This must be some kind of record – here I am posting four days in a row. I guess there’s been a lot to get “het up” over this week and today is no exception. But how can you not get in a dither when the first thing you read at six o-clock in the morning is an article saying that cursive writing will no longer be taught in the schools in Indiana? Is it just me, or is anyone else freaking out over this? I mentioned it -- well , maybe I thundered down the stairs, flew into the kitchen like a dust storm, and ranted and raved -- to Eric who was reading the New Yorker and eating Grape Nuts at the kitchen island. I was certain he’d join me in mid-whirl and we’d start the day filled with the satisfaction of mutual indignation. But he barely looked up.
“DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THIS MEANS? How will we sign documents? How will we …”
“Oh, I suspect they’ll work something out,” he muttered, returning to an article about haute cuisine and the consumption of insects.
Work something out????? What does he MEAN work something out? There is no working out to be done. We either value the individuation of handwriting, or we don’t. And this from a man whose grandmother took a course in Spencerian script and left behind many documents and letters of artistic beauty. A man who loves signed books even if the autograph is from somebody’s granny who penned a treatise on tatting antimacassars and printed it out on a ditto machine in the basement with smelly purple ink and bound it in construction paper with crooked staples. A man who wrote his future wife a letter on both sides of so many pages of legal pad the thin air mail envelope nearly burst at the seams. All I can say is, if such a man can scarf down Grape Nuts and read about baking bugs at a time like THIS our society is in big trouble.
While I would grant that his handwriting would not win penmanship awards, I love that handwriting and would recognize if from twenty feet without magnification. That handwriting with its regulation capital E’s (mine have since morphed into a thing of beauty if may say so myself) tell the world that Eric Kindig and ONLY Eric Kindig signed this letter, made this will, and wrote this lone poem to his fiancée (which, by the way, wasn’t bad). His signature, my signature, and yours, are part of who we are, a handprint, as it were, of our very presence on the planet.
I remember learning cursive writing. Oh, how I loved mastering the task of relaxing my grip on the pencil and making rows and rows and ROWS of looping interconnecting “O’s” big enough to fill the space between the rules on notebook paper. As soon as these became even and natural I got the prize – graduation to the use of a fountain pen. Okay, so maybe such implements weren’t so hot in the hands of a third grader, but I still remember the little plastic vials of ink we called cartridges and the scratchy pen point which sometimes loaded with too much ink and left annoying little spots on the ends of the last letter in a word. But that’s not the point. Well, it IS the point actually, but not that kind of point. The point that matters is that we learned the ancient craft of translating our thoughts into something visible and concrete by the use of our fine muscles, our brains, and our hearts. And in doing so, joined the vast continuum of humanity – ancient man who scratched petroglyphs on stone, medieval monks who left behind manuscripts of dazzling illumination, 18th century farmers who kept track of their expenses in leather ledgers, Victorian letter writers who bled purple prose, and even 20th century teenage girls who rambled about their secret crushes in diaries secured by heart-shaped locks that could be picked with a bobby pin.
I suppose I should add that Indiana children will still learn block printing since it mimics the symbols on keyboards. Or is it keyboards which mimic block letters? The distinction seems vague and almost unnecessary to contemplate these days, but contemplate it I do. I wonder why they even bother to teach printing really. What, after all, are cell phones, I-pads, and computers FOR if not for communication? Maybe it’s in case some poor Hoosier, in a moment of unthinkable departure from home minus cell phone or tablet, gets kidnapped and sequestered in an abandoned warehouse on the mean streets of Gary and needs to send an SOS.
I can’t imagine what else it would be for. Unless maybe to communciate with the dead.
6 comments:
My husband was nearly as apoplectic as you when he heard this. None of my 3 children actually use cursive even though they were taught it. They print.
That's interesting. He and I seem to be the only people I know who are freaking out over it. Your kids at least learned it. What happens when they don't and they can't READ it?
I had a classmate in high school who had been taught to print. He could print faster than I could write, and his output was highly legible. I tried it myself, and got to be pretty good at it. The problem was that I would randomly switch, even in the middle of words, so I quit printing in school. We don't really need cursive writing anymore, except for reading Ye Olde Dokuments.
No, no -- don't tell me this! I LOVE cursive writing. And see, what did I just say -- if we don't learn cursive we can't read it. So there go ye Olde Dokuments! What if one of them as yet unread contains the secret of the universe?
Can you calculate using Roman Numerals? Can you read hieroglyphics? Do you know anyone who can use a slide rule? Other than me? Can you even read Ye Olde English print, without a struggle? I can't, but those who want to, can. In school, make way for more useful skills.
By the way, I never used the word cursive until today. It was just called writing.
Actually, I CAN do Roman numerals. But the thing is, Roman numerals don't derive from our being as does writing. The connection between the brain and the hand is a powerful thing. I suppose it would be there for printing too, but I still mourn the passing of something else that is human and natural as opposed to technological. Every little bit we chip away comes with a price.
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