{"id":40074,"date":"2025-01-21T18:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T18:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/anthropology\/whats-up-with-cursive-anyway-everyday-anthropology\/"},"modified":"2025-01-21T18:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T18:31:09","slug":"whats-up-with-cursive-anyway-everyday-anthropology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=40074","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Up With Cursive, Anyway? \u2013 Everyday Anthropology"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Every so often, for the last few years at least, something comes across my feed about the death of cursive curricula in US public schools. The general tone ranges from it being a genuinely important part of United States Citizenship in being able to understand historic documents as primary sources, to\u2026basically \u201ckids these days.\u201d <\/p>\n
The latter argument is barely even worth responding to. You don\u2019t get to strip something out of public education and then make fun of people for not knowing how to do it. It is 100% the fault of those who remove it, not those who didn\u2019t learn it because they probably don\u2019t really know it exists in the first place.<\/p>\n
The former though\u2026I can see that as being a legitimate thing, sort of. <\/p>\n
I learned cursive in school, I wanna say we started in the fourth grade, but I could be misremembering there. I use it occasionally but really the only reason I write it now is to sign my name. Every so often I revisit my signature and see if I can make it look less like the work of a six-year-old. Having nice penmanship is impressive.<\/p>\n
My aunt Pat and cousin Suzie write in the most amazingly beautiful script it makes it almost frustrating to think of how pitiful my own handwriting is. I practiced calligraphy for a bit, got pretty good, came up with a style of my own that I kind of liked writing. But then\u2026I\u2019m left handed and lightly puddled, wet ink is not really suitable for someone who writes left to right.<\/p>\n
Having spent at least my fair share of time sitting in archives, I\u2019ve gotta say\u2026there\u2019s not always a whole lot of mutual intelligibility there. Yeah, there are swooping, curly letters and upon immediately seeing it it\u2019s pretty fancy. But letters were written differently, even if many period lesson books suggest otherwise.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at a few examples, starting with the most straightforward.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
This is the start of a letter from Amos Chafee Barstow written to his wife, Emeline Mumford Eames Barstow, on April 21, 1841. Some of it is going to be immediately clear to you, some of it less so. There are only a few examples, like the lowercase p in April (and the word probably), which show significantly different letters. The word \u201c\u2018ere\u201d isn\u2019t likely to be one that you see every day. This is one of many, many letters written by Amos Barstow which I scanned and transcribed for Lost & Foundry. Despite recognizing the writing and that it was English, it took me a bit to get good at reading Amos\u2019s handwriting.<\/p>\n
At this point I can recognize his relative age in his penmanship\u2013he was 28 here\u2013and it gets distinctly more shaky with more errors and cross outs as he gets older. At the end of his life it was growing quite poor. A solid understanding of cursive would probably get you through this one, though some of it might take a bit.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
If you\u2019re a cursive writer, I bet you have no problem at all reading this handwriting. This was written in 1901 by Grace Emeline Barstow, Amos Chafee Barstow, Sr.\u2019s granddaughter. She is writing to her father (Amos Jr.) here. That pesky p is still a bit different but you might not have noticed it or maybe would\u2019ve simply chalked it up to the writing of a 13 year old girl. That it may be, but we know from her grandfather\u2019s handwriting that that ascender on the p is something that\u2019s evolving out of handwriting by this point. Common in her grandfather\u2019s time, it was shortening and almost feels mistaken by Grace\u2019s time.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
Now give this one a try. This is the start of a poem entitled \u201cTo My Absent Husband,\u201d written in the 1840s by Emeline Barstow. It\u2019s a long poem and she separated the page into two columns, which isn\u2019t entirely apparent at first glance. Also, this isn\u2019t really that poor of a photo\u2013the ink is quite blurred. Some of this I\u2019m sure you can make out. The rest\u2026?<\/p>\n
It took me a few hours to get through this entire poem and difficulty in transcribing aside, it\u2019s heart breaking. Amos Barstow was well into his endeavor of starting what would go to become the Barstow Stove Company. He was spending most of his time either in the Norton, Massachusetts foundry or traveling New England to promote his business. Emeline was at home with two children and missing him.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most powerful line is when she describes their daughter\u2019s excitement in thinking her father had come home, only to find out it was her mother. How that must have felt to the both of them is immediately relatable to parents\u2013we\u2019ve all had our kid pumped for one parent to come home only to find out it was the one who was there the whole time. That disappointment feels personal sometimes.<\/p>\n
But how many of us reading this have had a spouse gone for sometimes weeks, with a handful of hastily written letters the only contact? The telephone didn\u2019t exist yet. At the point this letter was written, the telegraph was a new fangled contraption. There was no communication except the occasional letter. Emeline\u2019s pain is palpable and understandable.<\/p>\n
So was mine in trying to transcribe this poem. It\u2019s not just the font, either. Spelling has changed. Colloquial language use has changed. Do you know what quinsy is? I didn\u2019t until I read yet another of the letters in the Barstow collection. I thought it was a misspelling or something I just couldn\u2019t read correctly. I circulated the excerpt between friends, and one posted it in a group and someone in THAT group recognized it because they either have a medical background or are into that sort of history. Quinsy is essentially a tonsil abscess. I thought I was reading the word right but decided I couldn\u2019t be. Turns out it was just antiquated language. That\u2019s a huge part of reading this stuff, too.<\/p>\n
Howbout earlier?<\/p>\n
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Here\u2019s an example that should make you feel all warm and fuzzy if you\u2019re from the United States. It\u2019s a letter from George Washington to Jean-Francois de Chastellux , a French military officer assisting Washington during the American Revolution (courtesy of moutvernon.org). This is one dates back to 1784, and while you can probably make out a bit of it, it isn\u2019t simple by any means to read this.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably a bit disorienting at first, if you\u2019ve never read something like this. It (for me) starts off looking like a different language. Then I start picking out letters and realizing I should be able to understand this. Then more and more gets filled in and I start understanding individual words. Then I start looking for patterns in other words that I can\u2019t read at first. Sometimes I scan and zoom in. Sometimes I try to rewrite the word to see how the shape of them fits into how I write.<\/p>\n
After a while, sometimes pretty quickly, sometimes hours, sometimes days, my eye is trained and I can read a given individual\u2019s handwriting and by extension have a pretty easy time reading similar handwriting. It does start with cursive, but it doesn\u2019t end there. It\u2019s not a matter of \u201cok kids, you\u2019re 9 now, time to make things more difficult because that\u2019s what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cursive is important, but not simply because it may be what you learned. Things having been done before is just not a good enough reason to continue doing them. I don\u2019t think we use sundials much in K-12 anymore, either. They do have their utility, though, albeit increasingly narrow.<\/p>\n
As does cursive. In addition to looking pretty fancy, it is a gateway into reading and therefore understanding primary source documents. It\u2019s a fascinating and under appreciated aspect of language\u2013not just of the English language. I also know German, and learning to read S\u00fctterlinschrift, poor though I was at it, was amazing.<\/p>\n
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S\u00fctterlinschrift was the last commonly\/widely used form of the script style Kurrent. I\u2019m not nearly as practiced as I used to be, but being able to read it is way cooler than being able to talk to your friends in Pig Latin. The process of reading it is the same. I learned the individual letters, then in reading gobbledygook like this, I started picking out letters and then words I recognized. Those patterns help decipher others. As a starting point, the third to last word in this is \u201cGymnasium,\u201d which is basically a kind of German high school.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
So, learning antiquated writing systems and styles has its practical applications. But if we remove the \u201cyou should because I did\u201d aspect, the only thing that\u2019s really left is reading historical documents. Which is absolutely a reason to learn it. But. BUUUUUT. How many of us have read primary source documents that had not yet been read? Or transcribed?<\/p>\n
Howbout I make it real easy. How many of us have not read primary source documents that haven\u2019t already been studied extensively to the point you can base your academic career on the study of them? Probably most of us.<\/p>\n
For the most part, the primary source documents most people are likely to be required to (or really have any inclination to) read are highly scrutinized and the contents of them is widely and immediately available, in a printed font. It isn\u2019t necessary to learn cursive to be able to read the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution. It\u2019s nice to be able to, sure. And I agree that part of English, Social Studies, or US History classes should include it. <\/p>\n
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