Wow, who knew a benign thread on cursive could generate heated discussion?
Thrice Xandvii wrote:I don't know what school curriculum is like now, but what was described above bout learning cursive is much like how I remember it in my small town American school around the same ages mentioned. For a long time it was also strictly enforced, and I hated it.
I think I've got a couple of years on you, 37さん, and while I came up through four US school systems in the K-12 experience, the use of cursive was
never strictly enforced. I don't remember exactly when, but instruction in cursive started around 4th or 5th grade, and was presented as kind of an indication that you had "arrived" -- "printing" (use of block letters) was fine for children (for whom spelling would be more of an issue?), but cursive showed that you had your big-boy pants on (this seems to be substantiated
here (paragraph 1)). That said, even though we had been trained in it, I don't recall anyone in junior or senior high writing exclusively in cursive or being penalized for not doing so (though this is when a printing-cursive mélange usually got started).
I really enjoy good penmanship (though being graded on it is probably before my time).
Maternal grandmother -- cursive, her handwriting sucked (Mother and I concurred on this relatively recently)
Mother -- a mélange -- I always loved it and mimicked it as a child for which I was complimented coming up
Paternal grandmother -- cursive, gorgeous! but indecipherable to me as a child (God knows what style book she teethed on)
Paternal grandfather -- all capital block letters (as an architect/engineer, pretty meticulous)
Father -- a mélange -- all-caps plus cursive, legible (even to novitiates) but not aesthetically pleasing at all
Step-mother -- cursive mostly, very nice (a decade diff, so maybe they did penmanship grades back then)
As for me:
The mélange -- started out mimicking my mother's handwriting and getting compliments all the way up through university (avoided cursive because it didn't really look that good)
Started note-taking in cursive because it was faster (2000?), greater practice meant getting better at it
Now -- almost exclusively cursive (I guess I have my big-boy pants on), and now getting compliments therefor.
My Géarthnuns: Since it's along the same lines as what we're used to, it's good. It took some moments to get here, though.
My Chinese penmanship -- some days, it's da bomb; others, it looks like a five-year-old wrote it (my blackboard characters are nice -- even the (not-sucking-up) students say so)
My kana penmanship -- diss my kana; them's fightin' words
I would have guessed that in the light of our (relatively) recent "I loves me my fountain pen" discussion, that fountain pen users were decent calligraphers or at least cared about these things (yes, I understand that the sun still rises in the East whatever one's penmanship may be like -- I don't lose sleep). Maybe it's just pen-feel?