Hardly records of importance. In fact, those "records" were trashed once the comments contained therein were addressed. There wasn't some huge room at Navy Federal were those notes were kept for posterity
At last the two places I've worked, we've had boxes upon boxes of dead-tree files going back to the 90s. I presume thousands and thousands of other businesses have the same. Obviously, most of that will be machine-printed, and only a fraction will have cursive writing.
Both Chris and I have provided concrete observations about the lack of use of cursive writing in today's workplace.
That the two of you don't recall seeing it is hardly concrete. It's not a detail anyone would expect you to remember, if you had seen it.
You've been able to provide no tangible examples where cursive writing is an ongoing and important part of the workforce, any job sector, any company, or any job other than the highly specialized role of a caligrapher....but its manifest necessity and vitality in the smooth functioning of today's business world is NOT one of them, no matter what you theorize, and no matter how little to no evidence you provide to the contrary.
I never said anything about it being manifestly vital, and I actually said that education is not just about the work place. We learn to read and write so we can communicate with family and friends as well, and I've referred to cursive's role in that.
They would still be literate. They read English just fine. We're not talking about language, but script. What if those letters were written in shorthand (real shorthand as it used to be taught...in schools)?
I didn't say they wouldn't be literate, but there are degrees of literacy.
I don't know much about short-hand, but how valid a comparison do you really think it is? Compared to cursive, how generally was it taught, and for how long a period of time? How many important documents were (are) written or preserved in short-hand, compared to cursive? Short-hand serves basically one purpose (transcribing or summarizing speech), while cursive is for general purpose writing, so it's more useful, and might show up just about anywhere.
Also, one can find cursive charts and transcribe the letters. The letters aren't lost.
I don't think anyone's saying they're lost. But let's say there's a situation in which an older person, during a business meeting, writes a quick note, and hands it to a younger colleague, who wasn't taught cursive. Maybe he's telling him to go out and get the such-and-such file, or to employ negotiating tactic #503, or whatever, so he just dashes off a note. And he just happens to use cursive, because that's how he writes. You can say, "In my decades of business experience, I've neither seen nor heard of any such thing." Or you can say that's what texting is for, or that the old dude should have known to just print. Meanwhile, Joe the Recent College Grad is googling a cursive chart. It's not a far-fetched scenario, but I think it's an absurd one, that should be avoided by fully teaching the poor kid how to read and write.
Without using cursive, I can read the language of our culture just fine. We're reading this, right?
This is in print.
You're assuming the records in question were written in a standard script, correctly, and still legible.
No, I'm not. Some cursive will be easier to read than others. Some print will be easier to understand than others. By way of "tangible examples," I submit this photo of a pick ticket I "tanged" this afternoon.
Someone tried to scribble in a job name or PO number, which the millennial in accounts receivable will need to enter into the computer. That's not cursive, and I'm not sure whether it's letters, numbers, or both. The one thing I'm sure of is that I've never seen a sample of cursive more difficult to decipher than that mess.
And since Mike is so rigorous about concrete examples, I wrote some cursive on another pick ticket today. WHERE IS YOUR BLOCK PRINT GOD NOW?!