The Art of Cursive

I remember back in my younger years, when it was that dreadful time of the day where the teacher would tell all students to bring out their writing books. It wasn’t just any normal writing book, it was a cursive writing book. We would spend about an hour rewriting the alphabet five times over. Rewriting the words, “car”, “here”, “there”, “thought.” Watching how the words just got bigger as we went further down the book; our small minds thinking it was just impossible to write out the word “throwing” in cursive.

Second grade was when I started to learn how to write cursive. I can remember the teachers harking over us saying that we would be writing cursive for the rest of our lives. The older we got the more teachers would require cursive in every paper we would ever write. They would repeat over and over again, that in high school it would be a MAJOR requirement. So much so, that if the teachers even saw print on our papers, we would be docked points.

Today, cursive isn’t even taught in schools anymore. That day my little brother came home stating that schools were stopping the learning of cursive just enraged me. Partly because I had to go through the awful times of learning how to write it and partly because it was something I believed should be taught. Cursive is now an art form. Only a select few of people know how to write it.

It’s sad because, many people don’t know how to read cursive. Cursive is the same as print, it’s just slurred and connected, much like slurred music notes. It’s the same note, only connected to each other. Same letters, only connected to each other. Future generations won’t have a signature, because no one taught them how to write one. When they see cursive, they’ll think it’ll be some different language, when in reality it’s their own.

Cursive is now an art form. As an English major and a writer, it’s sad to see this is happening to such a beautiful form of writing.