By Nancy Cruse
When I was a kid growing up with 5 brothers on the farm, we used to create secret messages using codes we had devised using letters and numbers. We thought we were brilliant! We could be secret agents! What fun!
Well, not being able to decipher the written word is not always such a good thing. My 12 year old son came to me this week with a letter he had received from his grandpa. “Mom, could you read this to me?” I looked him puzzled and asked, “Why do you need me to read this to you?” “I can’t read cursive,” was his reply.
Wasn’t there a whole year in school spent learning cursive and practicing writing it? What was the point of that? The very next year, not one of his teachers enforced the use of cursive so he quickly lost the ability to write using it. He has printed ever since.
Not one of his three older sisters writes in cursive either. In this age of texting, Snapchat, and Instagram, why would they? They do most of their writing electronically.
There is a win in this situation for me. I can write my Christmas shopping list in cursive, leave it laying on the kitchen counter, and my son will still have no idea what Santa’s bringing him. I can give him a note to give to one of his teachers written in cursive and he won’t know what we’re discussing.
But there’s a big downside too. Most important historical documents, like the Constitution or the Gettysburg address are written in cursive. Sure, he can read the typed version of these documents, but there is nothing like seeing the original document and reading “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” in Abraham Lincoln’s cursive handwriting.
Should we stop teaching cursive in school? It’s really not the most pressing educational adjustment that needs to be made but the time spent teaching cursive could be used for a more fundamental part of their education, like math or reading. For now, I plan to leverage my use of the cursive secret code.
Nancy Cruse has been part of the Bloomington/Normal community for the past almost 30 years. A widow, with five children, along with her late husband was a small business owner in downtown Bloomington. Now employed by State Farm, Nancy is active in the community, writing the Clare House newsletter and maintaining their Facebook page, hosting an annual Fourth of July Food Drive, a team leader and fundraiser for the Pat Nohl Lupus Walk, and a member of Toastmasters International, as well as volunteering in various capacities at Holy Trinity Church and schools. In her spare time, Nancy likes to run, bike, hike, read, sew, and be a vegetarian who occasionally indulges in a Schooners Tenderloin.
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