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

