Cursive writing is an issue at hand for today’s students

Lots of people are disturbed about the trend away from teaching cursive writing. I’m among them.

I’ve been told I have nice handwriting. This would come as a complete shock to Mrs. Shoemaker, my sixth-grade teacher, who was so disgusted by my penmanship that she actually told me I should learn to type at the earliest opportunity.

I say the deck was stacked. If your handwriting didn’t look exactly like Mrs. Shoemaker’s, you were guaranteed a check mark in the “needs improvement” box on your report card, and (in my case) several despairing notes to the parental units:

“Michael seems unwilling to  improve his penmanship.”

“Michael’s sloppy penmanship remains a problem. I misread a line in his book report on ‘Guadalcanal Diary’ as “Vivian Vance has a big butt.’”

“Are you quite sure Michael is right-handed?”

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