Cursive Is Historical past
Gen Z by no means realized to learn cursive, Drew Gilpin Faust wrote within the October 2022 challenge. How will they interpret the previous?
Drew Gilpin Faust’s article on college students’ incapacity to learn cursive jogged my memory of the same lack of expertise that I encountered years in the past, once I was educating on the College of Colorado. I had assigned my college students timed shows. There have been no clocks in our school rooms (supposedly too distracting), so I introduced in a transportable analog clock. To my shock, none of my college students might learn it—they solely advised time on their cellphones.
Naomi Rachel
Boulder, Colo.
Discover the January/February 2023 Problem
Try extra from this challenge and discover your subsequent story to learn.
As knowledgeable calligrapher, an advocate for the continued follow of cursive, and a lover of handwriting, I share the wistfulness Drew Gilpin Faust expresses over the decline of cursive. And whereas I admit that in a sensible sense, writing is a expertise, I need to add that it’s an artwork kind too, a factor of magnificence no matter talent degree or perfection of kind. It’s a wondrous visible reminder of individuality and provides a component of artistry and humanness to on a regular basis life.
Lately, I used to be scribing reward notes at a retailer in New York Metropolis and a teenage boy watched over my shoulder curiously as I used an indirect dip pen and inkwell. I used to be shocked when he requested what language I used to be writing in: I noticed that to youngsters who haven’t realized script, I’ll as properly be writing in cuneiform. Maybe there’s a future for me in antiquities translation.
Rita Polidori O’Brien
Staten Island, N.Y.
Like Drew Gilpin Faust, I too will grieve the lack of the artwork of cursive writing. I used to be a third-grade instructor, and one of many targets of that grade was to transition the scholars from printing to cursive. The teachings began in September, and by January all schoolwork was to be in cursive.
By spring, a wee little miracle all the time occurred. Regardless of the rote instruction every baby obtained, each pupil organically stylized their very own penmanship. Some wrote in concise, blocky letters; others have been extra florid and ornate. By Might, an unsigned check or report was simply recognizable by the scholar’s penmanship and returned to the proprietor, like a be aware handed secretly between mates.
The lack of cursive might be a lack of individuality that in the present day’s college students gained’t even know they’ve suffered—however I’ll.
Rebecca Lee
Rocky River, Ohio
After I was in grammar college within the Fifties, we have been taught cursive within the third grade, after having realized the ABCs in caps and lowercase throughout the two years earlier than. Unhealthy penmanship was admonished, and corrected. We practiced.
In the present day I work as a lawyer, and I all the time have two traces for signatures—the signed identify and the printed identify under. It is because one hundred pc of the time the previous is illegible.
Lately I needed to look at previous land transfers within the New York Metropolis deeds information. The books, courting from the Forties, had handwritten information of titles, names, and land-lot numbers. I used to be struck by the sureness of the clerks’ script, the readability of their handwriting—it was fairly lovely. Line after line of exactitude and symmetry. And this simply to file the extraordinary.
Stephen M. Zelman
New York, N.Y.
Drew Gilpin Faust replies:
I’m grateful for the stunning outpouring of responses to my article—in letters to the journal, on social media, and in my very own e mail field—as a result of they underscored my sense that cursive’s decline marks a significant generational divide and cultural transition. The messages might present materials for an article of their very own—touching tales of early pedagogical encounters despatched by college students and lecturers alike, tales of the enjoyment of mastery and artistry concerned in studying cursive, and feedback from dissenters able to bid farewell to cursive with no regrets. Considered one of my favorites of these got here from a father who famous that, in any case, his son hasn’t realized to churn butter. However the many transferring tributes to cursive depart me satisfied that it’s removed from lifeless, and never going quietly.
Let Puerto Rico Be Free
The one simply future for the archipelago isn’t statehood, however full independence from the US, Jaquira Díaz argued within the November 2022 challenge.
As a Puerto Rican who has lived on the island my whole life and as a state consultant who favors statehood, I discovered Jaquira Díaz’s article on our political scenario deeply deceptive. Its title means that Puerto Rico desires to be free however has not but been allowed to be. Even worse, it argues that independence represents the “solely simply future” for us. The issue with these claims, and the cherry-picked historic abstract to help them, is easy: Within the final main plebiscite on the island, the political possibility with essentially the most help was statehood and a few type of free affiliation with the U.S. Independence could be a legit possibility most popular by the creator and others, however how can the “solely simply” various persistently be the one least supported by the folks? Statehood and independence supporters can agree that the decolonization of Puerto Rico is an ethical crucial for the US, however from starting to finish, that course of have to be centered on respect for and adherence to the democratic will of the Puerto Rican folks.
José Bernardo Márquez
Toa Baja, Puerto Rico
From the Archives
In “Can a Constructing Be Too Tall?,” Bianca Bosker explores the engineering feats which have propelled skyscrapers to new heights. Excessive-rises started dotting the New York skyline within the late 1800s, she writes—however to not common acclaim.
In The Atlantic’s October 1902 challenge, the creator Burton J. Hendrick railed in opposition to the “newest manifestation” of skyscraper design, writing that it “consists of a succession of prosaic tales … its monotony unrelieved by the slightest ornamentation.” He was additionally involved that the buildings blocked daylight, decreasing the worth of neighboring properties. Hendrick concluded, with some aid, that “the mania for mere bigness is subsiding.” He predicted that the large-office-building “craze” would ease up.
However the want to construct ever taller hasn’t gone away, and neither have issues about daylight. The posh residential “supertalls” that loom over Central Park in the present day prompted the creation of a “Sunshine Process Drive” to look into the consequences of the shadows they solid, which may attain half a mile.
Are their shadows actually extra troublesome than these solid by shorter, wider buildings? Perhaps not, Bosker writes: The shadows of those new buildings “are lengthy, sure, but additionally skinny, which suggests they move rapidly.”
— Will Gordon, Affiliate Editor
Behind the Cowl
The January/February 2023 challenge collects a collection of articles providing darkish visions of the longer term beneath the headline “Notes From the Apocalypse.” To design the duvet, the artwork division started by experimenting with other ways of depicting destruction—hearth, explosions, ominous skies—earlier than realizing that the important thing lay in “destroying” the duvet itself. The ultimate picture is a trompe l’oeil wherein a singed cowl reveals the desk of contents under. That is what {a magazine} that has survived the apocalypse would possibly appear to be.
— Oliver Munday, Affiliate Inventive Director
This text seems within the January/February 2023 print version with the headline “The Commons.”
