The late Jeanne Robinson in one of her stand-up routines said that she warned her children to learn cursive because she was writing her will in cursive.
I only wish my handwriting was neat, but I have lost some dexterity and even my printing the letters is very spidery!
If you can't hand-write what happens if you need note something, perhaps in many words, and have no immediate access to a computer, telephone or what-have-you? Or do but it fails!
Which is the more personal? A nearly-written legible letter, or a scruffy message (hi jst qick txt ta 4 xmas prez hows Mary xx Fred)?
Digital formats everyone raves about are all very well but how many will be readable in 10, 50, 100, 500 years' time when the industry is so rapacious that it makes equipment and software out-of-date and unserviceable at a criminally-wasteful rate?
Another big threat, varying by country, is laws designed to protect individuals' privacy but unwittingly and unintentionally risking by wholesale destruction, losing a lot of what could be very useful to future historians
A vast repository of hand-written and early-printed documents survive as ink or paper, vellum or parchment - and some are is cursive, some in hand-print lettering; but these need skill not only in deciphering the letters but also often in their language, such as Latin or Mediaeval English (French, etc.)
@ArishMell An interesting exception to your comments about survival is the body of Whatsapp messages that the Johnson government thought had disappeared. That turned out to be wishful thinking 🤣
Under the soil in the UK lie thousands of time capsules, inspired by Blue Peter, with valuable social data saved in digital formats (CD-ROM, 3.5" floppy disk) that are probably more impenetrable today than the Rosetta Stone!
@SunshineGirl Indeed! I think politicians - of all parties and we've nearly a dozen of 'em in the UK - should not use any form of "social"-media for anything official, including informal work discussions with each other, and certainly not issue public statements on any such site.
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I suppose when these media were new no-one thought that a) the computer trade would rapidly move to prevent any future retrieval of data, and b) the material would degrades so quickly anyway! The CDs at least may have a chance, if buried in a sufficiently sealed state, but would there be any machinery to use them when eventually exhumed?
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I used to have a lot of 3.5" floppy discs and noticed that the photograph files were first to disappear. They became corrupted in a very strange way, and some within a year or so of recording.
Though I've also lost photos on this fairly new PC and it seems suspicious that the problem started after Microsoft changed the OS from W-10 to 11 without my permission, wrecked my carefully-constructed albums and still interferes with it now. (It wants all your data on its so-called "cloud" servers, for its own advantage.) I have temporary copies on USB "sticks" but need buy external hard-drives: MS WIN-11 prevents using my two existing drives, and prevents finding any W11-drivers, if they exist, for them.
CDs may last longer as they work in a different way, and there the problem might be the plastic degrading rather than the optical "bits" fading as they do if magnetic.
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There are by the way, two CDs somewhere where they can never be read; and by design. They are symbolic war-memorial plaques. Each holds the names of all the crew who died on the ship in WW2, was encapsulated in resin and carefully placed on an appropriate area of its own war-grave: one on HMS Hood, the other on the Bismark.
Irony is that we won't need writing as much in the future as we do now... it'll all be about how well we can code.
We'd be better off cutting down on those cursive writing lessons and introducing more functional ICT lessons into the curriculum so that children today at least have a chance to get a foot on the ladder right out of school.
@HootyTheNightOwl Addendum: Here's another 'forward looking retro' thinker like me - this on thinks about preserving 'sound bytes' instead of words on paper.
@JollyRoger It's not just cursive writing that is dying... but any form of writing. Our exam boards have decided to start making parts of some exams digital now.
On the one hand, that might help with making exam papers legible and some (listening) parts of exams more disabled friendly... (yes, I still remember struggling with my French listening papers because the tape recorder was distorting in the echoy school hall) - but it would be interesting to understand the security behind the system to ensure that there's no cheating/hacking and make sure that grades can't be influenced in any way after the exams are over. We already had problems with hackers getting into the NHS's systems - so I can see how this could be another challenge to be cracked.
The problem with amassing collections like this is that, like every museum, it has to be profitable. There has to be a way to make it pay for itself - and that can negate the idea of it being "accessible to all".
I didn’t read the article but I am a teacher and up until recently wasn’t really allowed to teach cursive during curricular time. So one year I had a handful of kids who were interested in learning on their own time at recess - many recesses- I taught them. I wonder if they still use it.
Now there is a reintroduction of cursive back into the curriculum. The kids used to think it’s a secret language and asked me if every language has its own cursive. lol
@DoubleRings I'm curious about where you live - only because this effort I posted about was introduced in California. Here in Canada our students don't learn cursive. But then, with schools' "Don't correct bad bahaviour" policies, it's a wonder that teachers have the time to teach anything!
To teachers who teach or taught K - 3rd grade. As Valentines Day approaches, Did you ever have a student whose Mother, or Older sibling helped write out their Valentines for them, using cursive writing? This was the case for me when I was in K - 3rd grades. My Mother would buy, and write out the Valentines for me to give to classmates and teacher. Problem was that she wrote them in cursive, which I, nor my classmates at that age could read. I couldn't put them in the individual packets that each made myself; not being able to read the cursive name on the envelope; then my classmates could not read my Valentines that I gave them themselves. PARENTS, SIBLINGS, if the Child is to young to read cursive, PRINT the Valentines!
@IPmyPants I agree with you. Now, in all fairness to your mom's intentions: She only wanted you to be 'popular' by having cards for everyone in your class and not leaving anyone out.... At your age, would you have printed out all of those cards yourself? Her intention was heart-felt but her execution of it was poorly thought out. Yes, I don't think we started 'writing' until about grade 4.
@NativePortlander1970 Wow.... And you come across as a harshly judgemental person! That post of @PmyPants profile was totally uncalled for - even if he posted it, it's not for you to ridicule.
@Allelse Indeed.....your point is well made! And in the reality....it's not the forming of the letters that matters so much as it is the storage of the message. Where do you retrieve a document from cyberspace if for some cataclysmic reason the Internet and computer storage were to fail? Please don't say, "If we're all dead, it won't matter."
But: I suppose you don't put hand to pen and write or draw on paper any more?
@JollyRoger Of course I do, but I use my own Allelse shorthand and I wouldn't inflict it on anybody else. Hah! And even I have trouble reading it, but I have my own system. If I'm out and about and it's story writing time I write in blue or black ink in shorthand in hard art paper, then once my brain is empty I go back and correct the mistakes with red ink. Then once I'm home I type it up.
Printing is no good for me except in revision because of my spastic ADHD brain which runs too quickly, so I need a shorthand to get out the information as quickly as possible or else I go mad, lose my train of thought or the ideas slip away.
@Allelse Don't think you're alone with A.D.D. Sometimes I flitter around doing 4 things when I started out doing 1 important thing that never gets done until I wonder what I was supposed to be doing!! Does that sound like you??
@Thevy29 Is it? Grammar is complex and constantly evolving. Grammarly renders my prose into a standard accepted format. Good for the formal workplace, but I can't win the heart of my fair maiden with an executive report 😩
I don't think it is at any risk of dying. Rather it is becoming a specialized skill. People are going to be able to learn it. It is just going to be optional. Scholars, and especially historical scholars are still going to be learning it. Historical scholars translate all kinds of languages to make history readily accessible for the layman. They can do so for cursive writing as well. Nothing is really at risk of being lost here.
@ViciDraco But.... If you can't read it? My grandchildren can't read it! And... are you a 'dependent' person? Do you want to depend on others to do what you don't want to do? As I said in one response: Should a scholar 100 years from now need to be a linguistic archeologist in order to understand the written form of the language they speak daily?
@JollyRoger we have a broadly known written form for the language we speak daily. Not only is it the form most used by native speakers, it is the form non-native speakers learn and interact with in modern society. Why do we need more than one written form? If anything, that only makes learning to read and write English more challenging for non-native speakers. The whole 'dependent' person thing is a bit silly. We don't teach Latin. We don't teach sanskrit. Hell, we don't even teach old English.
For the record, I was not only taught cursive, it was mandatory to write with it when i was in grades 3 to 5. The only time I ever use it in my adult life is for a signature and that's honestly kind of silly.
I'm all for letting people learn it as an elective. I think it should be an elective in schools. But mandatory instruction is pointlessly holding on to the past. It's an exercise in past generations fighting against progress. And in this case, progress represents the standardization of English in the written form, both analog and digital. Print is just superior for computers, for press, and for general legibility. There's no good reason to make cursive part of mandatory primary or secondary education. But again, it makes a great elective. Kind of like an art elective, if I had to categorize it.
