I work in a university archives, and I'm here to tell you that the decline of cursive writing is creating a genuine crisis for historical research. We have centuries of documents—letters, diaries, government records, personal papers—all written in cursive. And the current generation of students and even young researchers cannot read them . I've watched brilliant graduate students struggle with primary sources because they simply don't have the fluency to decipher handwriting that was standard 100 years ago.
We offer paleography courses to help, but it's not the same as growing up with the skill. If we lose cursive literacy, we lose direct access to our own history. Future generations will be dependent on transcriptions and translations, which are always interpretations. I'm not saying everyone needs to write cursive, but the ability to read it feels culturally essential.
Historians in this forum, how are you dealing with this? And educators, do you think about this when you make curriculum decisions?
We offer paleography courses to help, but it's not the same as growing up with the skill. If we lose cursive literacy, we lose direct access to our own history. Future generations will be dependent on transcriptions and translations, which are always interpretations. I'm not saying everyone needs to write cursive, but the ability to read it feels culturally essential.
Historians in this forum, how are you dealing with this? And educators, do you think about this when you make curriculum decisions?