Forgotten Treasures of Americana: Cursive Handwriting

What ever happened to cursive handwriting?

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In our never ending quest to provide all of our readers with relatable, ‘slice of life’ style content, we here at the SoBros Network feel the time to weigh in on social commentary has officially come. It’s once again time for me, Big Natural, to open up the leather-bound parchment pages of the annals of history. Put on your plush robe, light your pipe, start a fire, and get ready for deep contemplation. This is the as-often-as-I-remember-to-write-it column: Forgotten Treasures of Americana. Today, we are going to be asking the important question: what ever happened to cursive handwriting?

I see too many of y’all posting memes about how we learned geometry we didn’t understand instead of schools teaching us how to do our taxes. This might not make me very popular on the internet, but geometry and math as a whole has a very practical purpose in our lives. It teaches us logic – how things fit together. I don’t know how people don’t see that – for me, my gripe is with cursive handwriting.

Why did I spend so much of my childhood learning this obscure writing style? When have I ever had to actually use cursive as an adult? When have any of us had to use cursive as an adult? You could probably ask me to write something in cursive at 36 years old, and I’d be screwed. Not to mention, my cursive never even looked cool. It always made me feel like a caveman, even as a kid, because I just couldn’t get the curvature of my handwriting to look beautiful and artistic like it looked in the text books. I remember stressing over getting it right, and now that I’ve been on this Earth for over three decades, that infuriates me. Because all of that time was for nothing. I could’ve used that time to write more short stories as a kid (I shared some short stories I wrote in the 2nd grade as apart of the ‘SoBros Short Fiction’ series over on our Patreon)!!! Instead, I was just filling out worksheet after worksheet with stuff I’d never use in the real world. SMDH.

So, what was that shit all about? Whatever happened to it? Are they still teaching cursive to kids these days? Oh, wait – as it turns out, it does have a pretty important impact on a child’s ability to learn, and develop fine motor skills.

Courtesy of Frontiers in Psychology:

“…cursive writing has been considered an essential precursor for further academic success (Fears and Lockman, 2018), and the skill is typically acquired during childhood in societies with a strong literacy tradition (Kiefer et al., 2015). Children must learn how to coordinate their hand movements accurately and produce the shape of each letter, and they may take several years to master this precise skill (Van der Meer and Van der Weel, 2017).”

Are you telling me that I became such a nimble athlete and developed cat-like reflexes because I learned how to coordinate the curves of cursive handwriting at such a young age? In that case, you know what? My opinion on cursive has officially changed over the course of this piece. I didn’t realize it was a function of teaching at an early age. That 100% explains why we don’t use it as adults – because hopefully, our brains have already developed. We don’t need cursive as a function of society per se – we need it as a way to enlighten our youth and ignite their little brains. I feel so stupid and embarrassed right now. Shit, my bad y’all. I’ll shut up now.

FORGOTTEN TREASURES OF AMERICANA ARCHIVES

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley

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