Here dies cursive writing. Long live cursive reading.

It’s happening. Cursive writing is dying, suffocated by neglect. For genealogy to live past it, cursive reading must live long and prosper.

In 2013, the Common Core State Standards Initiative, adopted by the vast majority of U.S. public schools, dropped cursive writing as a requirement. While some states are still teaching it (or allowing it to be taught) over and above the Common Core, most are not.

Those of us in higher education have been warned that we would eventually find ourselves with students arriving for college unable to read cursive. This week I realized it’s already happening. They are here.

A will in cursive writing

This week, I had the privilege of teaching two bright, hardworking young students how to do family history on Ancestry.com. A class assignment requires them to find the names of enslaved persons owned by a few local families. They were picking it up faster than any of us older folk ever could until I showed them a will. Things screeched to a halt.

I think they were as shocked as I was that reading a neatly handwritten last will and testament would be a brick wall to their progress. I recognize that a mid-nineteenth century will offers challenges even to seasoned genealogists, but this was more than a challenge. It was a foreign language at best and hieroglyphics at worst.

These two sophomores both attended elementary schools that taught cursive writing, but they never used it after learning it. And just like the Spanish I learned in the 11^th grade, it is all gone for lack of practice.

I mentioned this to a new acquaintance, while traveling yesterday, and she gave me more reasons to worry. Her children only know how to read cursive because she made them learn it outside of school. Only 17 children in her son’s elementary school can read cursive.

The cursive writing problem in the workforce

It had not even occurred to me until yesterday what this will mean to the workforce. The new acquaintance also mentioned a friend who is having trouble with a young woman she has hired. The woman cannot read cursive writing, and it is creating a real problem.

Though we are in a computer-driven world, those of us over 30 write in cursive as standard practice. Let’s say we want to warn an employee who has not yet arrived to work that they should not to turn on the computer until tech support looks at it. We write that on a sticky note, and put it right in the middle of the person’s computer screen. The employee arrives for work and sees a sticky note with unreadable squiggles on their monitor. They move it out of the way and press the power button. Later when you walk by, they ask you to translate the squiggles and say, “Oh, by the way, my computer has crashed.”

Cursive happens in the modern workforce and will for at least another 40 years. I’m a magazine editor by day. When someone hands me a document and asks me to look it over, I scribble notes around the margins. Will I have to give up the most efficient method of editing or will they have to learn this foreign language?

We have student workers helping us process magazine subscriptions for a readership that is largely over 60 years of age. Our customers write their checks, fill out their forms, and send us notes about how they want their subscriptions handled, in cursive. The oldest of them are writing in a very shaky cursive. My over-30 staff members don’t have time to serve as translators every day. I suspect we will soon need to advertise for jobs with the standard clause, “Must read cursive.”

The cursive writing problem in genealogy

As we contemplate this cultural shift, what might it mean to the field of genealogy? And what can we do about it?

First, I think we need to face the fact that modern technology will kill cursive writing as a skill and art. It is not the writing in cursive we need; it is the reading of cursive that really matters for genealogists and historians.

Will the allure of genealogy diminish when the new generations hit the roadblock that handwritten documents are going to be? Will family histories be created based only on records that have been transcribed in print?

What do we do about the cursive writing problem then?

• For the next 40 years at least, we need to be active in demanding that our public schools train children to read cursive writing—and that they refresh such training until it can be retained.
• If the schools are failing to teach children to read cursive, we need to teach the children in our own circles.
• Forever more, our genealogical and historical societies will need to offer training to researchers struggling to read cursive writing.
• We need to be actively engaged in transcribing handwritten documents, ensuring that ever larger amounts of historical information will be available to future generations. (See FamilySearch Indexing Volunteers for a way to do your part.)

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There is a sadness as I write this, because I remember how proud and grown-up I felt when I learned to write in cursive. I never imagined I would live to see its obsolescence.

We are the last of the cursive writers, friends. Let’s do all we can to ensure we are not the last of the cursive-literate.

 

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A Hopeful Note, as of 9/26/2021

I have become aware of a book that might be a solution for the up-and-coming genealogists who did not have the privilege of learning to read cursive. Kate Gladstone’s Read Cursive Fast – Learn to Read Cursive, Historical Documents, and Notes Even if You Don’t Write by Hand promises a quick solution to the cursive illiterate. If any of you are familiar with it, I’d love to hear your comments.