Cursive writing - being old doesn't mean it has to die!

I'm trying to send this link to as many teachers as I can contact. If you aren't a teacher, then surely you know a teacher. The value in this article below is that a vast body of history will be unavailable to many studious people if their quest for knowledge depends solely on reading documents that are only available in printed or digitized text.
The counter-action to this deprivation would be to inform school board trustees about articles such as are in this link so they might realize their lack of foresight in directing the school curriculum for which they are responsible.
If you have received this from me, please consider passing it on to someone else who might make a difference to what is happening to our youth's comprehension of the world's past.
Sadly, I am unable to pass this message any further than to my English speaking and writing friends!

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/shunned-computer-age-cursive-makes-comeback-california-2024-01-27/?user_email=fc89f8ef4936989ae13d4f442226bc6df204063776de74f998644cde7cc08a46

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

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will be readable in 10, 50, 100, 500 years' time when the industry is so rapacious that it makes equipment and software out-of-date and unserviceable at a criminally-wasteful rate?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.)

SunshineGirl · 36-40, F

@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!

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@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.

....

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?

....

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.

.

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.

JollyRoger · 70-79, M

@ArishMell Yes.... You may be among the few who are 'thinking forward' about the ultimate retrievability of digitized documents.