#64 Cursive · The Poetic Truth Behind Its Erasure

Cursive wasn’t just elegant — it was untraceable.

So why did American schools suddenly erase it… while students in France, India, and China still learn it today?

In this episode of Think First, we examine the poetic truth that cursive was “outdated” — and expose what was really lost when we stopped teaching it: historical memory, cognitive depth, and analog privacy.

Could this have been about more than efficiency?

What if cursive didn’t die…what if it was killed?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Think First, where we don't follow the script
.
We question it Because, in aworld full of poetic truths and
professional gaslighting,someone's got to say the quiet
part out loud.
Why did we stop teachingcursive?
I mean really, was it justbecause kids didn't need it

(00:23):
anymore?
Or was there something moredeliberate at play?
Because here's the thingCursive is one of the only forms
of written communication that'suniquely human, uniquely
unsearchable and, at scale,uniquely difficult to track.
So was killing cursive justabout convenience, or was it a
quiet war on independent thought?

(00:44):
Ask yourself who benefits whenan entire generation can no
longer read the foundingdocuments of their own country
in their original form?
Who gains when personal letters, historical archives and
handwritten journals becomeencrypted artifacts lost to time
?
Who wins when everything istyped, tagged, indexed and

(01:05):
uploaded, and what does it meanwhen your handwriting, your
physical signature of self,becomes obsolete?
Let's rewind.
In 2010, the Common Corestandards dropped cursive from
its national requirements and,almost overnight, entire school
districts followed suit.
The reason we were told it wasoutdated, that keyboarding

(01:28):
skills were more relevant, thattime was better spent on STEM.
On the surface, that's fair.
Sure, cursive isn't exactlyjob-critical in a Google Docs
economy, but deeper down,something doesn't add up,
because cursive isn't just abouthow we write.
It's about how we think whilewriting.

(01:52):
When you write in cursive, yourbrain fires differently.
You form thoughts as flowingshapes, not as pixelated boxes
on a screen.
Studies from the University ofWashington show that kids who
handwrite essays generate moreideas and retain more knowledge
than those who type.
Even in adults, cursiveactivates parts of the brain
tied to memory, emotion andmotor function that typing
simply doesn't.

(02:12):
So if this is true, if cursivebuilds better cognitive
scaffolding, why the rush toeliminate it?
Here's where it gets weirder.
When you erase cursive, youdon't just simplify classrooms,
you sever generational memory.
Think about it the Declarationof Independence, the US

(02:36):
Constitution, your grandparents'war letters, anne Frank's diary
, martin Luther King Jr'shandwritten sermons, even the
notes your mom tucked in yourlunchbox.
If you can't read them, youcan't fully understand them, and
if you can't understand them,someone else gets to interpret
them for you.
That's not education, that'snarrative control.

(02:58):
It's no coincidence thatcursive is hard for machines to
read.
Ocr, optical characterrecognition, has made huge
strides, with typed fonts, evenblock print handwriting has
become semi-trackable, butcursive Still a nightmare for
digital scanning.
Each person's cursive isslightly different Unique loops,

(03:19):
angles, pressure.
In a world where everything issurveilled, backed up and
metadata tagged, cursive is thelast analog cipher.
It's the ink trail of anuntraceable mind.
So maybe the death of cursivewasn't just an accident, maybe
it was a quiet compliancestrategy.
Remove the friction of analog,digitize the mind, standardize

(03:42):
thought and package it up niceand tidy for algorithmic
digestion.
Because when kids can't writecursive, they also can't read
cursive, and when they can'tread cursive, they also can't
read cursive.
And when they can't readcursive, entire centuries of
knowledge go dark.
You want to talk aboutgaslighting?
How about convincing an entirepopulation that cursive was

(04:03):
irrelevant right as digitalsurveillance became omnipresent?
That's not just a bad call,that's poetic truth.
With a stylus it feelsefficient, it sounds like
progress, but what it reallydoes is slowly erase your
ability to think in private.
And when you can't think inprivate, you stop thinking for

(04:23):
yourself.
So the next time someone tellsyou cursive doesn't matter
anymore, ask them this why arekids in France, india and China
still learning cursive, whileAmerican students can't read
their own constitution?
Why did the CIA keep cursivetraining in its old field

(04:44):
manuals?
And why does every powerfulsignature in history, from
Abraham Lincoln to Steve Jobslook like a squiggle, you can't
type.
From Abraham Lincoln to SteveJobs look like a squiggle, you
can't type.
They told us it was aboutsaving time, but maybe what they
were really saving was control.
The last privacy tool wasn'tdigital, it was already in your
hand.
I'm Jim Detchen and this hasbeen.

(05:06):
Think First.
You don't need all the answers,but you should question the
ones you're handed.
Until next time, stay skeptical, stay curious and always think
first, want more.
The full six-step framework weuse is at Gaslight360.com.
You can also dive into thedeeper story, the bio, the

(05:29):
podcast and the mission atJimDetchincom.
And if you like this one, tagit, save it, share it.