One day this week I was chatting with a dear friend of mine and we were talking about letter-writing and also handwriting in general. She was lamenting about the fact that in our society today cursive handwriting is not taught in schools anymore. Upon further research I have found that “Common Core” education standards, the standards that all schools are suppose to teach to (so that kids can pass tests…my sarcasm) is actually completely doing away with cursive curriculum. This is the standard government recommended curriculum. This somewhat humorous article tells you more about it and comes up with a great replacement idea…spelling (“Instead, schools should add additional spelling lessons to the curriculum… … because of Microsoft Spell Check, NOBODY knows how to spell without a computer anymore.”). They obviously have no qualms in the dismissal of cursive handwriting.
As we were talking about this she was telling me that one of her first “real” jobs as a young gal was to go to the county Courthouse and look up certain kinds of papers that were decades old to decipher names that were seen on photo-copies. When these papers were documented everyone wrote cursive and sometimes it was hard to read. She had an eye to decipher this writing. She goes on to tell me that she thought that so much of this writing was really a work of art. Handwriting back in the day was exquisite, absolutely beautiful. Everyone cared about their handwriting. She adored it, loved reading through it.
Nowadays you see very little of it. No writes.
Handwriting is a lost art.
Letter-writing is a lost art.
Eventually we will have no beautiful record of our days, except on a thumb drive.
How boring and how sad.
Pick up a pen and grab some paper today and kindle joy across the miles.
Kindler of Joy! 
I so agree with this post. I had three older children who learned cursive in school. I had a son much later and at a teachers conference I asked when he was to learn cursive. “Oh we don’t do that anymore.” I was stunned.
My husband also says how will we remember things just on computer. He likes me to still get photos printed and in an album.
I don’t know exactly how to put this…but with massive amounts of photos on the computer, will they lose their specialness?
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Hi Candace! Thank you for stopping by. I agree with your husband about pictures. One of the most beautiful things to do is go through boxes or albums of old pictures. I LOVE seeing pictures from when my parents were little and myself! My children have that…to see me as a child…to hold it in their hands. But they may not have the same with their children. My mother-in-law past away last year and we dug through boxes and boxes of photos. It was so wonderful to see all those memories. My daughters LOVED seeing their grandmother as a child and young woman and were able to take many pictures home with them. I have lots of pictures of my first 2 as babies but then the digital camera was purchased. I have 18 years of discs. I want to get busy and get albums made! Print lots of pictures. You can get some amazing deals from time to time on Snapfish or Shutterfly.
I do think they lose their specialness when they can’t be touched, held and cherished.
Susan
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