Kn U REED THIS?

Let's think about this. It's akin to the fact young people have a problem with the notion of time ...

We won't talk about stick shift cars but we could, right?

There's a cost to all of this as the question to ask is, what happens if the power goes out or one needs to be able to read cursive written information articulating something really important residing on paper. Disquieting don't you think? As often stated in BRT, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, something readily seen in the pix seen above when young people cannot discern the data contained within said images.

Illustration by Katie Martin. Source: Library of Congress.

GEN Z NEVER LEARNED TO READ CURSIVE

How will they interpret the past?

It was a good book, the student told the 14 others in the undergraduate seminar I was teaching, and it included a number of excellent illustrations, such as photographs of relevant Civil War manuscripts. But, he continued, those weren’t very helpful to him, because of course he couldn’t read cursive.

Had I heard him correctly? Who else can’t read cursive? I asked the class. The answer: about two-thirds. And who can’t write it? Even more. What did they do about signatures? They had invented them by combining vestiges of whatever cursive instruction they may have had with creative squiggles and flourishes. Amused by my astonishment, the students offered reflections about the place—or absence—of handwriting in their lives. Instead of the Civil War past, we found ourselves exploring a different set of historical changes. In my ignorance, I became their pupil as well as a kind of historical artifact, a Rip van Winkle confronting a transformed world.

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," 

 - George Orwell/1984