Behind the Curve With Cursive

“I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you.” Galatians 6:11 (Peterson’s “The Message”)

There was a meme that came across one of my social media feeds inviting the viewer to “Share if you think schools should teach children to write in cursive.” The meme, as you might suspect, was written in cursive. I suspect most of us learned how to make block letters at an early age (it was first grade for me), and once we became proficient with that, we began to learn how to write those same letters in cursive (third grade for me).

I honestly don’t know if schools still teach kids how to write in cursive. Maybe they do and maybe they don’t. They don’t teach mechanical drawing anymore, either, do they? Technology has moved on and, to be honest, I suspect there are plenty of subjects schools are required and expected to teach that micromanaging our educational industry from the luxury of the peanut gallery known as social media is probably not the best place from which to promote change.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate being able to read and write both the printed word and the swirly words of cursive. My mother-in-law had beautiful handwriting. Her cursive was a work of art. Mine, on the other hand, is an explosion of scratches that are, today, indecipherable, even by me, the author. I feel quite biblical that way.

I used to hand-write my sermons. When computers (AKA, Word Processors) first came out, I tried writing my sermons with them, but I found that the part of the brain that controls typing only knew how to type term papers. Word processed sermons sounded like college papers, not the living, breathing proclamation of the Good News. My fingers could write the way I spoke, but they could only type in the manner I thought. It was weird.

I came to a point, though, where I was struggling to read my own writing, my own notes. My handwriting had never been all that great, but it was deteriorating. Not from lack of practice or loss of fine motor skills. It’s simply that I am a slob. I have horrible penmanship, and it couldn’t keep up with the pace at which I thought (or think). Now THAT is a scary realization when one perceives how slowly the balloon that carries captions above my head fills!

So I began to learn to use the computer differently. Yes, I still did the typing, but I slowed the process down and learned to review my work as I went along, transforming the mundane into something with more heart and soul. It took work, takes practice, and still takes a lot more work, but over time, I was able to breathe some life into those manuscripts. The problem wasn’t the technology, but the brain attached to the fingers utilizing the technology.

I honestly don’t know what is taught in schools these days. My kids are grown and gone and my mother, who taught fourth grade up until she passed away, always enjoyed being on the cutting edge of new projects, new subjects, and new processes for teaching. She liked finding what worked, tossing what didn’t, and maintained good relations with the front office so was never second-guessed for what she was doing.

While writing in cursive may or may not be important, I’m more concerned with history that has been white-washed than in erasing cursive as a subject. I’m more concerned with the banning of reading materials than with the banning of an antiquated writing system. I’m more concerned with kids missing hot meals than with missing curly writing. I’m more concerned with the loss of voting rights than cursive writes [sic]. I’m more concerned with diminished access to healthcare and healthcare decisions than in how a doctor’s order or prescription for patient care gets written up or processed.

So, yeah, I can see the value of learning to read and write in cursive, but on the list of things to teach, I believe teaching kids to engage in critical thinking is far more important now than knowing how to scroll ink from pen to paper here in this, our valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)