Has handwriting become obsolete?

According to the Jan. 30th Wall Street Journal, children are not longer being required to learn cursive script in school; instead, they are now expected to be proficient typists. (One wonders if, once tablets become ubiquitous, typing will give way to proficiency in tapping and swiping...)

I can see a day in which people will no longer be able to read cursive writing; all those love letters your grandmother saved might as well be in Sanskrit, and the Declaration of Independence will appear to have been written in a foreign language.

It is a sign of the times that Jack Lew, our next Secretary of the Treasury and whose signature goes on all US currency, writes his name with 9 loops. When announcing his nomination, Pres. Obama noted "Jack assures me that he is going to work to make at least one letter legible in order not to debase our currency."

 

Hmmmmm. Why does that look so familiar???

Granted, my penmanship is so bad that I print my handwritten notes, and my signature looks like the scrawl of a third grader. But I still swoon when I see nice handwriting and dream of one day having the time to practice my cursive writing. Yes, I'm a nerd. My goal:

 

Comments

[EllenNaylor]

This is troubling to me from another perspective. There is kinetic memory that goes along with things that you write, not on the PC/tablet or smart phone, but in your own handwriting. That's one reason I take all notes in my handwriting at meetings and when I conduct phone research. I have my own shorthand and create a mindmap so easily that helps me remember. Typing just doesn't help me retain or think how stuff ties together as I am hearing it as my own illegible scribble does.

[Adrienne DeVine]

Good point Ellen Naylor!

[Karen Bleier]

And there is sound research (which I'm not going to hunt up at the moment - bad librarian that I am!) indicating that the process of learning to write by hand triggers brain development in previously unexpected ways. Does being a digital native have to mean learning nothing else? (Full disclosure: Montessori schools still teach handwriting, and my child writes beautifully for her age - better than me sometimes.)