. Something gets lost.

Does it, though? There are many, many talented artists working today. Comparing them to Michelangelo would not be fair, but comparing them to the rest of the oil-on-canvas hacks who made a living doing what Michelangelo did so well would not, I think, leave the modern artists at a disadvantage.

Cursive was the first villain, making it easier to write, probably to read. Clearly, the typewriter was the second villain. It allowed less educated women to enter the labor force, supplanting the highly trained -- male -- secretaries. Now we have these things called computers with infinite typefaces. We don't have the time for the pretty ones.

Typing is faster and easier to read than handwriting, so whether the rise of the typewriter and subsequent decline of handwriting was the fault of uneducated lady girls having the temerity to strive for financial independence or the fault of highly trained male secretaries wanting to make their jobs easier seems beside the point.

I do agree, though, that typewriters reduced the importance of handwriting and so reduced training. My mother would also argue that the rise of ballpoint pens--which require more pressure to write with, and a different grasp to accommodate the more vertical angle relative to fountain pens--meant that writing by hand became more uncomfortable. She was born in 1952 and blames ballpoints for her failure ever to learn cursive. She says she went straight from printing to typing.

For all the things the computer can be trained to write with, we still have the substantive problem that the medium is the message. Who could write "I luv u" in Anglicana Formata? :-)

Well, I mean, I could...

But I think that's rather an interesting question: Are these skills to be valued for their formal beauty? If so, there are many, many highly skilled calligraphers and painters and artists doing exquisite work, easily on par with the average level of the historical craft they're emulating. Nothing has been lost.

Or are the skills valuable only inasmuch as they were beautiful things that were functionally woven into the fabric of a society and economy? It is certainly true that, no matter how skilled those modern calligraphers are, the books of hours they write are not intended to be functional prayer objects, and the indentures and charters they produce are not going to serve as functional legal documents.

But in this latter case, then it seems that what we're grieving when we grieve the loss of cursive or fraktur or anglicana formata is not the loss of the skill itself (which is still alive and well and practiced by many artists still), but the loss of the society that it belonged to. And in that case, it's not fair to criticise kids these days for not being part of a society that no longer exists.

Very thoughtful, ergative.

I don't grieve for the loss of most parts of former societies, just for some existing parts of ours. Perhaps fairly described as a loss of taste, including in writing conventions.

As for the use of scripts, the efficient will win, without question.

[Katrina Gulliver]

I was writing on a plane the other day and the woman next to me complimented my handwriting. (I have a very curly cursive hand).
Typing is faster than handwriting, but the mental process is different.

[downer]

What if writing is on a computer in a cursive font? Can the students read that?

I'd suggest they can read cursive, but now they think they can't.

[AvidReader]

A few years back, I offered extra credit in a course if students read a page of secretary hand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_hand). I gave them an alphabet and some general principles. Halfway through, I realized some of them were struggling more than I had expected because they didn't even know cursive. Oops.

AR.

[Hibush]

What if writing is on a computer in a cursive font? Can the students read that?

I'd suggest they can read cursive, but now they think they can't.

Choose Bradley Hand to begin with, then if they manage that into the cool and casual Mistral. Easy enough to test. Some students might select the text and change the font to something they can read.

In my Jr. High German class, we learned to read cursive Fraktur. A little bit. Then in Russian I in college, cursive Cyrillic. I might still be able to decode some of that. But it is more important to practice decoding my own cursive notes.

[marshwiggle]

But in this latter case, then it seems that what we're grieving when we grieve the loss of cursive or fraktur or anglicana formata is not the loss of the skill itself (which is still alive and well and practiced by many artists still), but the loss of the society that it belonged to. And in that case, it's not fair to criticise kids these days for not being part of a society that no longer exists.

Good analysis. One thing though; a love letter in cursive seems infinitely more intimate than anything typed, since each letter reflects the individual writing. No amount of emojis can replace that.