The death of cursive (among other things)

The NYT carries an article lamenting the disappearing art of cursive handwriting (“The Case for Cursive”). Apparently, it is now taught very little in American schools, and most students have difficulty not only crafting but even reading text in cursive. The article quotes experts lamenting the loss of an aesthetic dimension, pointing to the difficulty young people will have reading their ancestors' diaries, and warning that hand-written text printed in block letters is easier to forge. The article also mentions that many students no longer have the fine motor skills associated with cursive drilling. As a result, even their non-cursive handwriting comes out sloppy and uneven. The loss related to the slow death of cursive may be much deeper, though. According to a previous article from the Wall Street Journal (“How Handwriting Trains the Brain”), during an experiment with schoolkids “sequential finger movements activated massive regions involved in thinking, language and working memory.” This effect must be strongest with cursive, weaker with printing, and is definitely gone with typing. Of course, 50 years from now no one will know what they have lost.