I never knew that. It’s interesting, thanks!

I'm 40 and our teacher explained why cursive was a thing in elementary school. I figured we were learning it so we could sign our name.

Take computers out of the picture. How long have we been using ballpoint pens? Cursive was obsolete even before computers took over how we write.

That's really interesting to know. Do you have any particular sources you'd recommend for further reading?

There is

former elementary school teacher Sharon Quirk-Silva

Probably another old person who just can't let the damn thing go.

I learned cursive in the 3rd grade, the amount of times I've needed it (beyond a signature, even then it's just a squiggle) is a whopping 0

It would be much more suitable in a separate optional class like you said, a calligraphy class or more budget for art classes (Which is far more important IMO)

That's a huge shame, because cursive is my standard handwriting for any note taking or long form writing. It feels less strenuous on my hand, and looks neater. I use print writing for short notes or to fill in fields on documents, but everything else looks so much nicer to me in cursive script.

Around 3rd or 4th grade in the mid-2000s I learned cursive and also have never used it outside of pretty much just using it for my signature. It's definitely something that isn't all that useful outside of signatures anymore, and even then, it's becoming less relevant when you can't write worth a damn on those electric signature rectangle things.

Though, I completely agree that expanding it by adding it to an art class in the form of calligraphy would be an amazing way to both learn cursive and make it more enjoyable.

Do you mean to say you would rather teach the children to write like a dad?

I learned cursive in school, I still can't read it. The nature of cursive is that only the person who wrote it can reliably read it and sometimes not even them

If those are desired results, what other activities produces the same result?

Lots of those benefits seems like they might be derived from playing certain video games. Assuming the peer-reviewed research supports that, shouldn't that be considered too?

So do video games.

Have there been? Link them.

Because I call bullshit on that

I'm not convinced. We learned cursive in like grade 2 or 3 or something and the rest of elementary school we had to do all assignments except for science and math in cursive with a ball point pen. I could do reading comprehension until an assignment asked what the characters were thinking and feeling then I lost marks. I even wrote to one of the still living authors of one of the books and they confirmed the teacher and my own opinions were both significantly different from what they intended but that didn't overturn my bad marks for lack of understanding. Fine motor skills I owe to my grandma's arts and crafts and video games she kept when my uncle grew up and left so I can't really say for that. It didn't do anything about being picked last in team sports but would that be coarse motor skills? Apart from the 2.5 savant syndrome kids we were all dumb as fuck but at least we could read and write cursive.

I've always struggled with it. Often people let it degrade into a line with tiny bumps, and it becomes illegible.

Personally I am Autistic and have ADHD, so the fine motor control is hard to manage. I can't write cursive neatly, but if I slow right down I can "draw" cursive.

Growing up undiagnosed when I did, has developed a hardy set of calluses across the knuckles from teachers hitting them with a ruler for bad pen grip or messy writing.

Most of those fuckers are dead or in diapers now.

If you are European it may be surprising to learn that most of the world’s cursive is not the same as the US. Learning cursive in much of the world is closer to joined-writing, where the form is more personal to the individual and the explicit purpose is speed (at least for right handed people). Learning cursive in the US is learning a bastardized form of joined-writing that has much lost its original purpose as a side effect of attempting to heavily standardize its form.

I really like hand written notes, especially since I can draw whatever I may need to help supplement the notes (graphs/arrows/boxes). Writing in print is so much slower and tiring than cursive, I will do whatever I can to not write in print. Also, I find my handwriting in cursive is far neater than print. I'm not sure the extent others can read it and am disappointed computers have a much harder time reading cursive into text.