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7 October 2018 • NVRA eVoice

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FREAKING OUT WAY
LONGER THAN YOU THINK ABOUT THE

DEATH OF CURSIVE byLilyRothman

http://time.com/4182624/handwriting-scare-history/

The pencil salesman’s handwriting was a mark of a
lament will likely great mind.
sound familiar:
“Penmanship,” he In 1947, TIME again

complained, “is sort of dying bemoaned the “day of

out.” typewriters, shorthand,

telephones and

In today’s texting, typing Dictaphones” when 70% of

world, worry about the teachers said that “the

“dying art” of handwriting is nation’s penmanship was

a common refrain–especially getting no better, or it was

among parents and getting worse.” Handwriting

educators who fear for a classes, particularly for

generation of children who cursive, were already losing

cannot write in cursive, as their time in the school day.

the amount of classroom German children work on their handwriting, circa 1950. Even the teachers
time spent on handwriting FPG / Getty Images themselves had bad
shrinks. There’s even a handwriting. “The day of the

National Handwriting Day – curlicue and flourish, and of

January 23, on John Hancock’s birthday – that a writing- arm exercises,” the story noted, “seemed to be over.”

instrument trade group sponsors in order to remind

Americans of the joy of penmanship. And they do have a Five years later, the parents of Brookline, Mass., organized

bit of a point: studies have shown that students who are a mini revolt against the local public schools’ decision to

taught both script and print writing do better on reading ditch cursive in favor of manuscript printing that one local

tests, and that cursive writing uses a unique part of the magazine called “a system that bears a striking similarity to

brain. the crude hieroglyphics of the ancient Phoenicians.”

But they also have reason to take a deep breath. A quick By 1980, “telephones, typewriters, computer print-outs”
look at TIME’s archives reveals that handwriting nostalgia and “a spreading weakness of will” were to blame for the
is not a product of the computer age. People were freaking epidemic of illegibility. In fact, the occasion for TIME’s
out about children not learning their cursive for decades noting the problem was that the group behind National
before the first word processors showed up in schools. Handwriting Day, which was established in the 1970s, had
decided it was pointless to continue to include signatures
That pencil salesman quoted above? He appeared in a in their campaign for clear writing.
TIME story in 1935, in which a representative of the
National Association of Penmanship Teachers and There’s no question that the way handwriting is taught in
Supervisors blamed not typewriters but prominent figures schools has changed—but when it comes to worrying
like Horace Greeley, who made it seem like bad
about that fact, some things have stayed the same.