It was a wake-up call for me earlier this year when my niece told me that her daughter could not read my birthday wishes that accompanied the card I sent her.

I immediately thought it had something to do with my somewhat sloppy handwriting, but, no, it was because I had written it in cursive rather than printed it. I thought to myself, “Gee, my note had to be translated by a third party as if it were a foreign language.”

I subsequently learned that this was not unusual: Many school-age children no longer learn cursive writing as part of their education. My mind went kaflooey wondering how these children would function in a modern society without knowing cursive. “Just fine,” the answer appears to be.

But what about signing a check? I am told that most children might learn how to sign their own name in the event that an archaic need such as check-cashing arises. I have stopped sending checks to my grandchildren and younger relatives, because they languish uncashed for months for any number of reasons.

Now, banks allow us to move money from one account to another instantly without a paper check, and there’s never a need to visit the physical bank. Then there is Venmo and other alternatives to traditional bank accounts.

Some of my generation are furious that cursive is going the way of the horse and buggy. I wonder why. I have come to terms with it. Just because I was brought up with cursive writing is no reason to demand that it should be imposed on a younger generation if it has outlived its usefulness.

I remember those dreaded Palmer Method sessions at the Lincoln Elementary School in Summit Hill where we used fountain pens (remember the inkwells in the corner of the desks?) as we learned how to write in cursive style. The Palmer Method of penmanship was promoted by Austin Palmer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was viewed as a simplified alternative to the much more flowery Spencerian Method, which had been around since the 1840s.

Don’t be too quick to write cursive’s obituary. It appears that this form of writing will not go away quietly. One Pennsylvania legislator, Rep. Angel Cruz, D-Philadelphia, wants to make it mandatory for students to learn cursive by the time they reach third grade and continue the instruction through the fifth grade.

Cruz is unhappy that there was a decision to remove cursive handwriting instruction from the Common Core Standards. As a result, Cruz said, many school districts with budgetary issues discontinued these classes.

I wonder why Cruz is trying to save cursive if its inevitable demise seems a foregone conclusion. “Despite the instruction of cursive handwriting slowly disappearing from our classrooms, there is increasing evidence of its benefits that go beyond simply writing,” Cruz wrote to colleagues, inviting them to be co-sponsors of his proposed legislation.

Don’t expect cursive writing to bite the dust overnight. In fact, in some areas it is making a comeback, but I predict that it will be short-lived, because kids will not embrace it.

Although cursive handwriting no longer is in the Common Core Standards, 21 states still mandated this instruction as of 2020, according to mycursive.com, an organization that helps teachers instruct students about learning cursive and helps promote the alleged benefits of cursive, including improving motor skills, promoting self-discipline and professionalism and improving spelling, grammar and vocabulary skills. Hmm, I wonder.

Some have compared the demise of cursive writing to the death of the slide rule and abacus. With the birth and proliferation of calculators, the slide rule became a relic of another age, not instantly, but in a relatively short period of time. I remember when calculators first became popular that teachers forbade students to use them in class to force them to use manual applications. Why, I wondered. What a fantastic tool!

With the almost universality of keyboarding, the need for cursive has similarly become antiquated. Sure, it’s a burden for me to print a birthday or Christmas note of some length to one of my younger relatives, so I have turned to alternatives - texting and emailing. Quite frankly, they quickly skim over the greetings on the accompanying card anyway.

It’s my message that counts, even more so the money gift delivered in any fashion except by check. Cash seems to be most appreciated. As one of my granddaughters put it, Franklin and Grant are her favorites. (Ben Franklin is on the $100 bill, and Ulysses S. Grant is on the $50 bill.)

I am sure that I will get a lot of pushback about my views on this subject, but I see the writing on the wall: It’s time to retire the teaching of cursive. There are more important things to teach and worry about. I assure you that all of us will survive.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.