Coding, not cursive
Hi, my name is Rosie, and I have a confession: I write in cursive.
Well, more like a jumbled mix of print, cursive, freneticism, and sloth (they call that “joined up writing” in the UK, presumably to shame people with its childish nomenclature).
Can you guess the last time I needed to use cursive? The SAT. Even our stern proctor was silent as the majority of the room, myself included, questioned what an uppercase cursive G was supposed to look like. This all despite having spent hours of elementary school instructional time devoted to each loop and line, teachers endlessly claiming that middle school, high school, college would only accept our work if it was written in this elegant yet archaic fashion. Turns out, people want to read cursive exactly as much as they want to write in it. No one imposed those strict print sanctions, and so we all settled into our own comfortable corners.
No one can tell where technology will take us, any more than we could have predicted where we are today. But what is apparent, is that the foreseeable future is paved with lines of code. The point of getting an education should be to prepare oneself for the future that lies ahead. To be clear, I believe the teachers of my generation were operating under the assumption they were doing just that. But today? Everyone from tech giants like Marc Benioff to the Trump Administration recognizes the need to integrate coding curriculum into the k-12 experience. Instead of learning to loop an “l,” future generations should learn to create a loop statement.
Another confession: I myself cannot code (something of a rarity in the heart of tech country). It’s not for everyone. But you know what? Neither is cursive. And when I look back at all the time wasted on what is, effectively, a dying language, I can’t help but wonder where my classmates and I would be if we had instead focused on another. If the skills were reinforced in the same way, clearly we wouldn’t be much better off than we are now. But even a baseline, established at an early age, could prove critical for deeper understanding down the road, and the further we move into the future, the more likely we are to see coding permeate the multiple aspects of our lives needed for an immersive learning experience that will leave its mark. We’re already facing a talent shortage; we owe it to ourselves, our society, and generations to come to close it.
