you know how in elementary school you were required to learn cursive to “improve your handwriting”
or whatever other bs reasons they gave to force you to make curvy letters for a grade. wellll, i was never really that good at it. like, i’m sure i was just as good as everybody else in third grade, but only knowing third grade cursive as a senior in high school didn’t seem very good to me. when i say that my cursive was terrible, i mean horrendous. like it looked like i never learned how to write at all. so, i took on the task of improving my cursive this month and everyday i write in cursive in my journal to improve my skillllsss. i think that cursive handwriting and calligraphy is so beautiful and in a way it made me upset that i couldn’t write like that. but, i know that i can do anything with repetition and belief in myself so this day on october 9th i have to say that my cursive is MUCH better than when i began this little journey nine days ago. after only a week and some I’m almost a new person because I’m looking at handwriting, mine and others, much differently.
also, i am quite appalled that children hardly have to handwrite anything anymore in school. being able to type is great and that has practically replaced handwriting completely. this is an epidemic and it is honestly sad. letters show so much more emotion than a text message. through writing letters you learn so much. you learn the value of time and how patience is extremely important in life. you learn how to express yourself through your handwriting and the words you use broadening your vocabulary and strengthening your lexicon. you learn how to be quiet and simply listen because when you are reading letters you can’t interrupt the person talking you can only read till the end and respond with a completely clear mind after having read their whole side of the story.
i am sure we all know that this is apart of a much larger changing in our society, though. don’t we? i mean… you only turn in homework digitally. children are learning their vocabulary through tv and games on an iPad or iPhone. the elderly are watching more tv than they are talking to their family. we only talk through text and FaceTime. how can we even begin to understand each other if we never see or touch each other? how can we know what the real meaning is behind someone’s words when all we can see behind them is a gray bubble?
i don’t know if I’m making this out to be more than it really is and i am not discrediting any of the innovation of our generation, but i will say many of the values that made us a unified people before are gone and it doesn’t seem like anyone cares. should i care?
tell me in the comments what you think about cursive and handwriting in general…
do you think there is an epidemic happening? do you think it is good or bad? or are you just neutral?