With the flick of a pen, the student finally finishes the essay. They look down at it surprised everything looks so neat. They handwrote an essay in cursive writing. According to the Take Part website, studies show that students who know cursive often excel on tests. That student just got an A on their paper and is going to Ace the final.
Handwriting seems to be getting terrible these days and the worst part is no one writes in cursive anymore. It seems like just two years ago everyone was required to write in cursive or the teachers would not collect the homework.
Teachers tell us to take notes and we are required to take the infamous “Cornell Notes”, but we should be able to choose our own method. Some teachers just post the notes online. While some students work hard, other student’s just text or play games on their graphing calculators. Students are not learning anything by not paying attention. They would learn more if they wrote what was on the board down on their own style of notes in cursive.
Teachers require students to type out essays and stories and hand them in on Sharepoint. They do not require a written document. Schools are not worried about how kids write, just as long as they can type. The school system relies too much on computers, and I am just waiting for the day when Sharepoint crashes.
The main problem is that no one is learning cursive anymore. What happens on that day when someone wins the lottery and they write their signature to claim their glorious prize? That is easy to fake. Someone just might as well write fake checks in their name. A signature should be written in cursive, so it looks like their own and not anyone else’s. If signatures are not written in cursive they will never look professional.
If this trend continues, cursive writing will look like hieroglyphics in the future. Who is going to be able to read any old documents from the past, like the Declaration of Independence? Cursive writing needs to be taught for future generations and should not disappear.