In every area of endeavour, those who love, respect and enjoy skilled pursuits and their props and accoutrements fear for their survival with succeeding generations. Fast food has taken its toll on cooking skills, computer gaming has diminished playing with simpler toys, texting has undermined competence in spelling.
Among those great skills under attack is cursive handwriting. A number of changes in societal behaviour have made it seem unnecessary, irrelevant. Tasks as simple as writing a cheque have all but disappeared, as cash cards replace other forms of payment. Few writers would consider producing a book, let alone an article, in long-hand. And, thanks to e-mails and texting, even simple, personal, hand-written notes and postcard writing have all-but-vanished.
Montegrappa, which manufactures luxury pens for the contemporary connoisseur, but which are redolent of a bygone era, appreciates more than most the attack on cursive handwriting and endeavours to support of the art of longhand writing.
Recently, Montegrappa was made aware of a feature article in one of the world’s leading newspapers, The New York Times, alerting its readers to the disappearance of the teaching of cursive handwriting in schools. Deftly, Katie Zezima explains what is gained by learning how to write with elegance, while explaining what its loss would mean to modern culture.
For those of you who love writing and pens, it is a thought-provoking story that we invite you to read.
Please click on this link: www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28cursive.html
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