may we also hear about the death of cursive? 👀 👂🏻
also as someone who was taught cursive in school, I genuinely never got why people were so so damn personally attached to it. like, oh noes, some random thing you were taught as a child has become irrelevant, we need to make a moral panic about this pronto!!! and idk how it is in the USA (or even the currentstate of things in my home country) but I was never taught to write in block letters and still to this day I struggle with writing some of them, which I absolutely need for filing out forms, so I might be just a little bit resentful lol
ABSOLUTELY YOU MAY !! and in doing so i will actually defend my pookie cursive because she has been unfairly maligned by others in ways you will soon understand
criticism of not teaching cursive in schools is actually a very complex topic and if anything should prioritise critical examination of HOW its taught and blah blah blah and people who really neither know nor care about all that are unfortunately the ones leading the conversations rn. Also as someone who studies nationalism and shit academically I have a LOTTT of thoughts about how cursive is being leveraged by certain ideologies rn blah blah heritage as the weaponisation of material and intangible culture with a focus on historicism for ideological means blah blah BUT if i started talking about that I'd never finish this post. so.
normally i would have all sorts of citations but rn im kind of turbodrunk so im not doing that sorry. please know it pains me too. also this is largely from a US specific context since penmanship reform varies more than you would expect across countries
ANYWAY
what used to be taught was various forms of business hand like palmer, which, very crucially, utilises muscular movement (MM for simplicity), that is, writing withmovement of the ARM, rather than the fingers or wrist,. This has a number of benefits. For one, you get much more consistent shapes so it looks nicer if thats something you care about, but much more compellingly, it is faster and much less tiring for your hand. You ever been writing and your wrist hurts or your hand gets a cramp ? That doesnt really happen with MM unless youre really grisping your writing utensil (more on that in a sec).
ballpoint !! world war 2 !!!
In 1938 the ballpoint pen was invented (a patent for a ballpoint pen was filed in the 1880s i believe but it could only write on materials like wood and metal and crucially, not on paper). This was a super great invention as I'm sure you know, but world war 2 is what really made it skyrocket to prominence. A pen that could leak, needing refilling, cant be shook or dropped, etc, isnt great in a hectic wartime situation, so ballpoints held the advantage over fountain pens (FPs) for a very good reason (full disclosure that I am a very strong fountain pen use advocate for those who have interest but the ballpoint pen was nonetheless a fuckin banging invention to be so clear). One of the downsides of the ballpoint pen, however, is that its harder to use when writing with muscular movement. (perfectbiscuits on youtube and reddit, very nice guy, sent me a vintage palmer certificate from the 20s which was super super cool, is an avid palmer user and actually did a few videos saying "ballpoints are totally fine for MM, you dont need FPs!" and then later tried out FPs and retracted his statement. lol.) A good fountain pen should write under its own weight, whereas most ballpoints require at least a little pressure, and can have slight movement weirdness that you might not notice....unless youre doing MM. Also again you kinda gotta grisp it pretty hard which is not great for MM. or arthritis and carpal tunnel and whatnot which is why I originally switched to FPs. ok enough about pens we move on now. basically ballpoint pens not so good for cursive esp MM
zaner bloser ! dnealian ! and co.
Palmer was eventually largely replaced with Zaner-Bloser (ZB) which had 2 main defining characteristics of relevance here:
it largely utilised MM, but also incorporated a small degree of finger movement to make it a little easier for people with less practice, being a good middle ground for a lot of people
it taught children print BEFORE cursive, to allow kids to develop writing skills earlier. This obvoiusly is of benefit, as you mentioned.
I dont think ZB is really the enemy here (whereas I DO personally dislike dnealian) but within a historical context I do think it is very much a turning point in the death of cursive. The predecessor, in a way. Separately, for people looking to learn or relearn cursive, it may be a good option. I dont use it myself since i always viewed it as the less neurotic palmer but. obviously that is a benefit to many people lmfao
The other element I mentioned is D'Nealian, aka a new (new as of the 1960s) method of teaching and writing cursive. There were others but this was the Main One that supplanted zaner bloser and shit. It was marked by a few distinct characteristics:
rather than MM or MM assisted with slight finger movement like ZB, it largely utilised wrist and finger movement
like ZB, it taught children print first , then cursive, however in doing so it taught cursive as an EXTENSION of print. That is to say, it began to a) teach cursive fairly soon after teaching print, before those skills could become properly entrenched in their own right, which was confusing for children, and b) it taught cursive essentially as "connected" versions of print letters, with "monkey tails" connecting the letters. This means that instead of wiriting, for example, "cursive" as a whole word as you were taught in palmer and to a lesser extent, ZB, you were instead taught to write "C- monkey tail - U - monkey tail - R - monkey tail - monkey tail - S - monkey tail - I - monkey tail - V - monkey tail - E" which is. just demonstrably worse. Yes, over time, it becomes more intuitive, but you really have to care ennough to WANT to practice to be able to get to that point. And unless youre me, or a handful of other mega penmanship nerds, no one is fucking doing that !! very reasonably !! Its fucking stupidsville and then people who learned ZB complain that children dont want to learn thier stupid illogical cursive anymore 🙄 fucking whateverrr
IIRC the timeline was largely that Palmer was dominant until after ww2, then Zaner-Bloser, which was largely replaced by D'nealian in about the 1970s (? dont quote me on that). It would be in no way accurate to state that the explosion of the ballpoint pen is what caused these shifts in penmanship style and teaching method, however what CAN be reasonably said is that these changes, occuring in TANDEM with increasing replacement of FPs with ballpoints almost certainly were some of the most significant influences in the decline of cursive writing. It makes sense, to be fair. Youre learning a less intuitive style of cursive, that is slower and more tiring, and youre using a pen that makes cursive writing marginally more difficult -- not so youd notice consiously, but enough to influence how much you may want to use cursive -- its no wonder people increasingly switched to using print !
ultimately I am very firmly of the opinion that teaching children cursive has significant value, in that, if taught well, it can make writing by hand easier for a number of students. It is also HARDER for many students, a fact which would be tempered but still remain true even if reform in teaching methods were to be implemented, which is why in a hypothetical world I believe that what is most important is to teach enough that children can decide for themselves what is most effective for them. In reality, however, the current capabilities of schools in the US (where I am) is stretched to its absolute limits for even the most basic of things, and its in no way reasonable to expect what Im suggesting to be feasible in practice. I maintain that children should be given at least the basic information about what cursive IS so that they can research it if they so desire, but thats less a matter of "you NEED to teach children cursive" and more a "people need to stop bullying children for having old lady interests" lmfao and also a bit of "if you want to go into history you either need to get some level of palaeographical capacity or know someone who does who is willing to help you out, and that means being able to read cursive". And, as Im sure ive talked about incessantly, kurrentschrift was an entirely different writing system used in germany until the 40s before a switch to latin scripts and prints (ever seen nazi posters in "gothic font" (blackletter)? thats fraktur !! there was a whole long running debate until the 40s over fraktur vs antiqua as part of this german writing reform. very odd example of what you would expect to be emphasised as heritage for nation building and ideological purposes instead being outlawed. lot to say about that but again i am not talking about nationalism rn alas)(if anyone has a focus in german/volkische nationalism and has thoughts about this pls pls talk to me i will kiss you with tongue) so its not like "learn cursive to read historical documents" is half as simple as people like to pretend it is. I saw a german guy in the youtube comments section the other day bemoaning that kids in the US arent taught cursive "unlike germany," he said, and that that would impeded peoples ability to read histroical documents....and it was basically purim and my birthday and molly all wrapped into one i ripped that man to shreddsssssss. nicely. well. as nicely as I am capable of. anyway point it the "historical document" argument is both true but also not really universal to any degree (only matters if you study certain things) and also is a lot more complex than people like to pretend.
ok im so sorry this is so long like i said im turbodrunk and also you activated my autism trap card pls feel free to ask if any of this doesnt make sense because im sure at least half of it is incomprehensible xoxoxo if anyone wants to learn palmer penmanship hmu
anyway dont be mean to my wife cursive its literally not her fault :( DO be mean to the people using cursive as nationalist bs which i understand maybe sounds crazy but such is the reality of studying nationalism is youre like "wow thats connected to nationalism" and you sound like youre making shit up for fun and fashion but youre actually right....anyway no, children should not need to learn cursive, and no, cursive is not useless. thats my take thank you for asking !!! 🤗🤗🥰🥰i cant find my fav happy emoji the smily blushy one just pretend its here ok love you mwah
