Now circulating on Facebook, yet another time-wasting, comment-harvesting post, titled:   “Should cursive writing still be taught to kids?”  This post has more than 215,000 likes and 28,000 comments, almost all of which are in favor.  Now, I abandoned cursive long ago with no sense of loss or regret — after all, what cartoonist uses cursive?  So I would rather talk about cursory thinking, or better yet, allow such thinking to speak for itself.  Here then are some of my favorite (sic) comments from that cursed cursive thread:

“I can see that without learning to write cursive, eventually there would be no kiteracy either in the long run, then there would be a country that has gone back to the stone ages and slavery would be rampant.  Keep the kids dumb and unable to get themselves out of poverty without the knowledge to get themselves decent deals, on labor or purchases of their life like cars and homes. definetly they need to learn to write cursive.”

Definetly.  Because, before you know it, they won’t even know how to carve their names.

“YES, AND IT IS UP TO PARENTS WITH SCHOOL KIDS, TO IN ENFORCE THIS.  THIS PARENTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT THE KIDS ARE TAUGHT.”

I agree, it would be good for many parents to know what their kids are being taught, and even better if those parents were taught it first.  Perhaps we could start with the location of the Caps Lock key.

“Yes, they’ll need to know how to address a letter, write a check, sign a speeding ticket.”

This shows some people are thinking ahead.  So are these commenters, who are counting on cursive to rescue us from the coming technology apocalypse:

“Absolutely!  We must have a way to survive and communicate if the power grid fails.”

“Yes it should as all lectronics can have problems any time.”

“Yes for if there was no computers how write”

And when technology collapses, all that will remain is a few crumbling pieces of paper:

“All of our founding documents are in cursive.  If people can’t read them how can they know their constitutional rights.”

“In order to be able to read many of the old historical documents, the younger generation will need to know how to at least read cursive so they won’t be mislead by the politicians who are out to ruin our way of life.”

Speaking of ruin, this might be a good time for all of us to become familiar with the signature (to the right) of the man who wants to be our next president.  Hard to tell whether it says Trump or Drumpf… if only I could read cursive.

“Yes I think cursive writing should be taught in school. However, we are on the cusp of a paperless society. Soon perhaps within the next few generations, people will not know what it is like to feel the grip of the pen in their hands.”

But thanks to our Second Amendment, we will always know what it is like to feel the grip of a semi-automatic weapon in our hands.  So let’s remember our priorities — the Second Amendment beats the First, every time.

Meanwhile, I will have to look up those scientific studies that show how cursive writing improves human performance in all sorts of unexpected ways:

“It teaches kids how to have good art skills piano abilities, caligraphy, electrician skills, plummer skills, should I say any more?”

“Neurologically speaking, the fine motor skills required to write cursive are substantially located in a different part of the brain than those required for typing or tapping. We are literally reconfiguring our brains when we don’t learn to write cursive!”

Interesting — the next thing you don’t learn will be the thing that reconfigures your brain.  Think about that.  Or not.  Because it’s too late.  You’ve already been reconfigured.

I end this column with some of the few voices of dissent:

“I don’t think it’s important anymore.  Using it ain’t needed in the workplace.”

“I can not imagine the first person to want to change our way of thinking and writing . leave things alone”

The last comment was so despairing, it made me want to call Cursive Services.