I was listening to the news the other day,
and I was surprised to hear that cursive writing is no longer being taught in
many schools. I was not aware that it
has been phased out in several school boards.
One such institution is trying to revive the practice of cursive
handwriting.
My first impression is that it should be
taught. After all, I learned it and look
how great I turned out...
Then again, when is the last time I
actually wrote anything? Work reports
are all on computer, reminder ‘post-it’ notes are printed, and notebooks are
print, mainly capital letters, we text more than we talk…
Come to think of it, I haven’t written out
a hand written letter in over a decade, maybe longer. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I
actually wrote anything out,
cursively speaking.
Yet I’m still left with the feeling that
something will be lost by not learning it.
What, exactly, I still can’t pin down.
My inner debate got me thinking about Bruce
Lee. One of his concepts/beliefs was
that one should keep what is useful and discard what it not. Makes sense for self defense. If a technique doesn’t work for you, due to
size, shape, physical condition, etc, throw it away. Why keep practicing something you won’t ever
use? The issue with this, of course, it
that it’s not always apparent what will be of use. Not at first, anyway. I discussed this in a bit more detail in my post found here.
I still maintain that for self defense
technique, you often must first learn and explore and experiment with a
technique before you can toss it away.
It is tempting to discard a technique that doesn’t seem to work for you
when you’re just learning it. From my
experience, several techniques I initially thought I would never use are now my
‘go-to’ moves. I needed to really
understand them before I was able to make a proper assessment.
Does the same hold true for cursive
writing? Does the value of learning it
trump its actual use once learned? You
could argue that it forces neural pathways, increases dexterity and fine motor
skills etc. but is of limited real world value.
The same could be said of (some) kata out
there today. I’ve seen a whole bunch of forms
and kata out there that are pretty questionable on the whole ‘real world’
scale. They may not have always been
(not trying to kick off a ‘value of kata’ argument, that’s for another time),
but they certainly are now.
Should cursive writing still be taught? Does Bruce Lee’s assertion that you should
discard what is not useful apply here?
Food for thought.
For now, I’m off to write a letter, by hand, just to remind myself what it’s
like…