Comradeship // Freechat

i learned it by having a teacher talk about it and show examples and then making us do it.. that's pretty much all of school really. no one ever had to touch me to teach me anything as far as I recall

I learned cursive around 2008-2010. It only got outdated and discouraged around 2015-2016 or so.

Pointless skill.

I am almost 30 years old and I have only ever needed cursive once in my life and that was for my social security card.

It's basically like marriage in the sense that it's only important because we make it important and frankly we don't really need it.

I mean cursive is really stupid and has no real purpose in an age where we can just type things out. Learning to write properly is an important skill but fancy writing, for what? Especially since it's harder to read.

As for the touch thing I'm not sure that's true? I've literally never heard of that being a thing

In China, people are just forgetting how to handwrite altogether. You can be considered a fluent speaker and writer without handwriting anything, because most modern tests allow computer, pinyin input for writing. There are many terms for the phenomenon, such a 电脑失写症, 汉字遗忘症, 拼音综合征, 汉字危机, and 新文盲.

I learned cursive in US public school. No one guided my hand; no one needed to. This was long before touching was such a no-no (assuming it is; I don’t know what goes on at schools in the 21^st^ century).

Just because you learned it that way doesn’t mean it’s the only way nor necessarily the best way. You could learn it by watching an animation of the characters being drawn, for instance, or watching someone draw on a chalkboard.

I am from the US and learned cursive writing in kindergarten. It became my primary way to handwrite for some time, although now I am blending a bit more of print writing into my writing fashion. On the culture of touch starving, that I can agree is silently murderous to many people. When every touch, no matter how innocent, is sexualized and sexualization is a horrible taboo to most of society, a basic form of human connection is lost between entire generations of people.

I see what you're saying and we agree, both with learning cursive and guiding the hand. The hand touching wouldn't be the issue, the bodies being that close may be. Decades ago, I worked in child care, my class were kindergarten and first year. They discouraged hugging but I let the kids hug me and hugged back. Today, it would quite possibly be grounds for dismissal.

I am from the US and learned cursive without any guiding hand in school. Our teacher would demonstrate on an overhead projector or on the blackboard and we would mimic her movements. Then we’d do practice sheets with cursive already on one line, and a blank line below where we’d copy what’s above. Worked fine without contact, I write everything in cursive to this day

this is basically off limits in the U.S and this would be seen as very scandalous for a teacher to do

Literally huh? American schools don't really teach how to do cursive writing anymore, but American teachers are absolutely not forbidden from or judged for touching children in this way. Strange misconception.

this would be seen as very scandalous for a teacher to do but in most of the world its such a normal, innocent act for kids to learn how to write

I would like to know where you're getting this impression of the US. As EmmaGoldman indicated, cursive writing in particular is slowly fading, due to not being required. But I've never heard of anyone being looked down upon for wanting to write cursive.

Second is that this is not the same as learning to write or not learning to write inherently. I'm honestly not sure how often kids are writing in school now, but it is likely they're still being asked to do some essay writing by hand. The letters themselves would look much like what we're typing in this thread. Cursive is its own style.

Literacy in the US is an issue though: https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics (I don't vouch for this particular source, just a quick one I could find on literacy)

Edit: I just realized, you probably meant the "holding their hand to guide it while writing" would be the scandalous part. In that, you may be right.

What do people who don't know cursive use for a signature in the west? Do they just print their name? In my wife's native language (non Latin alphabet), printing and signing your name are exactly the same.

I admit, I learned cursive by reading what my teacher wrote in my report whenever I misbehaved in elementary school and editing it so my parents didn't ~~abuse~~ discipline me.

I learned cursive in the early 2000s, but I also went to Catholic school. Anymore, the only words I write in cursive are my signature.

Honestly fuck cursive.

wait, americans don't learn cursive? as in handwriting?? how tf do those people write stuff down?

I think most of my classmates in school didn't write in cursive. Some did, and I infact nearly forgot how to write with non cursive letters in my own native language (writing a legible letter to my at the time crush was a pain in the ass, as my handwriting is physician-like, and I had to remind myself of non-cursive). We were taught cursive in 2nd grade and forced to stick with it (in primary school, and only when the teachers had to look at our assignments), so it comes naturally to me. But I think part of the problem isn't just a low touch culture, but also the lack of necessity to write in cursive. I guess part of that might be misplaced guidance, the teachers helping the kids with something they are really capablr of doing on their own (or should learn to do so), and not helping at all with others (we learned cursive from prewritten examples, and I don't recall being helped when actually writing in cursive.). Might be a reason as to why I struggled with keeping up with dictated texts when we first did them.