+1 to this

You’d never know it without asking me but my sloppy handwriting is the product of trying to add cursive concepts to my print writing style because everyone said cursive was good therefore it must only be able to enhance print writing. What a phenomenally useless skill. I could have spent those hours reading books.

I wonder if the SAT still makes you write the anti-cheating pledge on the back of your answer book in cursive

The person I replied to seemed to imply it was bad that kids aren’t taught cursive. I’ve heard that opinion before, as if cursive were intrinsically valuable. I think it’s like any other hobby skill: if you like using it because of your own enjoyment, awesome! But that doesn’t mean it’s inherently worthwhile for anyone else.

There are faster versions, but probably not so much the ones that are commonly taught. Also, most of the time one writes plenty fast enough. The only case I can think of where more speed is essential is steno and that is not cursive.

If you want speed, there are better options, not the least of which is a keyboard (or steno etc). I haven’t had a use case for cursive since it was required in elementary school. For most purposes that don’t care about speed it is inferior to the block writing styles I learned for engineering.

I swear, many years ago, there were papers published that showed print-style handwriting was quicker. Up until then I would have agreed with you; now I'm not so sure, and the sources have drifted into the mists of memory.

Worth a check.

The difference with France is that kids (at least mine) learn cursive from a very young age - in the UK where I'm from we learnt cursive when I was around 9 or 10 by which time the bad habits have already been formed.