Published Oct. 29, 2006 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
By Aaron J. Brown
With Halloween coming up, I thought I’d tell you something scary. Boo! Lowe’s built a large home improvement store next to Hibbing’s graveyard, and so any lawnmower purchased there won’t be a regular lawnmower but an UNDEAD lawnmower.
Boo! Actually that’s not true. Hold your letters. Boo!
I could use this “scary” opening device to deploy some political argument. Boo! For instance, did you know that global warming will turn Duluth into a warm Atlantic coastal village by 2025? Boo! Nah, I don’t want to write a political column this close to the election. Campaign operatives are ratcheted up so much right now that one false move by yours truly could unleash a legion of negative attack ads. Boo! The last thing I need is to be accused of guaranteeing free lemonade and bags of cash to illegal immigrants and/or terror suspects. Boo!
I now realize that this column, like an Iron Range pit party, is all “boos” and no substance. What are you going to do about it, reader? Stay the course or cut and run?
No, the scary fact I meant to mention (and probably should have mentioned) at the start was that computers have now almost completely destroyed the art of cursive writing. According to a recent Washington Post story by Margaret Webb Pressler, researchers find that teachers are abandoning cursive lessons in order to cover material required in standardized tests. Additionally, the increasing importance of computer keyboarding for students has crowded out the craft of cursive writing in the early grades.
Maybe you remember your first cursive lesson. I recall being nervous about the transition. As a kid, you just get the block writing down and, POW, they hit you with a “Q” that looks like a backwards “L.” It’s almost like an entirely different language. One time, just before I started to learn cursive, I found a “Babar the Elephant” book in a used book sale. The text was in cursive and I just couldn’t understand it. It freaked me out. Later, I learned that in addition to being printed in cursive the book was also written in French. That eased the blow, but only a little.
Penmanship, like gym, was an academic weakness of mine during the single digit grades. Invariably some teacher would look at my handwriting and say, “You’re going to be a doctor, aren’t you!” Ha-ha. Grownups sure love their clichés. But I knew I lacked the hand eye coordination to be a doctor. I’d sew someone’s spleen to their purple whatsit for sure. And I’d STILL have bad handwriting. But I must admit, in retrospect, that there is something wonderfully human about cursive writing, even when it’s hard to read.
Historians are the first to point out the problems with cursive’s demise. Many important historic details emerged from the handwritten notes that adorned the margins of printed materials. John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan revealed many important personality traits and elements of personal style in their handwriting. Napoleon Bonaparte used to send letters from the front telling his girlfriend not to bathe until after he got back. That seems like the kind of sentiment that would be changed dramatically if the writer put little hearts above the i’s and j’s.
The best we have now are e-mail and video, and both can be manipulated or lost over time. Instead of learning to keep their pencil tip on the paper, kids today try to get their words per minute over 50. It’s good to type quickly and efficiently, but that’s a pretty fair summary of our modern times. Typing over cursive. Fast food over courses. Self-serve over service. As bad as my handwriting is, and as much as I enjoy tasty burgers in less than 30 seconds, I still miss the humanity of the old ways.
Change is exciting, but also a little scary. So, boo! Happy Halloween.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.