I read something the other day that just absolutely floored me.  I could not believe what I was reading.  You ready for this?  Someone had to help their children read some recipes that their grandmother had written.  The children were grades 3 and 6 and both excellent students, so why did they have difficulty reading the recipes?  Grandma didn’t write them in German or anything.  However, she did write them in what apparently is becoming a foreign language to our children…CURSIVE.  That’s right, cursive writing is now difficult for grade school children to read because there are many schools in this nation that are not teaching it.

Cursive writing has been on a serious decline over the years for obvious reasons…most handwriting isn’t done by hand at all anymore, it’s all done electronically, whether it be by tablet, smart phone, or computer.  People don’t write notes anymore, they text notes.  They don’t copy a recipe from a friend, they email it, or something that I have done before is actually take a photo of the printed recipe and keep it in a file in my email for future reference.  Crazy, huh?

What about signing a letter?  A check? Birthday card?  Many of these items are now computer generated now so we don’t even have to sign our name.  And who writes checks anymore?

Are we really surprised that handwriting is disappearing?  Teachers explain that there is little or no time to teach cursive writing due to the common core standards.  No test exists to see if a child can write their name.  Cursive writing also will not improve the school’s year end rating.

Thanks to email, most people don’t even write personal letters anymore, or they will write the letter in script on the computer and print it out.  We’ve all seen the form letter that comes at Christmas time, right?

So if children are not learning how to write in cursive, they certainly are not going to be able to read it?  A cursive “Q” looks nothing like a regular “Q”.  They may have difficulty reading things that may have been written by loved ones like grandparents or parents.  At some point, they would need to hire an interpreter of pre-21st century documents in order to know how to make grandma’s homemade rhubarb cobbler.

Is this sad?  There are those who feel as though our schools shouldn’t waste time teaching things that don’t matter, like cursive writing, because they won’t be tested on it later and it’s just not practical for college admittance or a future career.

My two monkeys, ages 9 and 10, currently read and write in cursive, although it seems print is their teachers preferred way to receive homework assignments.

Maybe I should just get a jump start on my second career of transcribing cursive documents to print.  Should I charge by the word or by the letter?

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