Death of Cursive

I don't think cursive takes all that much time to pick up. Here in Taiwan, I often see 9-13 year old kids write things in cursive English for fun. It's legible, too. Cursive isn't required anywhere in their curriculum, at least in the one I designed, and it's their 3rd language.

Writing in script is much faster than printing, and the time investment is minimal. Until technology reaches the point at which most people really don't use a pen or paper and offices stop buying them, I'm inclined to call bullshit on all of these arguments that the skill is no longer practical.

When is the last time you, yourself, used a pen or paper? I'll bet you used one yesterday, didn't you? Odds are also overwhelmingly high that you haven't gone a single week in the past three years without using a pen or paper.

I've made this same argument with people who think that being able to write in Chinese has no practical use: http://toshuo.com/2007/the-pen-matters/