E
very
Monday
we
would crack the spine
of our “Handwriting
Without Tears” workbooks,
an artifact of early 2000s
elementary school curriculum,
a time when public schools
could
still
afford
such
luxuries. While these cursive
primers
generally
honored
their promise of dry eyes,
the exercise of tracing dotted
lines instead of keystrokes was
contentious.
Our
teachers
found
themselves
playing
defense
against a classroom of 10-year-
old children acutely aware of
the forthcoming extinction of
script. The translucent blue
iMac G3 perched in the corner
of the classroom mocked the
obsolescence of learning to loop
letters together. The naivety
of third grade did not blind us
from the Lucida Handwriting
font accessible on a word
processor. How could they
contend with the frustration of
learning to connect a cursive
“o” to a “l” when the two letters
were just three millimeters
apart on a computer keyboard?
My teachers would resort
to a honeyed threatening —
a survival tactic refined by
elementary school educators
in
admirable
fashion.
The
sweetness
of
their
candy
apple red teacher voice would
mask the startling proposition
that
your
cursive
abilities
would determine your future
academic efficiency: “You will
need cursive every day once
you go to middle school to take
notes.”
What?
As
a
burgeoning
member of the type A breed
of student, this notion was
distressing.
My
teacher’s
correlation of cursive writing
with success propelled the
hamster wheel of academic
anxiety that has not stopped
turning even 14 years later.
When
I
reached
middle
school, I kept waiting for the
day when my fragmented print
would be rebuked with a red
pen comment, “Please write
cursive next time.” But it never
happened. In high school, I
braced myself before my first
Advanced Placement history
lecture,
frantically
trying
to remember how to write a
cursive “b.” But the connected
script
would
soon
prove
unnecessary as my layman
handwriting kept pace with the
slides.
A skill that was once lauded
by my teachers as indispensable
became
irrelevant
only
a
few years later. Just as I can
no longer tell you what the
state flower is or how to
distinguish
a
brontosaurus
from a Tyrannosaurus rex,
my knowledge of cursive has
dissolved into the dark hole of
elementary school acumen.
The cursive alphabet is now
buried in my hippocampus
beneath a clutter of keyboard
shortcuts. The hazy remnants
of penmanship lessons yield
a
mediocre
signature
and
lecture notes that begin with
the
intention
of
beautiful
calligraphy but, by the second
page, evolve to an improvised
cursive-print hybrid.
I hold no spite for the
years of cursive lessons we
endured. Yet, as pupils whose
identity is so often lauded as
the iGeneration, I think it is
important to point out that the
technology of our classrooms
was so often juxtaposed against
an unease for losing the relics of
traditional schooling. We were
not immune to the nostalgia
for the blackboard hallmarks of
education.
There is perhaps no fiercer
representation of this reality
than cursive. It is the reason my
teachers held their penmanship
lesson plans so tightly despite
the headwinds of replaceability
blowing from Silicon Valley.
No matter how many times
“Fast
Company”
publishes
another article popularizing
the technological dependence
of our generation, it should not
be forgotten that our 8-year-old
eyes witnessed the two worlds
collide. We faced pressure to
write cursive just as much as
the burden to type 40 words
per minute.
Of course, I can understand
how the belief was formed
that our generation does not
understand how the world
operated
before
technology.
The wandering thoughts of
diarists and sweeping language
of freedom from an era gone
by
are
now
encrypted
by
slanted
strokes
foreign
to
today’s readers. Their once-
perfected
penmanship
now
makes our eyes squint as we
shield embarrassment of the
unreadability
of
a
bygone
era’s thoughts. And there will
certainly be no inked wedding
invitations
with
romantic
calligraphy or tender script
journal entries in my future.
Even
more
extreme,
our
relationship with the pencil
has become intermittent. After
a summer of tapping screens
and dancing on keyboards, we
reunite with the pencil at the
first lecture of fall semester. The
alien sensation of scribbling for
90-minute intervals welcomes
us back to the classroom with
hand cramps and fresh calluses
reinforcing the endurance lost
during the summer months. It is
a reminder of the dispensability
of writing on a page.
So, I get it. I get how we are
often viewed as robots who
lack the grit of paper and pen
academia.
The inferiority of students
in our generation is expressed
through our chicken scratch
handwriting. But we were in
the room when our teachers
espoused
their
polemics
defending cursive. We heard
the
whispers
of
parents
worried we were watching
too much television. And we
remember
when
the
first
laptop carts were wheeled into
the classroom and we dropped
our pencils.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 // The Statement
2B
BY SHANNON ORS, DAILY STAFF REPORTER
Handwriting without tears: I haven’t
written cursive since 5th grade
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
Managing Statement Editor:
Brian Kuang
Deputy Editors:
Colin Beresford
Jennifer Meer
Editor in Chief:
Alexa St. John
Photo Editor:
Amelia Cacchione
Designer:
Elizabeth Bigham
Managing Editor:
Dayton Hare
Copy Editors:
Elise Laarman
Finntan Storer
statement
THE MICHIGAN DAILY | NOVEMBER 14, 2018