Cursive Is Not Stupid

I've seen this story around, but hadn't really paid much attention to it until I ran across this post from Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. It's a bounce off this story. I find little to agree with:

Half the butthurt in this comment thread is based on the assumption that I was suggesting kids shouldn't learn to write with their hands. I just said "cursive", a fancy and outdated way of writing with your hands that is used by such a rare group of people that anyone who feels some compulsion to learn it should do so in college, alongside their basket-weaving courses.

I really can't think of a way to describe that comment as anything other than contrarian bullshit. I suppose it stems from the idea that people are so limited that they can only manage one skill at a time. Maybe that's the case in Indiana, but I'm from Illinois.

Granted, a lot of people have absolutely atrocious handwriting -- my own is of the "shock and awe" variety, and my printing is not much better, the result, I think, of spending too much time at the keyboard. Aside from the feeling of worth that comes from mastering a new skill, learning cursive was almost a rite of passage: you could write like a grown-up, so you were a little more grown-up yourself.

Learning skills is apparenly somehow a bad thing, particularly if they're "useless" skills such as cursive writing or reading German. (Yes, I started working on my German because I got really tired of saying "I used to be able to. . . ." There are a number of things in that category, which I'm working on.)

Of course, I realize that in the world inhabited by the really cool people, you do your grocery list on your iPhone, you e-mail your child's teacher instead of sending a note, you visit your friends and family on Facebook rather than writing a letter or postcard.

The point being, of course, that we're no longer allowed to slow down and think about anything. Writing it out longhand tends to make you do that, especially if it's something for someone else to read.

I just take it as more evidence of education as a tool of the corporate state -- teach them what the plutocracy needs for them to know and no more. I'm sort of surprised to see Marcotte falling into that.