i was thinking about making a post about the importance of learning cursive handwriting (historical documents, neurological benefits) etc. but then i remembered how i learned cursive by my teachers guiding my hand. i realized that this is basically off limits in the U.S and this would be seen as very scandalous for a teacher to do but in most of the world its such a normal, innocent act for kids to learn how to write. a low touch culture literally kills a people so insidiously.
I learned cursive around 2008-2010. It only got outdated and discouraged around 2015-2016 or so.
i learned it by having a teacher talk about it and show examples and then making us do it… that’s pretty much all of school really. no one ever had to touch me to teach me anything as far as I recall
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In China, people are just forgetting how to handwrite altogether. You can be considered a fluent speaker and writer without handwriting anything, because most modern tests allow computer, pinyin input for writing. There are many terms for the phenomenon, such a 电脑失写症, 汉字遗忘症, 拼音综合征, 汉字危机, and 新文盲.
I learned cursive in US public school. No one guided my hand; no one needed to. This was long before touching was such a no-no (assuming it is; I don’t know what goes on at schools in the 21st century).
Just because you learned it that way doesn’t mean it’s the only way nor necessarily the best way. You could learn it by watching an animation of the characters being drawn, for instance, or watching someone draw on a chalkboard.
For anyone who wants to ask, I learned cursive kind of like this. Just without the numbering.
I see what you’re saying and we agree, both with learning cursive and guiding the hand. The hand touching wouldn’t be the issue, the bodies being that close may be. Decades ago, I worked in child care, my class were kindergarten and first year. They discouraged hugging but I let the kids hug me and hugged back. Today, it would quite possibly be grounds for dismissal.
When I was in high school is really when they enforced no hugging. But in fact, female students would hug female teachers at the end of the year and nothing was done about this and this was usually the only exception. Although during my graduation ceremony I, a male hugged my elderly, female math teacher because she was grandma age and was hugging all her graduating students.
Sad.
Pointless skill.
I am almost 30 years old and I have only ever needed cursive once in my life and that was for my social security card.
It’s basically like marriage in the sense that it’s only important because we make it important and frankly we don’t really need it.
this comment saddens me because i know you are very intelligent
If you can explain the practical value of cursive handwriting I’m all ears.
https://mindcrucible.org/writing-by-hand/
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this is basically off limits in the U.S and this would be seen as very scandalous for a teacher to do
Literally huh? American schools don’t really teach how to do cursive writing anymore, but American teachers are absolutely not forbidden from or judged for touching children in this way. Strange misconception.
One of my close friends works in education and they’ve actually relayed to me the same experience. I think it depends on where in the US you are. Also, what level of position you are and the context behind the interaction. I doubt something like writing cursive would be frowned upon, but it can really depend on he school officials.
Everyone should know cursive, so they can sign their name. I wish shorthand was still en vogue, too.
I know a little bit, but couldn’t tell you quite a few letters. Though my signature is definitely a form of it, albeit not good because I have a Doctor’s handwriting.
I don’t know any shorthand, but I know people who do. What a timesaver!
I am from the US and learned cursive without any guiding hand in school. Our teacher would demonstrate on an overhead projector or on the blackboard and we would mimic her movements. Then we’d do practice sheets with cursive already on one line, and a blank line below where we’d copy what’s above. Worked fine without contact, I write everything in cursive to this day
Only tangentially related but I will say that at the time and place I went to elementary school that they didn’t have much of a no-contact policy though. I remember at the start of every year one of the forms my parents would sign was an opt-in permission slip to let the teacher hit your child to discipline them. I had one year where a teacher was liberal with smacking me with a wooden ruler even despite my parents opting out of that. This was around 20 years ago in the South
Honestly fuck cursive.
Cursive is not necessary because we have print, so there is no reason to have it except to make signatures harder to forge or to read cursive from old documents.
signatures are irrelevant these days and just ceremonial
it’s pretty much impossible to write down a proper signature on anything that needs a signature, when you apply for an ID you make the signature on a shitty tablet with a terrible pen, same with signing postal packages. it always ends up being a mess and nobody actually cares about how it looks or how accurate it is
important documents are almost always digital and you often just type your name in a text field or sign it automatically electronically with citizen authentication
at least that’s how it works here. i’m not sure why they’re even used these days. a strange relic of the past
this would be seen as very scandalous for a teacher to do but in most of the world its such a normal, innocent act for kids to learn how to write
I would like to know where you’re getting this impression of the US. As EmmaGoldman indicated, cursive writing in particular is slowly fading, due to not being required. But I’ve never heard of anyone being looked down upon for wanting to write cursive.
Second is that this is not the same as learning to write or not learning to write inherently. I’m honestly not sure how often kids are writing in school now, but it is likely they’re still being asked to do some essay writing by hand. The letters themselves would look much like what we’re typing in this thread. Cursive is its own style.
Literacy in the US is an issue though: https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics (I don’t vouch for this particular source, just a quick one I could find on literacy)
Edit: I just realized, you probably meant the “holding their hand to guide it while writing” would be the scandalous part. In that, you may be right.
I mean cursive is really stupid and has no real purpose in an age where we can just type things out. Learning to write properly is an important skill but fancy writing, for what? Especially since it’s harder to read.
As for the touch thing I’m not sure that’s true? I’ve literally never heard of that being a thing
so you dont have a journal
Pencils made cursive obsolete. It looks nice and all, and I can use and read it, but it’s just not that useful when you don’t need to worry about your fountain pen bleeding ink all over the place. I guess if you want your journal to look nice it’s good? It’s not like it’s even a creative experience like drawing, though. You’re just reproducing the same shapes over and over. What’s the point?
What worries me is children not learning how to use a pencil at all and just ditching paper in schools, which I think is coming. Why bother with old and busted wood pulp when everything is computer?
Nope, nor is a journal going to do the same thing for me.
I have an Obsidian journal where I type out my thoughts straight off the dome as they come to me. I will return to ideas I had months ago and add to them, have a reoccurring dream and add to that, etc. This is encrypted and backed up so I won’t lose it in case of a flood or anything. There’s other ways to organize your ideas and reflect on your thoughts.
wait, americans don’t learn cursive? as in handwriting?? how tf do those people write stuff down?
American, I was taught cursive. We often write down in print.
EDIT: Cursive is a type of handwriting, but not the only one.
ah okay, i was getting worried.
i still don’t quite get why some people manage to use print to write things down, it’s so much more inefficient!
edit: in russian, for example “cursive handwriting” literally translates to “hand-written writing” (рукописное письмо), so we may mean slightly different things, idk.
Yeah, print over here means when your handwriting is in the form of keyboard letters like how we’re communicating, at least from my end.
ah good, then we’re talking about the same thing after all.
in the country i grew up in, writing “in print” wasn’t really a thing (at least during my education, idk about now), and to be honest, it just kind of seems self-defeating to me, since the reason why cursive was invented in the first place was to facilitate quicker and more efficient writing on paper.
forms and official documents prefer/require print because it’s clearer
It was actually developed for ease of use when writing with a fountain pen. With a pencil or a ballpoint pen, I think printing is just as fast. I actually challenged one of my cursive using friends to a race once, and I won.
That being said, I’m old enough to have been taught how to handwrite (as opposed to print-style characters), but I wasn’t taught cursive. I was taught an alternative that was faster and more legible. I still abandoned it 5 years later when I was approaching high school. Legibility of my writing was more important than speed. And I quickly discovered that printing wasn’t actually slower. All I handwrite these days is my signature, and it’s honestly just an aesthetically pleasing scrawl.
It’s sad, isn’t it?
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I admit, I learned cursive by reading what my teacher wrote in my report whenever I misbehaved in elementary school and editing it so my parents didn’t
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