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News item: schools are returning to teaching cursive, which contributes greatly to the entire educational process.
Cursive writing is attractive, even elegant and is faster than printing, but that’s not all. There is both art and science to cursive writing. An architect trained before the invention of computer graphics often experienced design flowing out of him or her, through pencil and onto paper. The results often surprised and satisfied the architect as well as the client.
Cursive writing is like that, it’s translating thought into words, and it often seems that our thoughts are translating themselves. It allows you to associate ideas, link them and put them into relationship. The word cursive come from the Latin “currere”, that which runs, which flows, because thought is winged, it runs, it flies. Writers and writing instructors often compose in cursive, and then ‘cut and paste’ with scissors and scotch tape prior to word processing a final draft.
The world today is not as predisposed to creative free thinking as it once was. Schools everywhere including colleges and universities are stripping art and literature courses from curriculums to concentrate on coursework related to employment and earning money, and it shows. Student often feel overwhelmed with school only to graduate and be overwhelmed at work. Stolen moments on smartphones and the Internet are guilty pleasures. Writing in cursive is pleasure without the guilt.
When you spend all day at a keyboard instead of with pencil or pen, what is lost is the peaceful satisfaction of expressing self so freely and rhythmically, and the icing on the cake is how pencil line thickness and weight can bring thoughts and feelings to life. And pen choice becomes a signature of sorts and a window to one’s soul. Writing in nondescript ballpoint ink is less meaningful to the writer and less revealing to the reader, than words in ink that flows from a rolling ball, or words meticulously crafted by the nib of a fountain pen. No matter the writing instrument, cursive is “everyday art” and calm and peaceful pleasure is its nature, as is natural to all art forms.
So, yes, yes; it is imperative that we resume teaching cursive and writing in cursive for its contributions to the learning process and also to our mental health and spiritual being. Whether or not there’s a lot of opportunity at school or work, we can always write for our own pleasure a story, or keep a journal, both of which have therapeutic value in and of themselves, and we can write to one another in friendship and in love.
P.S. If your older child or young adult missed out on learning cursive in school, it never too late to teach them at home, or for them to learn on their own. Teaching/learning materials are readily available online, and it’s not like math, which is hard, cursive is easy to learn alone or in a group. A summertime neighborhood cursive writing camp or community course would appeal to all ages who’ve never learned or want to reintroduce all the benefits of cursive back into their day to day living.
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