Is there even a point to learning cursive anymore? Seems like a waste of time if they're still teaching it to kids. I can't think of any practical purpose for it. Knowing cursive is about as useful as knowing how to use an abacus.
Knowing how to use an abacus makes early arithmetic so much easier for young school children.
I think knowing cursive is still useful, too, because if you do know how to use ligatures to join letters you can write MUCH faster than if you have to write in print. As an engineer, I prefer smallcaps when I need someone else to read my handwriting, but if it's just for my own consumption (task lists, notes, etc) it's faux* cursive 99% of the time.
I also use faux cursive. I find it faster to print initial letters. Also printed "m", "n", "r", "s" and "w" are as fast, and more likely legible. That evolved over many years of note taking. I used to prefer Rapidograph, but now its rollerball.
Yeah, my reaction to most of these sorts of articles is "lawl, handwriting." Even on my Note 3, it's usually faster for me to type by tapping on Hacker's Keyboard than to use handwriting recognition (even if the recognition were perfect) and a lot of people seem to find Swyft-style keyboards really efficient. Eventually I think handwriting will go away just about entirely, and all that will remain will be reserved for moments like in The Diamond Age when a character is taken aback at the quality of an invitation's Chinese calligraphy, and the fact that it's used is more for a status symbol of being able to learn such an unnecessary art and perform it well than for anything else.
I think it's useful for being able to read old documents. My parents and grandparents wrote only in cursive and I'm finding I have to read their writing to younger people who can't read it.
I am not sure learning how to read cursive is very hard and teaching that may still be a good thing to do. Learning how to write it seems the difficult part though considering most people who do not know how to write cursive can read it just fine.
Note: Some cursive is much easier to read than others
