Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them. (Psychology Today, 3/22)

[progree]

24. The reason I was told in elementary school for learning cursive is because it is FASTER

Last edited Sun Mar 22, 2026, 06:13 PM - Edit history (1)

at least twice as fast as writing print. No lifting the pen after each letter.

It's not as important as before, but I still take notes at home, watching something like Frontline, with a combination of typing on the computer, and writing cursive (sometimes combined with print). Hand-writing for short things, typing for a long sentence.

I don't always have a computer with me when I need to make notes (and no way am I as fast on a phone as in cursive).

Several states have started requiring cursive instruction again in school.

ETA - I agree with your comment too about analog clocks. I have a friend whose teen daughter never learned to read an analog clock and refused to learn. But there are still many around, including at the grocery store where I do my shopping -- it's quicker to glance up at it rather than my wrist watch, which is often not oriented right, is covered by my shirt sleeve or jacket sleeve etc., so it's a bit extra effort to read (my wristwatch is digital BTW, so I'm not a fanatic about analog clocks)

And it's easy to learn -- just look at where the little hand is pointing, and one is pretty close to getting it right The really, really hard part is what the big hand is pointing to, for example if it's pointing to the "4" that means :20. Outrageous, one has to multiply by 5, that's a lot of work (I suppose an adult learning an analog clock would start out multiplying the big hand number by 5. Back when I learned to read a clock, that was before learning multiplication, so one just learned that "4" is 20-after somehow).