Is cursive still important? Without learning how to write in cursive, will kids be able to read historical documents?

Reading cursive can be like deciphering another language with its unbroken, swirling letters and nostalgic elegance. It was once natural to most when hand-written correspondence was a necessity and not just a nicety in order to read birthday cards from grandparents, but as the world has become more digitized and hand-written letters and such correspondence has dwindled, it has become more foreign,especially to younger generations.

The Humboldt County Recorder’s Office is subject to translating the primitive script regularly, because the office holds a great many hand-written documents, some more than 200 years old and quite hard to read. From land deeds to death certificates, documents were written by hand until 1905, according to Humboldt County Recorder, Debbie Engstrom, and the office holds hundreds of them, which are actually re-visited by the Recorder and Deputy Recorders, county officials, companies, and researchers on a routine basis. Many of them are significant enough to sway a court case, redirect land ownership or explain the origins of one’s family.

Humboldt County Deputy Recorder, Traci Unrein, expressed concern that when her 12 year-old son visits her at work, he is unable to decipher many of the documents that the office has that are in cursive.

 “We consistently have researchers in our office who are hired to trace water rights, mineral rights and chain of title.,” Unrein explained. “To find the answers for this, the researchers will usually start with the current owner of the property and trace ownership all the way back to where the patent was issued from the United States of America. That is the only way one can be certain that those rights were carried correctly to the current owner. If our children are not learning cursive, who is going to determine eligibility of such claims? Our records mirror journal entries and tell stories. We can all learn from history, but that will not be possible if no one can read the information that we have preserved.”

Recorder Engstrom recalled a time when she stumbled upon old death certificates that accounted for an entire family’s demise because the mother of the family incorrectly canned beets and all members died from botulism. As absurd as it sounds, these documents tell a very significant story for someone out there, as do many of the founding historical documents that are the basis for both people’s rights and freedoms. Knowing how to read these documents can make a tremendously important difference in many people’s lives. Without the skills to interpret it, history could be compromised or lost all together. 

“Knowing cursive is a direct connection to our past,” agreed Humboldt County Deputy Recorder Tia Lange. 

With schools focusing more on electronic teaching methods, it is hard to say if the continuation of the cursive writing style will stand the test of time, despite its significance in connection with the past. 

Teaching it within the classroom has not been a part of Nevada Standards since 2010, according to Humboldt County Superintendent, Dr. Dave Jensen, but despite the lack of standardization, cursive is still taught by many teachers at Sonoma Heights Elementary School, according to third grade teacher, Leanne Peters, and kindergarten teacher, Kim Messmer, both having taught for over 10 years. 

“Third grade is when we start teaching [cursive],” explained Peters and “It’s another tool in their tool belt,” added Messmer. Both agreed that it is important for students to learn how to read and write cursive because students still come across it in their school work, especially during history, and at home for many reasons. From the excitement about writing “fancy” letters, to just being able to read cursive in a textbook, students do enjoy learning what feels like a new language, according to Peters.

Sonoma Heights Instructional Coach, Sarah Fernandez, explained that she had to teach her teenage son basic cursive at home so that he could form a signature for important documents as he got older because he hadn’t learned at school. 

“To have a signature and not just print your name is really important as we get older,” said Fernandez.

If the expectations for teachers to teach students more and more each year keep climbing, as they have for many years, learning cursive at home may be the only option for students as it could fall lower and lower amongst the growing priorities in the classroom. Parents may have to decide between their child not learning cursive and teaching them themselves.

 Fortunately, this is not a new concern and there are many resources available online for those wanting to practice or learn cursive all together. Doing a simple search online like, “How to learn cursive at home,” yields hundreds of results for materials that can help adults and children learn or refresh cursive skills. According to many of the resources, it can also be done very quickly. There are even programs that can help transcribe documents from cursive to print, but none are quite as reliable as doing it personally, according to Engstrom. Having the independence and ability to read and write cursive for oneself is inarguably a benefit in any stage of life.

“There are computer programs that convert handwritten documents to digital format. It is a time consuming and costly process with a margin of error that I believe can’t replace the human eye,” explained Engstrom.