Learning to write in cursive. I'm willing to bet that for at least a few years in grade school or middle school, you were encouraged or maybe even required to write in cursive. It took up huge chunks of time and some things my teachers told me included "once you get to high school you only write in cursive" and various quotes along those lines. However, after going through high school and now a little over half of college, I think learning to write in cursive was one of the most useless skills I have ever learned.
To be honest, the bad aspects of learning to write in cursive far outweigh the good. One of the big problems is that for people who have horrible handwriting (such as myself), writing in cursive only amplifies writing legibility to the point where you can barely even read what you wrote. You might have heard your teachers say "it makes writing so much quicker because it's all one fluid motion." Well, that's great, but it doesn't do me much good when my B's look like L's, my R's look like a U and I hybrid, and my S looks like an accident scribble among countless other problems that arise. To me, regular, clean handwriting looks so nice. Cursive just looks cluttered and sloppy.
These days, you barely even need to write things down anymore anyway though. Everything's on computers. Papers, lab reports, resume's, anything. For me, I really only actually write when I take tests or when I need to take notes in class. When I take tests, I just take a little extra time to make sure the teacher can read what I wrote down. Then when I take notes, who cares? I'm the only one reading them anyway. I use cursive for my signature but my signature has evolved into barely legible scribbles at this point. So why take the time to learn a whole different writing style when you won't even use it?
Going along with that, why is this even a productive skill to learn? Sure, the penmanship elites can write in calligraphy. That's cool I guess. But I already learned how to write. Why complicate it with "Yeah I know you learned how to write, but here's a more complex way of doing it that you'll never use in your entire life, ever." I feel like with how much time I spent writing in cursive could've been spent being way more productive. Like learning more about math, science, reading, or english. I understand that writing would technically fall under reading and english as a language arts type class, but wouldn't the time be better served developing better reading comprehension, math, or science skills? Skills that will ACTUALLY be of use later on in life?
If you don't agree with me, that's fine. Whatever writing style you prefer, I won't judge. But just think to yourself, would your life actually be different if you never learned how to write in cursive?
