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                     The continued use of cursive writing

This past weekend was spent on cursive drills.

During the one of the marathon homework sessions [1], The Older mentioned the
work being hard because he hadn't had enough practice with cursive writing.
Both Spring [2] and I had a similar idea—a cursive writing drill.

From a typing instruction manual (Typing Made Simple, Copyright © 1957—it's
an amusing read) I found ten sentences that contain every letter of the
alphabet and the intent was for The Older to copy each sentence five times:

 1. Joseph Boxer packed my sledge with five dozen quails.
 2. Peter Fahb quickly mixed two dozen jugs of liquid veneer.
 3. The job requires extra pluck and zeal from every young wage earner.
 4. The jovial chemist quickly analyzed the mixture of brown and green
    powder.
 5. The queer, lazy witness from Kansas vexed the capable, patient old
    judge.
 6. John Wilborg, trapeze artist, executed his famous jumping act very
    quickly.
 7. Joe Quick, brainy government expert, was amazed to find numerous errors
    in the tax report.
 8. You can make good on your job and even excel in your work if you perform
    every task with quiet zeal.
 9. Our laboratory has just developed an amazing new wax that quickly
    restores the original finish on all furniture.
[DELETED-John Quinn improved his typewriting skill by seizing every opportunity to practice effective speedbuilding exercises.
-DELETED]

10. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

At a minute per sentence, it would take less than an hour; even at five
minutes per sentence it should have only taken three hours (and the last
sentence was changed when The Older exclaimed that it was **so long** it
would take **forever** to write) but instead it turned into a weekend long
marathon to write the fifty sentences.

“How did they come up with some of these letters? The b doesn't look like a
b,” said The Older.

“Because it's easier to write it that way,” I said (during my stint at
overviewing the cursive drills). “Cursive writing came about because it's
faster to write than printing. Write the next word, please.”

“This is stupid,” he said. “Why do we have to learn this?”

“Because it's required by the educational system and once past third grade,
you won't be allowed to write in print at all,” I said. “I don't hear the
sound of pencil against paper.”

“Well, when I'm President, I'll outlaw cursive writing,” he said.

“That's nice, but until you become President, you need to write in cursive.
So write!” And he would write the next word, and spend the next few minutes
looking about, playing with his pencil and otherwise do anything else but
write.

All day Saturday.

And Sunday.

But he finished the drill.

I had plans to meet with friends on Sunday afternoon. When I met up with
them, I asked them how many still use cursive in their day-to-day activities.
I had expected that no one still used cursive writing since I certainly don't
write by hand every day; neither does Spring. But two samples do not a trend
make as I found out when half my friends said that yes, they still use
cursive writing in their day-to-day activities; one stated that it was faster
for him to take notes in cursive than it was to take notes in print.

I'm sure The Older will not be pleased to hear this.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2003/04/02.2
[2] http://www.springdew.com/

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