it's called penmanship
 

I write both ways to be honest. The odd thing is I actually sign my name with a combination of cursive and script. I use a nice fancy cursive first letter followed up by script.

lol, the mere fact that anyone here think we need this style of writing is appalling, and again, if you cant teach your kids to sign there name, your failing as well .

Cursive writing is probably the most useless thing I learned in school.

I wouldn't be so sure. My writing is sort of a hybrid of printing and cursive but I still use it daily. I think cursive is a faster, more efficient type of writing rather than printing. But even if you choose not to write in cursive, what happens when someone hands you something written in cursive and you have to hand it back and say.. I can't read this? Thankfully, you will never have to do this because you learned it in school.

I'd say the answer is perhaps not to have as much emphasis on cursive handwriting, but it's still part of every day life.

True but not really the point.

My son started learning cursive in 1st grade.

My daughter wanted to learn it so she taught it to her self with one of those cheap workbooks

That isn't how it works & I would contend that penmanship isn't an obsolete skill .. as evidenced by the fact that the very school who cut it is asking for it.

Worse .. they are not teaching more of the other skills. What they do is teach down to the lowest denominator. The truth is that now:

Regular Classes = Borderline special education

AP Classes = The former regular classes.

Follow the money. School is not about educating, it's about having standard test scores high enough to continue funding. Sorry about that.

this had nothing to do with my post. the op complaint was the kids could not sign a document, in 4 years i would have at least taught them their names.

That is very good since some schools have such a poor system.

You might be right, but declining level of education has nothing to do with whether they teach cursive writing or not... Fact is they have budget constraints, constraints on how skilled and motivated teachers are, etc and they do the best they can with it...

it's not like someone just decided lets not teach cursive anymore so we can teach kids how to play video games instead...

Will it be funny or sad in 50 years when it takes a specialist to read an old document because nobody can read the old language of English cursive?

They likely could have handled it better. Many schools around the country no longer teach cursive, but this is the one, for whatever reason, that we hear about.

Personally, I would rather they teach kids how to play music that write cursive. It still teaches motor skills, hand eye coordination, problem solving etc and it is show that music stimulates the brain. From grade 4-6 twice per week we had music class. I learned to play the recorder (which annoyed the hell out of my mom) and learned a few other basic notes on a few basic instruments and we were able to write our own compositions.

Like you say, people often don't respond well when things are "taken away." Many people say they want change, but really they don't want change. Many people have the attitude of "It was good enough for me" so it must be okay. When things change some people get scared and immediately assume it is for the worst.

Any chance you're from Texas?

People wonder why I don't want or have kids, this is a perfect example!