I’m torn on this. I went to private schools where everyone had to learn perfect penmanship in both printing and cursive. All reports had to be written in it. But as relevant as that skill was at the beginning of the computer revolution I have not had a single reason to write in it in at least 20 years. I’m not sure I could string together the alphabet now without a little practice.
And yes, even reading it is a bit of a challenge unless the writer forms the letters well. When was the last time any of you had to read cursive outside of historical or archived documents from the 80s and earlier? I still had to write in it into the 90s but outside of the classroom it was already long gone.
As wonderful as it was, it’s a dead script today unless we want to resurrect it for taking notes fast and having our phones and tablets convert it.
I write almost exclusively in cursive, almost every day. This included notes and orders at the hospital until we went to electronic orders 3 years ago.
Dead. No one writes in cursive; mostly it’s used for signatures only.
Even my shopping lists or to do notes are on devices now. Why write?
When I’m at work I write (in cursive) in a logbook that is a legal document. Only the youngest engineers use block printing, which is what I was trained out of by halfway through grade 3. And their letter forms are often atrocious!
Because you don’t use it does not mean that it is unnecessary to all.
You also inadvertently made the point as to why learning cursive is important: If you can’t read or write it, how are you going to know what any and all documents written using cursive actually say?