Death of Cursive

Mom was surprised at how cheap my textbooks were.  She said that she'd have been ready to pay $1000 on any given semester, and she says in university it's even more expensive.  Well then, I shouldn't complain.

Did you know that cursive is supposed to be more formal than printing?  Since this blog holds an audience with a majority of people at least a generation older than me, I'm willing to bet that you did.  It seems like implementing cursive writing was in certain situations was a staple in our society up until recently, as opposed to now when it's almost dead.

Back when I was sending photos to Mali, I wrote a letter to the guy who would be forwarding it to my village.  I told Mom that I was self-conscious about sending the letter, not only because I was writing in French, but because I was printing, when I knew the Malians wrote cursive.  Mom told me that it's proper to use cursive when writing letters or for anything formal, and I was flabbergasted.  Nobody in my CWY  group could write cursive.  I myself only know how to write my signature, and even then, the writing is pretty illegible.

My education in cursive is limited to a course I took in grade three.  This is common among people my age, but looking into this a bit further, even people who are only a few years older than me complain that they were constantly teased by their teachers with the necessity of cursive, which turned out to be an unnecessary skill. "We'll let you print in elementary, but in high school, all assignments will be in cursive."  "We'll let you print in highschool, but in college, all assignments will be in cursive."  "Papers written in cursive will not be accepted."

There are only two cursive fonts on the word processor on this computer.  Sounds like cursive died really fast.  Within a human's lifespan.  Actually, maybe even within only a couple of decades.

I got enough fiction to last me awhile.  I managed to stock up a little while I was up North and came back with a fuller list than what I'd had before.

I already had Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, and Obasan, by Joy Kagawa, but now I've also got Ken Kesey's Sailor Song, Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Cat's Cradle.  That'll keep me busy for a little while