Skip to content

Letter: Past time to fully restore cursive writing

Editor, The News:
11937105_web1_fivepeaks
(THE NEWS/files) Zdena Novy is a former teacher.

Editor, The News:

Re: Citizen’s Ink: Despite technology, cursive writing remains essential.

Katherine Wagner’s point of view reminded me of Jack Emberly’s article you have printed in this newspaper. He asked a question: “Should handwriting still be taught?

As well, he made a statement: “Cursive writing will always be useful.”

My former Grade 7 class read his article and discussed the topic of cursive writing.

Here’s one response: “I think it’s nice to learn cursive writing, and I agree with the article. What if there was an old letter that contained important information. How would the people of the future be able to read the letter? Why would they even want to get rid of cursive writing in the first place? Why is cursive writing no longer necessary? I do not think getting rid of cursive writing is a good idea.”

We further studied the development of writing.

Here’s a summary from one of my former Grade 7 students: “Was it the Mesopotamians who invented writing with reeds and clay tablets? Or the Egyptians with carvings in ivory? A close race, but the Mesopotamians were ahead with the Egyptians, writing a couple of centuries later. The Mesopotamians, as well as the Egyptians developed pictures into writing. If you had a very simple sentence or phrase, this system would work well. But it failed with complex speech. So some changes were made. The ancient Egyptian’s word for beetle sounded very similar to the word for ‘to happen,’ so because it is easier to draw a beetle than to sketch out ‘to happen,’ the picture began to represent two things. As time went on, more and more pictures were being joined or replaced by the first phonetic letters. This type of alphabet was small because, instead of needing one symbol for each word, they could now join sounds to form the word. Once this type of alphabet was composed, only a tiny minority learned to read and write it. Those who could were called scribers and they gained much respect; often they were priests. Today in our society, it is thought odd if you cannot read or write. But in the future, will writing once again become an art? With all these computers, will writing become something only a very talented few perform?”

Personally, I agree with Katherine Wagner’s statement: “It’s past time to fully restore cursive writing in British Columbia.”

Zdena Novy

Maple Ridge

Editor’s note: The letter by Ms. Novy was submitted in cursive writing.