If you can read this, you were born before the year 2005.

Is this truly a bad thing?

My gut reaction after reading this story was, “Well of course they have to learn cursive. It is a vital skill essential to every day life!”. For instance:

• When I use my credit card. There’s something wrong about signing my name in block-letters. Definitely, cursive writing rules supreme here.
• When I read old documents, like the American Constitution and recipes from my grand-mother.
• When I pick up a Coca-Cola can. If it weren’t for my thorough knowledge of cursive, I might accidentally pick up a Dr. Pepper.
• When I want to be fancy and want to write a love letter, apparently it’s the thing to do.
• Finally, it helps when I want to read old-war-epic movie posters starring Denzel Washington.

OK. Fine. I don’t cursive often, nor do I read it often. In fact, I rarely write anything without a keyboard at all these days. But does this mean our children should stop learning cursive? We learn tons of stuff we never end up using in adult life. For example, I learned geometry and algebra. Heaven knows I don’t solve for x very often any more (though the answer is probably 42). And what about Roman numerals? Aren’t they only used for sequels and SuperBowls? If  algebra and Roman numerals are still being taught, shouldn’t cursive as well? Shouldn’t our children follow in our footsteps?

Could it be that the true value of learning cursive writing goes beyond penmanship.

There is a school of thought that says cursive writing is easier to learn than print. The logic behind this is that cursive is generally one long stroke, while print forces you to stop and pick up the pen a lot. Being easier to learn, it gives children more confidence to learn something new. While I’m uncertain that cursive is easier to learn, maybe in the end it doesn’t matter.

Maybe the fate of cursive is doomed to the same fate as painting and film photography: appreciated, but only practiced by the die hard few who still feel a connection to the craft. So while I, myself, am still on the fence about cursive, I do stand firm on one topic. Regardless of whether you write me a message using cursive, or block letters, please do me one favor:

Spell properly, and leave your SMS abbreviations for your text messages.

KTHXBI

What do you think?

(Thanks to Kathryn Presner and once again, Jackie Ng for your colorful opinions on this topic.)