There are statistics and reports I could cite, but I am not going to. But, just look around. How many people write in cursive?
From School to a Second Attempt
I learned cursive in school. I started in an early grade, I forget which, and I wrote in cursive for most of my school time and a little after. I wrote very fast, and ready it very little. This is a good thing, because my handwriting was (and is) very hard to read. As an adult in school, I stopped taking notes at all because throughout my time in school, I took notes, but never actually consulted them because I never needed to. The act of taking notes was possibly a form of reinforcement and it was sufficient for me or perhaps even unnecessary.
In the first years of schooling, I learned to write in block letters and then after learning that, we immediately went to cursive in the next grade. In middle school, we had a typing class (using what I now recognise as IBM Selectrics) which emphasized proper typing and touch typing, but we never had access to the typewriters outside of class and the class's drills. It did very little to teach us the skill of touch typing except in theory. Whereas we were expected to write with pens (pencils, but I strongly preferred pens because they had more fine tips and did not smudge) on nearly all occasions. One would think such frequent practice would lead to mastery of the skill. After high school, I eventually bought my first computer and mastered touch typing in quite a short time because I stuck to the principles I had learned in that typing class and I like to do things properly. After that, I stuck to the keyboard in all things and gave up writing in cursive because the times I wrote with a pen did not require speed but legibility.
I hear now that many schools have given up cursive to focus on more important skills. Many bemoan this. I wonder why? Yes, we learned cursive, but the purpose of cursive was not to be graceful writing, but to compensate for the deficiencies of pens. All writing systems have abbreviated quick forms. Ancient Egyptians had cursive hieroglyphs. The Chinese had and have cursive characters. Even Arabic has shorter forms. The Romans had unjoined cursive forms as well as the Roman forms we know and use now. And of course all the languages which use the Latin script have cursive forms. Why? Because we needed a way to write quickly and still have some sort of legibility. For publication, humans have stuck to the more distinct and legible forms. Cursive is essentially a shortcut for using pens without having to resort to shorthand systems.
Writing with a pen is uncomfortable for me. I thought it was due to improper training and practice. After adulthood, I tried to relearn cursive so I could at least use it well and comfortably. But I could not learn. In fact, it was very uncomfortable (nearly painful) and frustrating. I tried calligraphy, relearning cursive, and relearning another cursive script distinct from what I had learned previously. I could do it, but I could not do it fluently. I was essentially painstakingly drawing the forms, which defeated the purpose of writing. Why could I not use this skill even with deliberate effort? I could learn Dvorak to touch type within hours and have retained the skill with no practice (because I have not reached the high speed to which I am accustomed, I rarely use Dvorak, but when I do, my speed goes up slightly, so I'm sure if I put the effort into using it for longer periods, my speed would improve much faster, but that is actually hard, especially since I write productively).
Enter Dysgraphia
Dysgraphia is like dyslexia, but for the writing. Specifically, it is a difference in the nervous system which is otherwise unnoticed until a specific action is needed. The act of reading and the act of writing is not something that is biologically important. For most of history and in most societies, it would not have been necessary. In our modern age, far removed from the natural condition of humanity, many things are manifest which would not have otherwise been noticed. Dysgraphia, dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, many personality disorders, and the like are all disorders because they cause hardship in the lives of people who have them. Dealing with innate conditions like that is difficult. Does one use drugs or surgery to "fix" what is essentially different and not broken? Does one accomodate them? To what degree is a person who is significantly different have to learn to deal with others versus others having to deal with people who are different?
Those are all questions which are important, but the focus here is cursive writing. We teach it to people who are undeveloped...people who do not have the fine motor skills for using it. Furthermore, it is a measure of intelligence. This is not official, but it is evident that teachers and people rate people with neat handwriting as being more intelligent and given that many tests involve writing, this is unfair. If we are going to have an institutional unfairness like that, we should go by something a little more biologically significant, such as facial symmetry or something. Still unfair, but at least it has some value.
So, for those bemoaning the antiquated skill of cursive writing, does your desire to preserve it include indoctrination of young people, discomfort for many, and lack of utility, and most importantly, to the detriment of the skill of touch typing and reading and writing? We could have classrooms full of people reading and writing without having to worry about the primitive act of scratching a stick on paper, but no, we have people doing drills writing cursive forms which end up becoming butchered in signatures and everything else is "please print".
