Cursing? No, cursive writing is not for cursing – nor a curse

A few months back, a lady asked an interesting question. Why don’t the schools (at least, the “public schools” – government-run, tax-funded) teach children to write in cursive anymore?

She had some good thoughts – definitely answers that could be exactly right. Of course, her answers could be viewed as those of a conspiracy-theorist.

She suggested that it was no coincidence that teachers are using cursive writing less and less. Cursive encourages making ideas (thoughts) into words. For one thing, it does not let you take your hand off the paper, so that you develop a flow of ideas, stimulating more thoughts, associating the ideas to each other, and then putting them into the proper relationship. It both controls emotions – you must have good self-control to write well in cursive – and at the same time communicates emotions. In contrast, hand printing and typing do not exhibit emotions, and require a far different kind of action and control.

The very word “cursive” comes from the Latin “currere” – meaning to run or flow: thoughts and ideas are winged: they run and even fly. Like the fluid hand and baton gestures of an orchestral conductor, or the movements of the hands of a violinist or fiddler, both intellect and emotions: mind and heart (and even soul) are engaged.

In today’s world, that is not just unwanted and not understood, it is positively detested. It appears that much of society, a lot of business, and even more government does not want us to think rapidly and carefully. Does not want to tie emotions to reasoning. Wants to stifle thought.

Why? Because communication is so important. At least to little things like peace and prosperity, and harmony in society: even to liberty and freedom. The powers-that-be, of whatever type, do not want free people: they want people who are subservient. People who do not and cannot think for themselves.

Several people also point out that AI programs cannot read cursive. A claim we’ve not attempted to verify, here at TPOL. But given the problem that most AI programs have with actual words as shown on images? We would not at all be surprised.

Regardless of these claims, we at TPOL see other reasons. One is that the current crop of government-educated and licensed teachers are not taught it themselves, and certainly not taught how to teach cursive. Why? We speculate that it is because standards keep getting lower. And because they must have their four years and 90-100 semester hours filled with the humongous amount of propaganda they are expected to teach, this gets pushed to one side. And in the same way, the first five or six grades of elementary school must mostly be spent in pushing that propaganda, and since even basic reading and writing skills are not taught until 1-2 years after they once were, there is less and less time to teach things which require both growing dexterity and attention to detail. (It is the same in basic math and reading skills, we think.) Another factor is the regimen of testing children: no modern testing system used to quantify “progress” and “success” in schools has any means of evaluating cursive writing: the most dexterity required is to print letters in little boxes (uppercase only, please) and darken the circles of answers.

But whatever the reasons, the issue is very clear. Modern schools are failing in many, many ways to teach children the skills and attitudes that they need to become adults, to be successful in life. This includes not just the GRTF schools, but more and more private schools. And since most parents are themselves products of GRTF-compromised schooling, even home-schooling is often deficit in providing those skills.

We will ask one of our TPOL staff to provide a follow-up commentary on this, based on personal experience: an “I” viewpoint and not an editorial “we” point of view. For now, suffice to say that modern schools fail pretty much across the board.

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