We know that because of advances in technology, our schools are moving away from teaching cursive and handwriting all together.
Big mistake. BIG mistake.
Let me tell you why.
Our founding documents for our country and much of the first two centuries of our country's legal and historical paperwork was hand-written and very often in cursive.
Historical studies show that civilizations which are unable to access, read or even have records of their foundings ultimately perish. Losing sight of where they've been, why they came to be, where they were headed - they lose sight of even where they are and ultimately become unable to determine their destiny as a nation and a people. Ultimately - civilizations like this collapse and have collapsed so many times.
What about transcribing everything though so nobody has to read it in cursive?
Too much like the dark ages when only clergy and royalty could read and thereby ideas were suppressed and the transferrence of knowledge was severely limited impacting a society for an entire millenia!
On a practical note, I do genealogical work and one of the things I do here and there is read old documents that have been scanned and transcribe them into computer databases so they can be searched by others. Other times, I search through others' transcriptions until I can find the original documents and verify their contents. I am looking at things like land grants, wills, property records, marriages, legal rulings, ship passenger manifests, passports, draft notices, draft cards, medical records, ship freight manifests, warrants, court records and letters - none of which I could do if I didn't know how to read and write cursive. Some of those records are important to me personally as some of them hold rights to me personally today to land and property and even scholarships and grants for my schooling through various historical societies.
Everyone needs free access to our past, our writings and documents. The best way to make this possible is to not have to rely on the integrity of others to do it for us, but to be able to do it ourselves - and our children be able to do it for themselves. I wouldn't rely on Obama or Supreme Court Justice Kagan or Attorney General Eric holder to tell my kids what they say or even what they mean.
Cursive isn't about just writing - it's about reading - its about our freedom being understood and preserved!
