The Importance of Cursive
by Miki Saxon
Writing in cursive is considered slow and inefficient, not to mention old-fashioned, whereas computers are productivity tools.
They help people do stuff faster and more efficiently.
They can automate repetitive work and help organize complex projects.
But like most things, computers, and now other smart devices, have a dark side.
Computers can kill creativity and thinking itself, along with social skills like empathy.
Keyboarding is a good example; it eliminates the need to write, which people see as a good thing, because they can type much faster than they can write.
But that efficiency is a double-edged sword.
Research now shows that kids learn better when they write longhand using cursive, as opposed to printing or typing.
For adults, typing may be a fast and efficient alternative to longhand, but that very efficiency may diminish our ability to process new information.
Beyond damaging the ability to learn, the inability to write cursive usually reflects an inability to read it.
While at first glance that may not seem important, a second look and you realize that it shuts you out of anything that was discussed in correspondence, first person journaling and dozens of other human interactions over centuries.
Even if Google was able to scan all the hand-written archives, they could not be read.
If you aren’t familiar with cursive, trying to read something written in it is akin to trying to read a Russian document when you don’t know the Russian alphabet.
If you don’t know cursive, find a place to learn it.
You’ll be surprisedatn the value it will add to your world.
Of course, you may be one of those people who believe that anything that predates computers and the Internet has no value.
If so, you deserve my sympathy—and my contempt.
Flickr image credit: derrypubliclibrary
