I just found a bunch of handwritten letters in my basement (from Vietnam) and it occurred to me that it won’t be long before they’ll have to have specialists to read cursive writing. They don’t teach it in schools anymore and I was at a shower recently when the bride-to-be handed a card to her friend and said, “I can’t read cursive. What does this say?”
A Lost Art by Jean
September 3, 2015 by ElderChicks
5 Responses
Leave a reply. We'd love to hear from you!
Welcome to ElderChicks
We are part of the fastest growing part of the population: senior women in their retirement years. Senior women living in a world most of our mothers and grandmothers didn’t imagine, let alone inhabit. Share your story and join the conversation.Order our new book!
Archives
Top 10 Blog Topics
-
How to Use Our Blog
ElderChicks 
Wow! Cursive writing might be going the way of runes and hieroglyphs! What a shame!
Wow . . . Have we come so far that the next generation can’t read!! What’s go on in our schools . . . Has the computer taken over our lives? Cursive is so important . . . A handwritten note is so personal and thoughtful.
I remember my aunt who learned by the Palmer method, what great handwriting she had. And, we had fun in high school personalizing our own script, remember those heart shapes to dot the i’s? So sad that children no longer learn cursive. I didn’t realize it was becoming a lost art.
I went to a lecture at the library of Congress. The person speaking had written a book about Jesse James wife. She said the hardest thing was to find researchers who could read the letters written at the time.
The Smithsonian magazine had a full page ad asking for people who could transcribe their correspondence and documents as volunteers. I am considering signing up. It is important not to lose these items, but it is a shame that kids are no longer taught cursive.
Wouldn’t it be fun (as well as an important contribution) to read those old letters?