If “video killed the radio star,” the keyboard killed cursive. Perhaps ‘killed’ is too strong a word, but the curly, right-leaning script is bedridden in Handwriting Hospital, and it’s unclear if it will recover. The word “cursive” stems from Latin’s “currere,” or “to run.” Appropriately, this is the style where the pen only lifts in between words to create spaces or to dot I’s and cross T’s. Cursive originated in the mid-15 th century in direct revolt against the harsh, Gothic type of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. Italians craved a more romantic script and developed the smooth, cursive form of writing we now know as Italic. From its origin, elegant script stood as a status symbol and was taught in specialized schools starting in the 1700s. Cursive once stood as a prominent part of the elementary curriculum, up until some foggy point within the last decade. Evidence dates to 2009 when the U.S. adopted the Common Core State Standard Initiative, which put students across the nation on an “equal” playing field for the purpose of college readiness. The Common Core includes different guidelines for every subject; among the fundamental skills for “English Language Arts,” cursive is nowhere to be found. Still, it’s strange as to why people have taken so long to recognize cursive’s absence. Despite the nebulousness around its time of death, small steps have been taken to resuscitate cursive. Fourteen of the 50 states commanded their State Boards of Education to secure cursive as a part of the curriculum once again, but 36 states and the U.S. territories have not made these strides to keep cursive within education. Last fall, the nation’s largest public school system located in New York City, with 1.1 million students, encouraged the teaching of cursive, specifically at the third-grade level. Cursive’s resurgence has been overwhelmingly supported by specialized programs that assist children struggling with dyslexia. Language specialists working with students across the U.S. have found that students with dyslexia benefit from learning cursive. Dyslexia specifically affects a student’s ability to read and sound out letter combinations. Since cursive integrates coordination, motor skills, and memory, the decoding process becomes less rigorous and more systematic. Cursive also assists in the appropriate spacing of letters, further helping these students with a structured decoding process. Apart from these examples, there remains a deficit of cursive teaching in the public-school system. How has the shortage of teaching cursive affected U.S. students? The most glaring example may be Americans’ reliance on electronic and completely impersonal signatures. It is not the same to type one’s name, as it is to craft it. Recently, during the November 2018 midterm elections, many Americans dealt with “handwriting disputes” regarding their applications for absentee ballots. The lack of consistency with some
Should Americans protect this endangered art, or do we send it off into extinction, with the dodo bird and Juicy Couture? Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a signature as “the name of a person written with his or her own hand” and something of a “characteristic mark.” If people are not adequately taught cursive in their early school years, the issue can span further than absentee ballots. Down the road, these students will have to sign a lease on a car, a mortgage, or banking agreement — even for the delivery of a package. These “signatures” that people claim to have are, often, a combination of one-time scribbles that are ever-changing. Appearing juvenile, these signatures pose the threat of easily being replicated. Without the knowledge of cursive, American citizens will not be able to craft a signature that is distinguishable enough to validate their identity. signatures has shut out tens of thousands of voters from this midterm election who actually are who they claim to be. Absentee ballot applicants are struggling to match signatures from previous government-filed documents within their state, causing difficulty in their quest to express their vote. Florida was riddled with lawsuits over the 2018 midterm election, as state officials “identified” 4,000 out of the 2 million mail-in ballots to be problematic, and thus, discounted them. The criteria for these ineligible ballots is questionable and could hinder voters from casting ballots at all. This is as much an issue for people who were able to successfully vote as for those who were not able. Could American democracy crumble because of the lack of proficiency in cursive? A signature is a form of identification that people are not born with. It is not a fingerprint, genetic material, or a number sequence immediately assigned post birth. A signature is a learned skill that must be consistent in the way a fingerprint is: practiced until it becomes muscle memory. The glide of a pen must feel familiar and of one’s own, rather than a quick, illegible scribble to validate a simple coffee purchase. Every letter that builds a name must be inscribed the same and has to illustrate who the writer is every time. The composition of signatures is what validates that it is this person who signed off on that, not someone else.
VOLUME 6
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FM/AM FASHION MAGAZINE AT MARIST
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