A Case For Cursive - For History’s Sake

Last week my folks went on vacation and came back with some souvenirs for my daughter and her cousin - replicas of The Declaration Of Independence.

They presented it to the girls at a family dinner and the hard to miss events that happened next have inspired this post.

My daughter’s response was delight, as she’s a total history buff, and quickly went to open the document and began reading it.

My niece’s response was that of confusion. She opened it up.. looked at it... turned it over... looked at my daughter.. then her Papa and said, “I can’t read this. Is it French?”

The girls are the same age, one has gone to public school her whole life and one is homeschooled. This isn’t a debate about what is better, as both girls are extremely intelligent and will go far in life.

But the fact that my niece had no idea how to even begin reading this thing she had been handed, when my daughter was easily deciphering it, hit me in the gut pretty hard.

I do remember making it a point to teach my daughter cursive writing, as I thought it was important. I have heard many times that schools aren’t teaching it anymore, and felt that was a shame.

But seeing the results of these decisions (on both parts) before my eyes was a pretty intense moment.

Crazy enough, everyone else at the table seemed to realize in that moment the exact same thing... as silence overcame the group.

My daughter looked at her cousin, scooted closer and began reading the document from the beginning aloud to her.. and my nieces eyes lit up.

After dinner my munchkin dug out her old cursive writing curriculum and started working through it with her cousin, then told her she could have it and they could practice by writing letters to each other.