i was thinking about making a post about the importance of learning cursive handwriting (historical documents, neurological benefits) etc. but then i remembered how i learned cursive by my teachers guiding my hand. i realized that this is basically off limits in the U.S and this would be seen as very scandalous for a teacher to do but in most of the world its such a normal, innocent act for kids to learn how to write. a low touch culture literally kills a people so insidiously.

    • Orcinus@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      21·
      4 days ago

      American, I was taught cursive. We often write down in print.

      EDIT: Cursive is a type of handwriting, but not the only one.

      • ʙᴏᴏᴋᴡʜʏʀᴍ [any]@lemmygrad.ml
        10·
        4 days ago

        ah okay, i was getting worried.

        i still don’t quite get why some people manage to use print to write things down, it’s so much more inefficient!

        edit: in russian, for example “cursive handwriting” literally translates to “hand-written writing” (рукописное письмо), so we may mean slightly different things, idk.

        • Orcinus@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          14·
          4 days ago

          Yeah, print over here means when your handwriting is in the form of keyboard letters like how we’re communicating, at least from my end.

          • ʙᴏᴏᴋᴡʜʏʀᴍ [any]@lemmygrad.ml
            10·
            4 days ago

            ah good, then we’re talking about the same thing after all.

            in the country i grew up in, writing “in print” wasn’t really a thing (at least during my education, idk about now), and to be honest, it just kind of seems self-defeating to me, since the reason why cursive was invented in the first place was to facilitate quicker and more efficient writing on paper.

            • WhatWouldKarlDo@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
              5·
              4 days ago

              It was actually developed for ease of use when writing with a fountain pen. With a pencil or a ballpoint pen, I think printing is just as fast. I actually challenged one of my cursive using friends to a race once, and I won.

              That being said, I’m old enough to have been taught how to handwrite (as opposed to print-style characters), but I wasn’t taught cursive. I was taught an alternative that was faster and more legible. I still abandoned it 5 years later when I was approaching high school. Legibility of my writing was more important than speed. And I quickly discovered that printing wasn’t actually slower. All I handwrite these days is my signature, and it’s honestly just an aesthetically pleasing scrawl.