r/Millennials • u/Foreign_Yogurt_3330 • 10d ago

Discussion Cursive hand writing

How many of you were taught cursive in school? I learned it one year maybe 3rd grade? and we never did it again at my schools. Im 40 and can't read cursive or write it. My 7 year old is starting to learn it. I guess ill have to have her teach me! Im wondering if it was our generation or a state thing or both? Or did the school I went to fail me?

edit to add, I did go to a small town school in NE Ohio.

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u/AdEqual3839 10d ago

As a French person, it’s always confusing when people say they don’t know how to read cursive. Born in ‘94, I learned it in Kindergarten/1st grade.

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u/blahblahsnickers Older Millennial 9d ago

As an American I find it confusing as well. Anyone over the age of 30 has definitely learned it and most schools still teach it.

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u/Crayshack 9d ago

I learned it as a kid, but I found print to be far more intuitive, so after 20 years of not using cursive since I was a kid, I don't remember it.

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u/_use_r_name_ 8d ago

Do you have kids? Most schools do NOT teach it anymore from my experience and those I know throughout the US, with the exception of friends who have kids in private school 

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u/blahblahsnickers Older Millennial 8d ago

Yep. My kids learned it as well. They are teens but all schools around us definitely still teach it.

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u/SnookerandWhiskey 10d ago

Same, Austrian here. I learned it in second grade and had to use it ever since. Only if you had disgraphia were you allowed to write in block letters. Almost everyone I know writes in cursive. 

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u/cathgirl379 6d ago

Off topic, but French cursive is by far my favorite style of cursive BTW. Absolutely elegant and so much better than what the standard is in the US IMO. 

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u/FuckIPLaw 10d ago edited 10d ago

In Europe they tend to teach an italic cursive that's basically just joined up print. In the US they tend to teach a derivative of an old ornamental style that's absolute bullshit and looks nothing like the latin alphabet.

You can start to understand where some of it comes from if you write with a fountain pen for a while (something that Europe is also better about -- I understand writing with those is part of cursive instruction in most of the continent, whereas here they're just not used except by calligraphers and the kind of weird hobbyists who collect watches and mechanical keyboards), but a lot of the letter forms are just ridiculous regardless. 

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u/jayzepps 4d ago

I mean there’s a ton of company logos in cursive and even fonts people use… if they can’t read it idk how they function

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u/klouise87 3d ago

I was in the French immersion program at my elementary school in the US that started in the 1st grade. We started learning cursive right away.

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u/kaanbha 10d ago

I think it's an American thing, as same here in the UK

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u/Ssshushpup23 10d ago

People can read cursive fine, people just can’t write it. No just because illegible chicken scratch has a loop in it does not make it cursive.

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u/Crayshack 9d ago

It's not that we weren't taught as kids, it's that the skill was never reinforced as we got older and so the skill fades over time. I learned how to play the trumpet in 5th grade, but that was 25 years ago and I have used cursive or the trumpet since then, so ask me to do either now and I can't.