American “cursive” is what is known in other countries as script. It’s the kind of thing you might learn on a calligraphy course. Although there is overlap, it’s not the same as e.g. what in the UK is known as “handwriting” which is writing with the letters joined together explicitly for the purpose of comfort and efficiency with zero aesthetic intent.
At least for me, though I believe the majority of the UK would agree, handwriting (“cursive”) is what I use in daily life, e.g. writing a shopping list, and that print is reserved for whenever I want to be neat and formal and have others understand my handwriting - but it’s kind of a chore to write.
Now, in later classes, especially in middle and high-school, developing your own handwriting style was common and not problematic - and many, including myself, adopted some print letters while still using many cursive ones as well.
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After leaving college and not needing to write much after a decade or two, its jarring enough to get used to writing in block script.
I can at least understand the idea of writing printed characters by hand - the difference between that and cursive isn't that large, and is non-existent for the above. But to forego handwriting entirely doesn't seem plausible to me, in these subjects at least.
I don't think I've heard anyone advocate for getting rid of handwriting. All I'm saying is I got very out of practice after leaving school. In school handwriting was almost exclusively for personal use. I toyed with digital note-taking at the time and realized it was terrible.
> the difference between that and cursive isn't that large
:shrug: Like I said above, the three or so generations I've seen in the US got a couple years of cursive, never saw the value in maintaining it on their own and got very out of practice. The distinction is strong enough that decades old references stick around in my head [1]. A lot of people live with terrible block handwriting. I took an online class and started handwriting notices and realized how out of practice I was with block writing because of how illegible it was and how soon my hand started cramping. I never got comfortable enough with cursive to be faster and/or more legible than block handwriting.