Seth Godin wrote that we should stop teaching students cursive writing because it is a useless skill. I disagreed. A reader took issue with my comments quite vociferously, but wasn't considerate enough to leave his name. Since he has denied me the ability to respond to him personally, I'll respond here.
He suggests I might be of his parents' generation, 65-70 years old. I'm 43. I've been using computers since I was thirteen, long before they could sit in your lap. I'm a university educated electrical engineer, marketing software products. I currently own 5 laptops, 2 desktops, and a Mac. I type for the better part of each day. Yet I still write every day too. I still love the feel of pen on paper. I use a hacked combination of printing and cursive, such that my pen never leaves the paper.
I mentioned PDAs, and he asked if I had ever heard of Graffiti (he misspells it). Yes in the 10 years I've used a Palm for, I have. The last time I looked, Graffiti was a combination of printing and cursive. And new tablet PCs tout their ability to capture cursive handwriting.
He suggests that grade school children (mine are in high school and first year university) should be taught in read-only fashion, because there are so many other things competing for our limited brainpower. I've never personally found my, or my kids' brainpower limited - the more I stuff in, the more it holds - though I can see his point from a time limit point of view.
As for a useful skill, that really depends on what you define as useful. If his children wish to become artists, is that not a useful skill? How about historians? Computers are a blip in history, while generations, even centuries worth of documents exist as script on paper. How about doctors? The computer has not yet replaced their bedside notes on charts, though it might be polite to refer to their scratchings as cursive. These are more likely to be replaced by speech recognition. Once speech recognition becomes common, will we eliminate written words altogether?
We too often forget that the printed word on paper is the only thing that has any kind of longevity. In my shory history in computing I've seen puch cards, tapes, 8", 5.25", and 3" floppies, CDs, and DVDs. Only 3" floppies, CDs, and DVDs are still readable, yet I still have paper notes I wrote over 20 years ago.
Imagine if the Declaration of Independence had been written on a computer.
I'm not suggesting that we spend weeks teaching cursive writing, but a few days shouldn't hurt too much.
A quote from third grade teacher Ed Boell at Horrall Elementary School in San Mateo, California, in this CBS News article says it best:
"The truth is, boys and girls, even if you write a lot of e-mail on the computer, you will always need to write things down on paper at some point in your life," Boell says. "The letters you write to people are beautiful, and they'll cherish them forever. Have any of you ever received an e-mail that you cherished?"
Printing is a skill. Cursive writing is more of an art, and sometimes we do still need to protect art. And we still need to be able to communicate with the much larger percentage of the world that hasn't reduced all of their communication to electronic form.
I still think that cursive is useful. It is always good to have discussion too.