As classrooms go digital, a quiet debate over cursive reveals what we value in literacy today.
Cursive declined not from handwriting speed, but because keyboarding tests became literacy gatekeepers in 1980s schools.
Some schools replaced cursive with keyboarding early on, assuming future generations would never read handwritten notes.
Cursive preservation movements emerged from archivists, not teachers, citing easier digitization of scanned documents with modern scripts.
Surprisingly, some elites still prize cursive for signature legitimacy, while classrooms teach print to optimize standardized test performance.
Cursive declined not from handwriting speed, but because keyboarding tests became literacy gatekeepers in 1980s schools.
Some schools replaced cursive with keyboarding early on, assuming future generations would never read handwritten notes.
Cursive preservation movements emerged from archivists, not teachers, citing easier digitization of scanned documents with modern scripts.
Surprisingly, some elites still prize cursive for signature legitimacy, while classrooms teach print to optimize standardized test performance.
