20140807.0608

A friend of mine not long ago spoke to the idea of cursive writing in schools, heaping aspersions upon it. When I talked about the issue with him later, he admitted that his reaction to the endeavor was irrational, although he maintains there is no real reason to teach cursive in schools--except perhaps as an art function, taken as an elective. This is somewhat strange, because he also voices the opinion that education has to be about more than simply "the practical."

I necessarily agree with the last part; the academic humanities, except insofar as they are viewed as service courses (analogized by another friend of mine--yes, I do have more than one--to bran and fiber: needed for health but not usually thought of as pleasant), are often among the "extra" materials excised from curricula in the name of "efficiency." Reductions to narrow views of the practical, then, threaten my ability to secure a livelihood for those I have to support, and I am necessarily averse to such things. It is already enough of a challenge to keep food on the table and a roof overhead. And I agree that there is no "practical" reason to make concerted efforts to teach cursive; most people will not have to write in it, and they will likely not have to read it. Even those who will have to write with pen in hand are likely to do so only on forms that require block printed capitals--characters not unlike the runes of old. (I am a medievalist, after all.) But I am not nearly so averse to teaching cursive as is my friend (although I agree about the tyranny through which cursive was often taught--but if that is an argument against the subject being taught, then none should be taught, for there are despots in all disciplines).

I find cursive to be of benefit to me, even if my pen-hand is atrocious as it has often been accused of being. The motions used to write in script differ from those of typing or of block printing; their use triggers different parts of the brain, or does so in different ways. This leads to different patterns and types of thought, or so it seems to me it ought. And I am aware that, even with so poor a pen-hand as I have, my writing in script connects me with the long tradition of literacy. (That my pen-hand looks much like the products of scriptoria is entirely accidental but entirely fortuitous.) Part of what a system of schooling a people supports is meant to do is transmit a root idea of who those people are; it has to pass along a sense of history of the people. Those of us who teach have a duty to get that idea right, to ensure that the history taught is as close as can be to the history that was. But we also have a duty to pass on an idea of what the people aspire to be, and it remains in many places the case that the people want to be the kinds of people who can do all things with grace and aplomb--and cursive is, when it works well, far more elegant than blocky print.